The Wordsmith's Forge

This poem came from the February 5, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired and sponsored by Stephen Laird.  It's based on a video about stellar motion within the galaxy and the italicized lines are quotes from the video text.  This poem belongs to the series An Army of One: The Autistic Secession in Space.

To understand the universe,
one needs parallax.

To understand the war,
one needs perspective.

Time, space, and distance
are not to scale.

Estelle created a holographic program
that showed the whole galactic plane,
the Sun swimming through space
on a spiral path like a strange jellyfish
making its way through a sea of ink and sparks.

The arms of the Milky Way
reach out through the stellar wind.
The planets dance around the Sun,
forever led by its luminous beacon.

It takes about 226 million years
to orbit the galactic center.

The notable battles of the war
appear like pinheads of red,
visible only at high magnification,
spattered along a short span
of the Sun's infinite looping path
and beyond, into the Lacuna
that lies between the Arms.

So small an impact,
one would think,
looking at it in the context
of all that lies around it.

Please read my notes in the video description
before posting a comment.

Look at this, you conceited imbeciles --
the universe made this masterpiece,
and all you can think to do
is FIGHT OVER one little piece of it?
And to think you call US "mentally disabled."

This?  Is why I'm against the war.

This poem was from the February 5, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl.  It came from prompts by Shirley Barrette and janetmiles.  It has been sponsored by janetmiles.  You can read more about evolution, intelligent design, and Occam's Razor online.

There are clues, if you pay attention,
indications that the world was not made,
that nature is just an incredibly complex kludge,
hints written deep in the human body.

It's there in the knees,
quadrupeds turned to bipeds,
cartilage that becomes coarse
and then frays away grain by grain
until the ends of the bones grate together.

Somewhere a woman is lying in bed with a new knee,
thinking, "I really want to go home."

It's there in the eyes,
clear lenses that warp and thicken,
becoming opaque in spots
or veils over the whole surface,
until the light fades away like evolution in reverse:
detail to shape to color to shades of gray
to darkness.

Somewhere a man is sitting alone with his trifocals,
wishing there were someone to yell at him.

If God made all this,
then the logical conclusion
is that God is an ignoramus
who clearly failed bioengineering.

Occam's Razor slices through the knotty argument
and declares that, no, there probably isn't any
guiding force behind life on Earth --
only evolution, blind and lame.

chordatesrock  has helped me find some of these resources about autism, something I'm researching for my new series  An Army of One: The Autistic Secession in Space.  Some other folks have added things too.  I put in the stuff about space and science fiction for convenience.  I'm compiling a list here, for other folks who wish to write about these topics, suggest ideas for me, etc. or who are dealing with autistic spectrum issues in everyday life.  If you have more resources -- especially from the perspective of neurovariant people themselves -- please share in comments.