The Moon Rocket Crashes On Planet Trauma
1.
The little rocket is launched at the earth. It nose-dived into the dust. I walked on the
planet like the MOON, the day I first walked. Even with its sun, oceans, stones and trees.
It was the wrong STOP. It was trying to eat me alive. I opened my mouth and ate it first.
Stuck my flag into planet trauma. These are some thoughts about a mother's hatred and
its affect on me. Can one be eaten alive by hatred? My mother was so big when I was
born. She was more landscape than woman. I didn't like where I ended up. I blamed
myself, when I shouldn't have blamed anyone. I was sinking into a crater, my ship
dropping through 50 miles of dust. It's a lot bigger when you are 4 ft shorter. Some
children go to bed, try to bury their bruised organs in the blankets. They are found there
by their families shouting, or by their tongues and fingers. I spent time outside in the
backyard, looking at the stars. When no one is looking, dogs stare at the stars from cold
chains. Dogs locked outside look for another place. A heart. Soon the places far away
were calling to my wrecked craft. I turned everything I touched to light. Bugs turned over
to walk again. I stuck the snails back on the fence palings. I brushed the tangled knots out
of the coats of dumped pups. Damp kittens were retrieved from the sewerage pipes, and
hungry birds were full of crumbs. This is like a shopping list. Children are little aliens.
2.
In 1998 Columbia's astronauts performed the first embalming ever done in space,
replacing the blood of young rats with formaldehyde. Jay Belvry and Dave Williams
injected an anaesthetic overdose into eight sixteen-day-old rats and then pumped the
formaldehyde into their hearts and through their blood vessels. Their blood was pushed
out the other side of the heart, flowing along a wick. The astronauts dissected the
animals and stored the brains and other vital body parts in the same preservative. The
work was conducted in a sealed chamber with gloved openings for the men's hands.
Friday's dissections were tricky given the rats small size. Sixteen-day-old rats are as big
as a man's thumb and weigh a mere half-ounce, their brains are the size of a fingernail.
Once the ship returns to earth in May, the team will examine the brain cells under an
electron microscope. "It's an unfortunate thought, but "yes," One fatal step for rodents,
one giant step backwards for HUMAN-KIND. "We think it's really neat, as their nervous
systems will develop in outer space," Kerry Walton the neuroscientist said. Rats with their
eyes recently opened, used their front legs to scoot around their enclosure inside the
shuttle. Later, more than half of the 96 baby rats that were launched on the research
flight, have died from starvation and dehydration. The astronaut heroes nursed some of
them back to health, so they could dissect them later on.
3.
The stars are lonelier than the flesh. Each star pulses its remaining light, each pulse is a
question. I look into the night sky. The star has died light years away. My skin is frail.
Starlight slips through space like a loose rope. Space string gathers its comets and
satellites like velcro gathers cotton string and dust mites. The star that was solid matter
contracts to white gas. My bones will disintegrate to powder. When I see the head of a
cow in the desert, I am always shocked. We are shocked to find the bones of other human
beings. We tell the world about it. "The BONES of a HUMAN BEING!" The police must know
about those bones. They are scavenged up by society and collected. Children begin by
collecting birds bones, and tiny broken wings fallen from nests. Bones made clean by
micro-organisms. They see themselves inside the skeleton. They call out to the birds.
"Will I be eaten by worms when I die?," "Of course you will," their teachers say. Bones are
very clean and smooth like stones. Nothing loves bones. My bones still have their flesh
wrapped around them like a ribbon holding together a box, or form. The stars will not love
me, no matter how much I love them. I cannot carry a star in my pocket like I can a
stone. I cannot throw a stone into the sky and make a star. This is all I need to know. Am
I wasting time here? But I don't know what else to do.
4.
My moon rocket crashed here. It looked inviting. Can you blame it for believing? Will I go
on to prove the planet wrong? It has been wrong but there is no blame. It has been right
but there is no credit given. My flesh soon loses life and falls loose, like the rope of light
from a dead star skipping through the galaxy. I cannot say where it goes or where it came
from. My bones are all I have left. The river of blood rushes across them. My eyes fill with
blood. The hills are blood seen through them. The sun is setting. Blood leaked from my
body when I cut it. The maple trees are oozing syrup - gum trees bleeding sap. The blue
fly has green guts squeezed out of it. It's side exploded on a windscreen. Corrupted
rocket. Sometimes I feel like a tree trapped inside flesh, or a whale with an ocean inside.
Tearing through tides of blood that surround my bones. I could flood this earth with blood
or at least the universe of an ant. My greatest moment, yet to the earth it will be like a
red drop spilt. Please don't kill yourself, life's too short. It will be killing you soon enough.
Russian scientists want to create space mirrors, to reflect light down into the bleak nights
of the arctic winter. It would involve sending satellites into orbit around the North Pole, in
order to reflect the sun's rays back onto small areas of land. The effect on these areas
would be greater illumination than that given by a full moon. The scientists said that 2-3
kilometres could be lit up by quiet a small mirror. The natural pattern of light and dark in
the arctic disrupted, by reflections as fanciful as unwanted space junk.
5.
The moon rocket breaks down on planet trauma. Generations of voyagers come to the
same conclusions. Life is like a dream. Walking on the earth is a dreamed moment.
Dreams are the great motivators, night and day. When we die do we wake up? Or do we
go back to what we were? Featureless, infinite space. It wasn't even dark. It was nil. No
sun. No stars. I didn't go back into the universe, didn't go to god or love. I came from nil.
We are still coming to terms with our bodies. Nice knowing you. My rocket is departing,
even as it launches it white tail fires. A meditation inside whilst physically alive. One is
captured by purity. One eaten by worms. Done right, it's like snow has dropped on a
landscape overnight. Like an orgasm experienced simultaneously by two organisms.
Separation is kinder under the circumstances. I launch my rocket which runs on its own
hot engines. I am fueled by self-love. I am fueled by self-hatred. If the self is a rocket
consider it launched. By the way the moon passed quickly. By the risky sun, and by my own
internal heat combusters. I allowed pieces of metal to drop away from my life, to rain
down on the deserts. A desert pea trembled beside a burnt out ute. I noticed it, but it
didn't mean much. It gave me nothing but its presence. I do not like to pollute the earth
or leave it behind, but I'm not made to be perfect. I am flying towards stars who's light
has died, in a space that is infinite and directionless. What else is there to do? This a life
I was given to. I do not own it. I drive it around like it was a very old broken down rocket.
In the end it's mundane to remain. The outback collected its debri and gave no answers.
People around these parts can relate to that, know about aliens.
6.
The astronaut was ordered to kill the adult male rat, after its electric cap came off and its
brain electrodes came out. The cap, which had been attached to the rodent's head more
than a month ago, apparently was loosened by growing scar tissue. The animal was no
longer useful for brain research. Inside the shuttle a couple of vivisector astronauts keep
a watchful eye on 1,514 crickets, 4 oyster toads and hundreds of pregnant rats and mice.
Before launching the shuttle NASA was having trouble with the toads, who were so
frightened they buried themselves in their tank, the proper readings from the
transmitters wedged between the rocks. Once in orbit baby rats simply floated away from
their mothers and could not suckle, whilst the mothers were stressed out by the strange
space environment. Two hundred from 225 young swordtail fish died on the mission,
which also provided water that was too warm. No snail eggs hatched in orbit. Two of the 4
adult oyster toadfish were DOA. As soon as the landed spaceship was unloaded, scientists
began dissecting the few dozen surviving baby rats, as well as the nearly 2,000 crickets,
snails, fish and older rodents that were onboard. Researchers had to move fast, to see
how the animals nervous systems had adapted to weightlessness. When you initially see
this you think, "Oh, no," because the vivisectors had not been transformed by their
experience. They wanted all the baby rats back as soon as possible for dissection, before
their flesh deteriorated any further and spoilt the findings just beyond the gaze of the
earth. They sought to destroy sentient life and would travel no further.
7.
Before astronauts and rats with unopened eyes explored the heavens, another species of
space traveller tested NASA rockets, in flights that bolstered the hopes of star-gazers: the
nation's astro-chimps. Recruited by the Air Force in the late 1950's, 65 toddler
chimpanzees grew up learning to be at the helm in the Mercury space capsules that paved
the way for an American to land on the moon. These animals found stardom in 1961 when
one sharp chimp, 3-year-old Ham, won the honour of preceding the first U.S. human,
graced the cover of Life Magazine. But as manned space flight took off, the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration no longer needed chimpanzees, which can live more
than 50 years. Ham died years ago, the air force grounded the other chimps. Now, the
nation's 33 surviving astro chimps - along with their 110 descendants are suffering from
zero gravity associated trauma. There are deserts of unlaunched rockets. Civilisations of
machinery rusting in the outbacks. I went back again and again looking for the fuel of
rage to fuel my flight, my long journey. Hindrance is the great learned fuel. If someone
had helped me, I wouldn't have known what they were trying to do. I felt like I was only
living in half a landscape, stumbling over invisible rocks. Something whistled in the sky,
half a wing cut by light. A not quite an animal close by my cheek. I decide to return from
where I had come from, using my instinct as internal combusters, and my rage as the
launching pad.
8.
Life on earth looks away from its location. Has the universe been designed - fine-tuned,
initiated? Is there still room for god at this point? A final answer is I haven't given up.
Humans are inconsequential but interesting beings, god - the lazy minded theory. Why
have I bothered with questions? I haven't made a measurement of god, light from the far
distant past, a settling out of an enormous explosion, where our galaxy finally end up.
The death ship is the biggest spaceship I'll ever catch, since conception. I want it to be
predictable and cosy, so I desire someone to love me, a pope, a lover, a dog, a mother, I
am frightened, bewildered. The eagle has landed, my life was a random accident. This is
a pre-launch test, December 12th 1965, a fire on the launch pad. The hazardous, greatest
and most dangerous adventure yet. One small step for HUMAN KIND, one giant challenge
for MYSELF. At the spacecraft centre, prior to launch: ignite fuel engines, shut down
thruster. Are we just drifting through empty space holding together the pain of our minds
and flesh? Heaven has no location, Houston. My rocket has no found angels. For some
reason, you were meant to feel something, or is trauma simply a place where the grass
hurts. I looked over my shoulder, back down at the tiny planet. Death/Life, the door is
open, step through. We are not alone, we are looking for signs, whilst we sleep like
babies satellite dishes scan the stars. The spacecraft will leave the solar system drifting
in free fall space. This could take some time, and what about all those emotions? Why did
you make contact with them? |
