In Efflorescent I wrote about Michael Whelan and his creative writing contest and my submission to the contest.
That poem was the first one I’d penned in 10 or 15 years. The last one I recall writing before that was one in a series that I called something along the lines of the “science of poetry” or the “physics of poetry”. I don’t even remember the details any longer since it’s been so long ago, and I don’t think I have a copy of those poems.
But writing poetry again made me realize that even with all that’s going on right now in my life, that my need to write could be fulfilled by writing poetry — it’s certainly easier than plotting out a whole novel and then writing it, editing it, figuring out the artwork, publishing it, promoting it etc 😛
And what better subject to use as my muse than Michael’s artwork?
I contacted Michael and asked if it would be OK to use his artwork to go along with my planned poems — I didn’t want to take it for granted that I could simply use his artwork. I got a response which said that it should be OK (I assume since this is not anything commercial) but that it would be on a case-by-case basis.
I was OK with that and so here I’m writing a new poem … I’m not sure if this will see the light of day or not (since I do have to run it by Michael and/or his team) but I’m eager to see where this goes 🙂
Michael has a lot of interesting and beautiful artwork on his site. And if you’re interested, you should definitely take a look at the galleries.
While I first discovered Michael by way of his book cover illustrations and so that would seem to be the best starting point, I actually wanted my first poem (aside from Efflorescent) based on Michael’s artwork to be based on Terminus.
Why Terminus? Because it is kind of a wistful look back at the US space program and I have my own link to it in that I was born the day Americans landed on the moon. Yes, this is absolutely true 🙂
I’ll go more into the moon landing and my connection to science fiction and other stuff at some point, but here’s the poem…
Gazing Beyond
by Fahim FarookGazing beyond the bounds of what I could see,
To dream of grasslands wider than a great blue sea.
This is what I’ve done all my life,
To see beyond life’s general strife.I dreamt of starships piercing the black of space,
Of conversing in tongues with those of an alien race.
I dreamt of lands that human eyes had never seen,
Of being in places where man nor woman had ever been.And now here I stand on this rickety scaffolding,
Not letting go of the breath that I’ve been holding.
Gazing again at what I’ve been barred from seeing,
Been here for hours, have to stop myself peeing.I thought I’d see the next step in humanity’s journey,
To the stars, and not breathing its last on a gurney.
But all I saw beyond that tall imposing fence,
Was not something hidden by the Ministry of Defense.I did not see rocket ships aimed at the stars,
Nor did I see voyagers going to Mars.
Instead I saw a sunset, all golds, oranges, and red,
As the sun headed tiredly for its rest in bed.And that’s good enough for me right now,
A vision of a rocket can be beaten by a grazing cow.
Dreams of ships, and stars can wait for the ‘morrow,
I’m content with beauty that none can steal or borrow.
