A poem you wrote or like?

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The Rainbow Bridge poem is both sad and touching. I can't read it without getting a major lump in my throat.

Shortly after Stephen Hawking came up with the idea of Hawking radiation - that black holes do radiate, thus losing mass - it was assumed by many physicists that since we can know nothing of the interior conditions of a black hole, the radiation must be ultimately randomized - heat. Hawking maintained that since the conditions are unpredictable, the radiation is similarly unpredictable - "it could be heat. It could be light. It could be a television set. It could be the collected works of Proust in ten leather-bound volumes." (I believe that Hawking has since rechecked his math, and changed his mind about the nature of Hawking radiation, but that was the idea at the time, at least.) This prompted Michael Bishop to pen "For the Lady of a Physicist", a poem which appeared in the Jerry Pournelle-edited collection Black Holes, and which went on to win the Rhysling Award in 1979.

If I with her could only join
In rapturous dance, loin to loin,
Deep space itself would soon discern
Galactic rhythm in our burn.
Our bodies stars, our debts all void,
Then we would waltz, and, thus employed,
Inflate with megacosmic thrust,
Through night, and death, and sifting dust.
Godlike lovers, we would hang
Beyond the cosmos, whose Big Bang,
All these mad millennia past,
Is but a popgun to our slow blast.
And, as we reel in raw elan,
Pulsing plasma in vast pavane,
We would shame the Pleiades,
Relume the Magellanic Seas,
Deliver all our Milky Way
(Ionic flux too fierce to stay)
In supernova, and so rehearse
Our own expanding universe.

But my small body is no star,
Albeit something similar,
A blind pool vacuuming into it
All the lambency it's not fit
To redirect and render strife.
The woman I would take to wife
Sees only blackness in my eyes,
Rapacious ebon, hungry skies,
An O-gape gravid with desire
To aggrandize myself in fire.
And so her light sweeps down the hole
That is the maelstrom of my soul.

Therefore, I have become to her
A dark, entropic murderer
Whose chiefest virtue is his pull.
Now, while my strength is at its full,
Let me crush her to my embrace,
Collapse her will, and show my face.
With her my Beatrician guide,
We'll tunnel with the thermal tide
Into the arms of Betelgeuse,
With Quasar sets and Marcel Proust
Emergent with us, glory-bound,
Detritus of God's Lost-and-Found.

Thus, though we cannot create light
From love, yet we can vanquish night.

Despite getting all embarrassed, here are four of my more recent poems I have written


Indefinable Life
Life in an explanation
Of words I cannot find
A mass of confusion
Of misunderstanding
A mixture of chaos and time


The Freaks of the Universe
Everything happens for a reason
On Earth and throughout space
But order falls into chaos
When it comes to just one race

Homosapiens are their name
They think that they are great
They think their brains are "Number 1"
But they're really second-rate

Only humans will do things
Which make no sense at all
Do things for no purpose
And disobey the rule

Do animals ever gossip
Or drink away the days?
Of course they don't, they follow
Nature's scientific ways

The Earth is only held in orbit
As it obeys all the rules
And if science finished working
The universe would fall

Most humans cannot see this
To logic they are blind
So the universe moves on forward
With the humans left behind

So by human ways I'm different
By their ways I am dumb
For I don't get their "reasoning"
Or idiosyncratic "fun"

By human rules I'm outcast
As it's not their way I seek
But logically it's obvious
It is they who are the freak


My Bedroom Is
My bedroom is my greatest friend
It is always there for me
Whenever I need some place to go
This is where I'll be

My bedroom is my greatest fort
It keeps me strong and safe
Whenever the world tries to attack
It is my hiding place

My bedroom is my greatest nurse
It helps take away the pain
It soothes the wounds the world inflicts
So I can venture out again

My bedroom is my greatest aide
It is where I can confide
It is where I can assess the day
It is where my thoughts can't hide

My bedroom is my greatest space
It is where I can tune out
To wander through my hectic mind
And sort its problems out

My bedroom is my greatest world
It is where my life is run
A world where order can be imposed
And inhabitants number one



My Way
I may do things differently
Or not do things at all
I may not do what others do
I break the social rule

I may protest vehemently
When something "gets my goat"
I may take things to literally
I may not wear a coat

I may say things unusually
Or things which may seem rude
I may seem somewhat fussy
Like when it comes to food

I may not understand your point
Or care to listen in
I may not hear a simple sound
It may sound like a din

I may be a perfectionist
And hate it when I'm wrong
I may not like being criticized
I may not talk for long

I may not care for how I look
As my fashion sense would tell
I may not wash too regularly
I may begin to smell

I may not care for drinking beer
Or going to a pub
And my idea of living hell's
A noisy crowded club

I may not get your simple jokes
But laugh at my own thoughts
I may walk round in wintertime
In just t-shirt and shorts

I may see things as right or wrong
With nothing in between
I may have a strong moral code
And tend to cause a scene

I may not vocalise my thoughts
And keep them to myself
Emotions are indescribable
I hate to ask for help

And so you see I'm different
But I don't care a bit
Although my life has dealt its blows
I'll battle on through it

I wouldn't change for anything
I'd rather let it be
To change would be to mutilate
A very special me