Still Bouncing Off The Wall in 2006

Adaptation.

To survive would be cool.
You have to work to survive.
Fuckin' A fusion, we're we're whirl.

Have to celebrate death, the unknown.
Clark Kent was a journalist.
Whole oceans feel the ripple started in a pond.
Typing is almost like paddling the water from a canoe.



"Who is it?"
"It is CANU."
Communication-Active Nautical Unit.

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Time B?
Top Dead Center, between the future and past.
A line of knowing, guessing, a cutting separation like Panama.
A line of certainty, between enriched life, and depleted death.
The flow inside us, from coming to loss.



Two shades of light, ahead and behind.
Long reds trail back, short blues bunching before us.
Beginning to see things drift, dilate.



Time's wet upon wet river.
No need to rush, or move with hellish flush.
See the eye in your head.
Feel the world's fingers in your stew.

Wonder why you're breathing and reading,
Of the Canoe.

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Talking stories.
Talking plot lines.
Talking about what happened in the tunnels of Celand City,
15,000 fathoms below the icy ocean surface of Europa.

Jed was an ice farmer, swinging 'round Jupiter.
The colony had needs.
Not everything could be shipped from the Mars Position.
And nothing from Earth. Not for four generations.

Jed got up from his jelly mattress.
The mattress was made from the local life forms of the big 'E'.
A curious geothermal heated water-species that appeared
To have gotten its start as sugary, brightly colored bacterium, like jelly beans.



They hadn't progressed far during the life time of the solar system.
But they made good mattresses.
And you could eat them, harvest them.
The cold jelly beans of Europa.

Jed remembers, and recounts for his young ones.

The day the beanstalk fell on Earth,
The beginning of our necessary self sufficiency,
The orbital tether was destroyed by the Red Sand,
The most radical faction of the Mars-Belt economic collective, the Concentration.

There had been various political actions for decades,
In the form of shipment slowdowns, and shocking hijackings that always ended with slaughter.
The Belt's adolescent emotional, political venting,
Hurling giant asteroids into the Sun, for all of Earth to see.



A serious disagreement had arisen between Earth and her offspring.
The rift began with the formation of the Concentration.
Finally, war came, the moment Earth looked to her neighbors, her progeny,
And they declared their independence and their disdain.

It had began with threats of rocks and rockets.
One for the other, elements of destruction falling and climbing.
But Earth sat lower in Sol's gravity well, and would succumb to the cheapness of throwing rocks down versus hurling bombs up.

The war raged on.
The 2300s spent fouling the nest of Mankind.



But time past, people survived.

Not just below the crackling malevolent skies of destruction pocked Earth,
But also above, in tacked-together rock bubbles and improvised ships of the Belt.
And in the sand storms of Mars, footprints were repeated, not blown away forever.

Like a sunrise in your gun.



"Papa Jed, what's a sunrise?"