poetree | Poem: "A One-Way Trip"

This poem came out of the January 8, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by

primeideal. It was inspired by Anthony & Shirley Barrette. It also fills the "time travel" square on my 1-2-13 card for the

trope_bingo fest. You can find other poems in the series Tripping into the Future via my Serial Poetry page.

"A One-Way Trip"

Death is a given:
not the enemy's death or your own
but the death of everyone and everything
that you ever knew.

It is better to become death
than to become a destroyer of worlds
like those on the battleships slaying innocent biospheres,
better to become entropy's airman
than to become another sad cripple on the streets
like those who survive the infantry battles.

It is better, you tell yourself,
that this should happen to you
instead of other soldiers who might still have
parents, siblings, children left alive
to miss them if they never come home.
Someone should get to enjoy those things,
the sweet things that make home worth defending.

Death is a given:
life is always a long glide
from emergence to annihilation.
Only the form it will take is new
and uniquely terrible.

You at least know what will happen;
you can brace yourself for it
like setting your shoulder behind a shield
before meeting the enemy's charge.
You volunteered for this duty
knowing it would be a one-way trip.

The enemy fleet is caught completely unaware,
falling into the trap like an elephant into a pit.
The first tap of their tractor beam
against the hull of your solitary ship
is enough to trigger the time machine.

Suddenly space is on fast-forward.
You watch the war flicker past,
so easily won as whole enemy battalions wink out,
sucked into different timestreams.

Star systems drift away,
streaking bright as the taillights of skimmers
disappearing into a rainy night.
Nebulas blossom in the strange flower gardens
of space where now and then, rogue planets
pass like lost bumblebees.

Spacedust moves in curtains, in veils,
now hiding and now revealing
the scenery between swirls of smoke.
Supernovas flare like fireworks,
brilliant and brief.

You watch it all whirl past
because you cannot do anything else,
cannot help but see
what you are helpless to stop.

It takes a long time, subjectively,
for the time machine's battery to run out.
It takes eons, objectively,
for the damn thing to run down

and spit you all back into ordinary time
like flies smashed from the amber
by a ruthless hammer.

It takes a long time, subjectively,
for the enemy to start screaming.
It takes only minutes, objectively,
for them to sweep their sensors
across the empty space and confirm
what they had observed:

nothing and no one is left
of all they had known.

Perhaps not even humanity remains,
although that will take time to determine
whether or not.

You flick your sensors along the bands
and pick up alien signals, bright with life,
and you heave a sigh in sheer relief
that something has survived, however unfamiliar.

The enemy is devastated, demoralized
by the sudden shock of loss.
Their ships drift ever so slightly
out of alignment as the crews panic.

You turn on the stardrive
and your ship slinks quietly away
from this, your last battleground.

You turn to the nearest sun
and jettison the time machine
into the fiery clasp of the corona,
banishing the devilish device

back to the hell from whence it came.

* * *

Discussion

What do you think of second-person and present-tense literature?

Do you enjoy dark and/or far-future science fiction?

How do you like the idea of time as a weapon?

Have you ever written anything using these techniques or motifs?