Dysfunctional Family of Planets
* Mercury * Venus * Earth * The Moon * Mars * Ceres * Jupiter * Saturn * Uranus * Neptune * Pluto * Eris * The Sun
* Heliopause: A One-Act Interplanetary Mash-up
Mercury
No one else has flown so near the Sun
and lived to tell the tale — although you’ve not
had much to say. (“It’s hot! It’s cold! It’s hot!”)
Whatever wings you had were burnt and blown
away in solar storms, your wits undone
by comets screaming sunward — so alone.
You’re like the Moon, or maybe a little brother
who ran from home and made a dangerous friend,
with a place to stay and a way of life that tends
to a death spiral. Mostly out of sight,
you’re shrunken, wan, and wait upon another
needle prick in the twilit swath of night.
Of all the planets, yours the shortest tether:
a fireball and pebble brought together.
Venus
The smelly yellow twin of blissful Earth,
our Auntie Venus overwhelms a room
with the heavy, eggy waft of her perfume.
Her walk is slow. That sexy ass-ward turn
is the trawl of an aging flapper bent on mirth.
Her still-volcanic body, built to burn.
What happened to her? The brightest girl in school
from spelling bees to boys abruptly flipped.
In way too much mascara, crimson lipped,
she ran with Cupid. Such a lethal pair!
Their rivals — punctured, gasping — played the fool.
Then moonless, middle aged, she glimpsed despair.
The evening star, the lovers’ star of dawn,
her nothing if not Beauty carries on.
Earth
Queen of the Prom in a flowing azure gown,
with perfect air, so warm, so full of life…
Not even a god could dream of such a wife!
Yet there’s a dangerous edge to her as well.
The weight of adulation gets her down
and turns her pleasant looks to living hell
Ask the dinosaurs. Or the trilobites,
cute as a bug in Ordovician time.
And what became of the four-legged fish, who climbed
ashore in search of greens? All casualties
in the Five Great Extinctions science cites,
in Mother Earth’s occasional killing sprees.
Pale blue dot, and something more:
a pretty face, a furious molten core.
The Moon
With wide gray eyes, your mouth agape,
you seem to try but cannot look away.
As soon as the Sun goes down, the mice will play.
Then lovers tell you even to your face
of foolish, nasty dreams; they can’t escape,
so they confide in you and plead for grace.
But you are still a child, a virgin goddess.
When Mother sat you down to have the talk —
his what? in where? — you scowled and took a walk.
You’ve made yourself more distant ever since:
athletic as Diana, lithe and modest.
Other girls get giggles when you wince.
Unblinking Moon, ever more withdrawn,
the day will come, we’ll look, and you’ll be gone.
Mars
We had such hopes for the boy. Though slight of build
and somewhat wet, he showed a fearsome flair
for smashing toys and abusing silverware.
He swaggered when he knew that he’d been bad,
triumphing over helpless things he killed.
He knew himself, poor chicken-hearted lad.
For months he’d sulk, resurging then to manic,
At Troy he marched with troops so he could feel
the heft of battered armor, bloodied steel.
Disastrous dawn, in the city’s final throes,
he hid behind his consorts Fear and Panic.
A god cannot be slain. Mars froze.
To NASA we bequeath his red remains,
to learn if life was ever in his veins.
Ceres
Why am I here, picking through debris
in the belt between the solid worlds and him?
Beyond the inner planets, fragments swim
as if some would-be sibling left a mess.
The lees of that miscarriage tug at me.
I tend the child who never coalesced.
Busy, busy Jupiter, Lord of Skies,
his mere presence squeezes empty space.
His satellites surveil me, scan my face.
He rules by fire, but politics is water —
explaining why that day he closed his eyes
to Darkness sneaking up behind my daughter.
Omniscient Jupiter. Sees himself as good,
yet knows I’d cut his heart out if I could.
Jupiter
Fuzzy ball.
Original wooly bully,
your knitted bands are raveled sleeves of care.
And your color’s off, like bottled herb and root.
That Great Red Canker looks acute.
With loose ends unwinding everywhere,
you’re not yourself, not fully.
Not at all.
It’s not like there was ever time enough
to take my glory in, as others may.
Father tried to eat me — that was tough
parenting. Mother sent me far away.
I overthrew the older generation,
and not a moment since for relaxation.
Not with all
the girls you were screwing?
Those days in heavenly hay were itchy good.
Too bad about poor Io being harassed.
Europa more than most knew where she stood.
Callisto, bathing plump, herself embarrassed.
In many a field I sowed Olympian seed —
though childlessly with smooth-cheeked Ganymede.
Your lawful wife, what was it like for her?
Juno understands, but has her pride.
When gossip stings, her vengeance is severe.
She and I make sure we don’t collide.
Our deal is “free but not to interfere.”
In theory I’m the one should hold the rod.
It’s hard to be yourself when you’re a god.
Poor you, with lightning bolts in either hand.
How do you cope when days don’t go as planned?
Strategically I’m always getting bigger,
securing space and coaxing farther things.
A swarm of loyal moons extends my vigor.
A while ago I meant to grow some rings.
They never measured up to you know whose.
When Fates decree, one doesn’t get to choose.
Do you foresee how doomsday will occur?
Apocalyptic moments have been mine.
Of late I ate an anarchist for dinner:
bomb-bombs à la Shoemaker-Levy 9.
Once, I sent the Flood to punish sinners;
then sorely missed their smoky sacrifices.
When Fates decree our doom, their word suffices.
Decayed by your own doing
you shall fall.
Saturn
Stardom paints a halo,
gives your life a glow,
if living right is not its own reward.
To bask in being known,
by people in the know,
you need a play that fascinates the horde.
This thing you’re famous for —
a look, a phrase, a feat,
an incandescent moment from your prime —
you’re stuck with now forever.
Endlessly repeat
the camera-face you flash for sightless Time.
Who’s your favorite planet,
aside from Mother Earth?
(Of course she’s popular, she’s populated.)
Behold my golden rings —
such hula-hooping girth!
My eye-appeal cannot be over-stated
compared to balls banal,
in smudgy-crayon hues.
Go ahead, admit it. I’m spellbinding!
I pose in migraine-stillness
for telescopic views;
my rings are clenched, the rocks and ices grinding.
Okay. I ate the kids.
Does that make me so bad?
In self-defense, you’d have done it too.
The Fates foretold my fall,
the way they did with Dad:
“The father of your vanquisher is you.”
It’s so unfair. My reign
was called the Golden Age.
You wonder what’s the point of procreation
if giving it your all
will only set the stage
for whelps who seek their own glorification.
The NASA paparazzi
caught me by surprise.
Two Voyagers came scooting up behind;
the first clicked off a closeup
that widened earthly eyes.
The other got the shots that blew your mind:
my eight resplendent rings,
arrayed on velvet night,
where Sol is but a half-a-quarter Moon.
They surge and scrape to form
a wreath of gathered light
where winding lines of destiny were strewn.
Uranus
“PULL MY FINGER,” Grandpa cackles.
I comply. He cuts a methane blast.
I pull a face and ask, as if aghast,
where THAT came from. And he replies, “Uranus.”
It never fails to raise parental hackles.
An uproar’s all it takes to entertain us.
“YOUR-a-nuss!” Titania slaps the table,
insisting Sunday dinner be polite.
Oberon says there’s no need to fight,
yet here we go — like cuckoos on the hour,
a caterwauling tragi-comic fable
of what becomes of gods who fall from power.
They tell me I’m too young to understand
why parents have to have the upper hand.
Neptune
He’s god of the sea, god of the unseen,
of the deep space where light loses its way,
where shadows squirt from words too dark to say,
a god who answers prayers we know not of.
His horses killed a grandson … caught between
a father’s wrath and Phaedra’s violent love.
Impassive blue, with jaunty cirrus streaks
like gashes venting hurricane winds below,
he isn’t one whose undercurrents show.
The grim advance of counter-spinning storms
to a king’s brother’s layered motive speaks,
to the dire work ambivalence performs.
The Sun is planet-like in Neptune’s sky,
an evening star to portside, cruising by.
Pluto
Pluto was a little lamb,
sweet as jam, many fans,
the baby of the planet family
children learned at school.
He made the children laugh and play:
small and gray, found astray.
Can we keep him? Hip-hooray!
His snow was white as fleece.
Why did teachers kick him out?
Up the spout, cruel rout!
His planetary cred in doubt,
they tagged him T-N-O.
TNOs are not like us,
back of bus. Not a plus,
just too heterogenous,
so meanies changed the rule.
Pluto’s still a little lamb,
told to scram, on the lam.
“Who can say now what I am?”
Dear Pluto, go in peace.
Note: TNO = Trans-Neptunian Object. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union changed its definition of “planet” to exclude Pluto — on the ground that it looked more like the many tiny TNOs than like the eight other planets.
Eris
The gyre ends here, like a loose wire
throwing sparks that don’t know where to fly.
With the push of the solar wind whispering by?
Or the pull of the local star? Its glow is faint.
This far away, the Sun’s a pallid fire.
A god to some, but never a kindly saint.
A rounded, solid planet, restless Eris
glides in tilted space, a Vast Alone,
whose farther shore must host the Great Unknown.
Yet mere impatience tempts the Goddess of Strife
— daughter of Night and Chaos — to venture careless
on a comet dive at the hub of warmth and life.
Untethered Eris spirals through the cold:
a fitful mind the center cannot hold.
Note: Eris is a minor planet beyond Pluto, discovered in 2005. It is roughly the size of Pluto, with a diameter about three-fourths that of our Moon. Eris’ elongated orbit ranges from 38 to 97 AU, which is to say from a Pluto-like distance to very near the heliopause. One Astronomical Unit (AU) equals the Sun-Earth distance, about 93 million miles.
The Sun
A chariot? No. More of a glowing coal.
Or a magnet — pulling so hard it forms a ball,
pulling so hard its core implodes, and all
that effort sprays as a golden haze, which feeds
a distant vine of life, which blossoms in a soul.
There ain’t no car, no fiery-footed steeds.
The Sun’s a center, source of heat and light.
He’s not the one who moves; you figure it out.
And “he” was never a he: that came about
because the human mind personifies:
what fits with our experience must be right;
we see a charioteer traverse our skies.
The Sun’s agnostic, a vast indifferent eye.
He sees us looking up, and wonders why.
Karl Stull - Creative 