poem 12 (free-for-all), poetry workshop

[wellownedbkup]

our last poem had to showcase what we learned over the semester. as i learned pretty much nothing i didn't already know, i got to write out whatever the heck i felt like writing. poetry snob, yes. but since i made myself have bigger challenges than my professor offered... *shrug*

this deals with a big talk i had in astronomy lab with this kinda awesome guy named peter. we're killing time talking about the lab and it got turned into this big joke about becoming a superhero based on all these cosmic rays that shoot through us every day. seriously: you calculate than over a million muons pass through you a day, and they're irradiated particles that move so fast, time moves slower for them.

so while we were in class, we end up talking about the hulk, superman, spiderman, mystery men and how "my mommy calls me special" and pretty much anything to kill all the time we didn't feel like spending sitting there.

a sestina is 39 lines, with 6 end words rotated each stanza. so they have to have the lines end a certain way.

p.s. peter's awesome. i think he likes me.
Astronomy Lab Sestina (You’re a Superhero)

So why can’t you be a superhero?
15 kilometers up are cosmic rays
passing through us faster than light:
negative particles meant to die
before they become our radiation
poisoning, muon ripples from space.

You joke how you could be a space
cadet, anything but a superhero,
shots of the Carbon-12 radiation
exploding from our bodies like rays.
Calculations tell us, not when we’ll die;
math more on how close we are to the light

insidiously from our Sun. Watching waves in a light
box, counting smoky trails in a finite space,
you ask about the time it takes for them to die--
quirky grin sly: ‘my mom calls me special’. Superhero
status only moments away, like guns that shoot rays,
courtesy of living in constant threats of radiation.

There’s talk about a spider without radiation
insistently biting you, Peter; the talk’s light,
sure, like prism broken rainbow rays.
You’re not Superman yet, not from outer space,
positive you’d give anything to be a superhero
between never and when you kick the bucket and die.

Millions of muons accelerate and die--
starstuff and latent planetary radiation
convincing evidence you’re already a superhero,
your smile white bright as unfiltered sunlight
drawling, ‘when I’m out of people’s visual space,
I’m invisible.’ Teeth sharp as a ray’s,

you bite off words like mathematical rays
extending too long before they die
parallel actions of their muon brothers in space,
relative time much slower for their radiation
zing to pierce the barrier of the speed of light—
microcosmic superheroes.

You’re a superhero before you ever think to die,
sponge-like in cosmic rays and solar radiation
unknowingly in the light that travels through space.