Out of the Ecliptic.

Soldiers stare in poets’ guise,
shout bloody words at careless skies.
Faces bowed are steeped in grief,
and turn away from warrior and thief.

Art ensnared in martial rule,
followed by bloodlust thirsty fools.
Teachers caught are sold and bought,
preach manifestoes to the worth of naught.

Mourning not another day,
these people force my hand.
I’m leaving now.
Stealing out before the starlight fades.
Leaving this world of worldly fears,
bloodied guns and rusty tears,
where sunlight gleams on deadly spears.

Climbing up, up and out,
out of this ecliptic,
away from the cyclic,
rhetoric writings calling tunes,
and forbidding dances.
Everyone with backward glances,
unwilling to take chances.

Up from this surface,
and out of the ecliptic.

Leaving you and all your memories,
granite hearts and fallow fears,
leaving all you ever meant to me,
or ever meant to be.
Leaving all this mad confusion,
hateful lust and emotional pollution.
Cried too much, I’m leaving now.

Climbing out of the ecliptic,
on my way to the stars.

Outwards from your faithless arms,
away from your poison charms,
hypochondriac alarms.
Eyes with just a hint of magic,
hiding something,
caught, bound up and held within,
with tragic shortcomings.

Poets stare in soldiers’ eyes,
write hopeful words about clear skies.
I’m leaving now, cried too long,
leaving nothing.

I wrote Out of the Ecliptic sometime around 1976/77/78, sadly the date is missing but it’s grouped in with a lot of others from around that time. What does it say about me? I’ve always believed that there is a future “out there” somewhere. It doesn’t mean that I abdicate responsibility for getting our collective acts together “down here” and making the world a better place, but I firmly believe that eventually humanity will leave Earth and set-up home on other planets.

As a child brought up on visions of the future supplied by Arthur C. Clark, Isaac Asimov, Gene Roddenberry, James Blish, E. E. “Doc” Smith, Gerry Anderson and the like, why wouldn’t I have believed that?

However, that rosy extraplanetary future was tempered with the many and varied conflicts going on around the world in the 1970’s and in a moment of teenage angst I took the opinion that maybe it was better to just leave.

Maybe it is better, four and a half decades later there are still conflicts going on.