PLANET POETRY

Normally when I write poems, I write them in the way I speak, so words and phrases that have emphasis I try to make stand out. The way I wrote this poem was somewhat unnatural, but I used that to highlight the question of why there is this order. I know that the sequence of planets is due to their distance from the Sun, but I wanted to explore that theme as if it was in the planets' control to do something about it.

I think that the theme can also be a microcosm of the world, which itself needs change and in which there are ideas that should be challenged. The weird structure can show that, when this does happen, there are uncomfortable conversations to be had but ultimately those conversations point towards the underlying question: “Is it the right thing to do?”

Wanderers

Comets’ icy tails burn the abyss, Extinct plains sink into craters where asteroids live; Cracks gape as the surface shatters and the wind of blackness blasts, and waning light traces those frosted moons but cannot resurrect them.

The space is dark and endless. Autonomous planets live Alone, struggling to survive: But are they alive? Or are we alone?

Decimated universal islands are swallowed as black holes celebrate, their creeping storms engulfing rocks with names of lost Gods, Mars erat deus belli, As planets fight the fiendish forces he established, Assembling barriers to slow the siege.

Strange

That there is some Order

That the planets find themselves in Structured

In an almost seemingly perfect way

Not by hierarchy, beauty or Stature

But because they want to?

Obviously, it means something, right?

The order. Like

Saturn has found themselves in sixth place

How very humble of them,

It’s not like they are the only planet with the best-looking rings, the second-largest planet in the solar system. Surely,

That should give them wings right?

Legs to stand on

Maybe it warrants more than sixth place.

Shouldn’t it?

Who decided, Saturn

Why did you choose to be there?

Strange.

Why did you get to stay and Pluto did not, Because he’s too small?

Well then, tell Mercury

‘You’ve gotta watch your back!’

Order, Structure

What does it mean, Why Doesn’t it change, What Makes your order Planets.

The right one.

Esther A-A (U6F)

To survive a siege you must escape the shadows.

Only from loving light do dreams arise: Chances taken before times cruel inescapability passes by, As planets move in elegant paths, Light grants freedom when freedom lasts.

Unsettled hope hates to wish but light conquers even in the darkest of realms. The sun’s warm glare revives life, cloaking those inauspicious stars, Gravity towing planets together along elliptical planes.

Rotatory spheres tick as clock hands orbit the centre star, pulling his subjects as Helios once did. Gravity defies respect, removing the rights of less powerful wanderers.

A complexity greater than life governs the universe, Light is our escape.

Charlie B (L6O)