The Death of Old Man Messier

Author(s) Note: DERP, don't be silly, there was no way Mustard and I were going to skip out on this one.

--

Have you ever been down to the M82?
Where you find whiplashed stars to
those shattered streams of light
that whisp away before they're seen.

Stellar dust marks the tomb,
a rainbow burial of x-ray lights
in the space time sky.
Yes, down in Messier,
brighter than our Sun's soul,
where time stands still
as grandmum pretends when we
look into the scope; but do you know
what really happened?

I think everything clustered together,
after they captured the sky,
perhaps that's when everything collapsed
and webbed out into spindles.
but legends are misleading;
so who knows if everything
faded to black?

It began on one night, in neutral space,
from arm to arm of Old Man 82's spiral
array, an invisible symmetry disobeying
Mother Nature's rules; a tiny dip
tore a hole in his clustered matter, as
he'd witnessed the obsèque for IC 10 &
the Atennae twins.

Messier must have wondered what happened
when elbows knob together
and bones shatter like light did.
What happens when gas runs out
and stars sputter
he could watch them fall to dust
in his throat. and for a moment
do you think
all he could feel
was the spectrum flicker?

And the spindles itched
a million lightyear line across his nebula face
like the imprint of glasses from ear to ear
but he's lost them
because he's blind now, alone,
and he ponders
the quivering scratching inside
his gut
wondering about the last
baby star he devoured in a
cloud of smothering dust.

He forgot things grow exponentially
until his belly trembled like pulsars
and everything is white on black
seared star flesh that falls from his face.
It's simply a spiral, stained black
and nestled between the valves of his heart
that consumes everything, broken plasma
hanging from the edges.

M82 thought of Bode and the curious German,
as his plasma danced with dark matter
jutting a crimson stream of gas to
M81.
I asked grandmum
if he'd ever lovedloved liked humans did
and she said he'd shed a tear across the universe,
Halley's Comet passing by old man Messier
as he puffed a final star, a supernova
bloomed atop his head.

Perhaps he died
and pushed carbon from his lips.
but I can hear grandmum whisper
in the darkest nights
how he stripped space from time -
digging a hole right through his chest
fleshed out stars from his ribs
pulling gravity from it's strings;
I think that's why his heart collapsed
and everything went with it,
falling in.

Spiral and spiral uncoiled as
intestines bound around his broken
arms arms spanning a galaxy and then-!
everything coalesced on invisible horizon
sinking to the point, a dizzying wash;
a celestial disc ripping itself
from the roots it buried in stars

Now that he'd faded the lights,
I'm sure he could feel the spindles
coax his bones apart and have them
fall to dust, so he could see that gravity
would still exist;
exist though everything was quiet
the kind that burrows into his heart,
splashed across a neutron star,
it flickers out like the spectrum did.

For a second he closed his eyes
two red dwarfs swirling around a single point,
and he remembered when he was young
and how gas and gravity expand and expand
and he met his twin 81. And when he opened them
Messier was happy it could end.

Be good and review this viciously all. We'd be most grateful.

Ello, Kamas. *puts on Poker face* (the actual expression--not the song)

In order to reciprocate your terribly valid points on our submission to the contest, I would like to hazard several suggestions for improvement on this green beastie you have here.

First off, I would like to inquire as to why you seem to lack vampiric imagery in the entirety of this poem. You reference stars and all sorts of celestial beings, but not one reference can be found of the most mystic and dazzling of all creatures: Vampirus Sparklius. I suggest immediate overhaul to make room for the beauty.

Secondly, I fear that you may be dodging controversial issues within this piece. You speak of exploding stars, dying beings, and black holes, and yet I cannot relate this to by decaying soul in the least. My suggestion, clearly, is to remedy this with carpal lacerations and diary entries.

Finally, I would like to encourage you to be more experimental in your formatting! Don't be afraid to post this in the form of a word document and combine all of your phrases into one breath--in fact, I would have it no other way. Fashion your poem into the image of a flask or of a dove flying away carrying a razorblade. The sky is the limit, of course.

I hope you take all of this to heart, and I look forward to seeing you on judgment day.

Spoiler

We've spoken in chat about this, darling. Wonderful piece.

-Lumester

Due to the length, I'm reduced to a line-by-line critique.

Have you ever been down to the M82?
Where you find whiplashed stars,
shattered streams of light that whisp away
before they're seen.

Alright, so I read up on the M82, or the Messier 82. Read up a little on Messier, too. He cataloged 110 "deep sky objects" for the purpose of helping astronomical observers, in particular comet hunters such as himself, distinguish between permanent and transient objects in the sky. Okay. Quite the little goose-chase you have me on already. I know barely nothing about astronomy, except the pictures look cool sometimes, and apparently M82 and M81 are related somehow. One draws the other to it, one is a prototype (?) of the other. I'm a fairly keen reader, and that's about the extent of the research I'm willing to do on the topic of M82 and this poem. I hope this is all the background information I'll need.

Stellar dust marks the tomb,
a rainbow burial of x-ray lights
in the space time sky.
Yes, down in Messier,
brighter than our Sun's soul,
where time stands still
as grandmum pretends when we
look into the scope; but do you know
what really happened?

(Kamas, you know I feel about this astral imagery...)

Okay, I've read through this a few times, and the problem I see with it right off the bat is that aesthetically, it's pretty dull. The language doesn't quite grab me. The language isn't dynamic enough, falls flat, rather flaccid. Stellar, rainbow, tomb, space time sky (?)? Nothing is concrete, and the cosmic imagery is tired.

I think everything clustered together,
after they captured the sky,
perhaps that's when everything collapsed
and webbed out into spindles.
but legends are misleading;
so who knows if everything
faded to black?

There is not a single interesting word here. MMM, we talked about recuperating the word. Where is the weight of each word here? What drives each? Where is the inherent meaning in each? How do they contribute efficiently to make a whole?

It began on one night, in neutral space,
from arm to arm of Old Man 82's spiral
array, an invisible symmetry disobeying
Mother Nature's rules; a tiny dip
tore a hole in his clustered matter, as
he'd witnessed the obsèque for IC 10 &
the Atennae twins.

(neutral space. I like it.)

Okay. I enjoyed this stanza. The language is fresh. Although, Mother Nature? How does the mention of the mother nature contribute to the poem as a whole? As a contrast between she and Old Man Messier?

Messier must have wondered what happened
when elbows knob together
and bones shatter like light did.
What happens when gas runs out
and stars sputter
he could watch them fall to dust
in his throat. and for a moment
do you think
all he could feel
was the spectrum flicker?

And the spindles itched
a million lightyear line across his nebula face
like the imprint of glasses from ear to ear
but he's lost them
because he's blind now, alone,
and he ponders
the quivering scratching inside
his gut
wondering about the last
baby star he devoured in a
cloud of smothering dust.

He forgot things grow exponentially
until his belly trembled like pulsars
and everything is white on black
seared star flesh that falls from his face.
It's simply a spiral, stained black
and nestled between the valves of his heart
that consumes everything, broken plasma
hanging from the edges.

M82 thought of Bode and the curious German,
as his plasma danced with dark matter
jutting a crimson stream of gas to
M81.
I asked grandmum
if he'd ever lovedloved liked humans did
and she said he'd shed a tear across the universe,
Halley's Comet passing by old man Messier
as he puffed a final star, a supernova
bloomed atop his head.

What's with the double take on loved? Some sort of kinky form-play? If so, cut it. Gimmicky. As for name dropping "Bode" and "the curious German". Certain poems can get away with such obscure references and allusions, and they're generally poems that use them sparingly and which have prior justified their use with compelling language. I want to care who the hell Bode is. I really wish I did, but you haven't set me up, nor elaborated upon his inclusion. It's just another rabbit-hole into Wikipedia. Grandmum. Her purpose? The elderly, the earthly. Apparently the one with all the astronomical know-how. My reading so far does not include her as any special symbol. And I think that's a problem. A poem like this, a piece highly steeped in background knowledge, allusions and at least a pretended symbology, MUST keep a close watch over its intentions.

Perhaps he died
and pushed carbon from his lips.
but I can hear grandmum whisper
in the darkest nights
how he stripped space from time -
digging a hole right through his chest
fleshed out stars from his ribs
pulling gravity from it's strings;
I think that's why his heart collapsed
and everything went with it,
falling in.

Okay. A parallel to Grandpa. You intend to take the sprawling imagery of two interacting galaxies and compare them to human beings. To grandmum and her husband who has a suffered a similar fate as Messier, a heart-attack of sorts, presumably. A cancer.

Spiral and spiral uncoiled as
intestines bound around his broken
arms arms spanning a galaxy and then-!
everything coalesced on invisible horizon
sinking to the point, a dizzying wash;
a celestial disc ripping itself
from the roots it buried in stars

Dynamic language.

Now that he'd faded the lights,
I'm sure he could feel the spindles
coax his bones apart and have them
fall to dust, so he could see that gravity
would still exist;
exist though everything was quiet
the kind that burrows into his heart,
splashed across a neutron star,
it flickers out like the spectrum did.

For a second he closed his eyes
two red dwarfs swirling around a single point,
and he remembered when he was young
and how gas and gravity expand and expand
and he met his twin 81. And when he opened them
Messier was happy it could end.

I'd be interested to know how much you two planned and plotted before engaging in this. How much of this was impromptu. From what I heard from Kamas, you did a sort of back-and-forth parry in a WriterPad, alternating stanzas and co-editing simultaneously. I can see that here. I can see which is Kamas' and which is MMM's, and, more specifically, I can see where you got your act together with what you wanted to say, although I don't think your concept necessarily warrants this sort of length. I feel like it dragged on, repeated itself, and could lose a couple stanzas . From my best interpretation, I see this as a sort of galactic romance. Or, more fascinatingly, a romance between god and mortal. Grandmum's relationship with the galaxies parallels her terminated relationship with her dead husband -- she obviously derives some sort of erotic pleasure from M82. Something like a galaxy is generally viewed as being rather everlasting, undying. So might a love-centric relationship, soul-mateship. However, even galaxies decay, waste away. The character of Messier, the lover, is interesting if you consider him the immortal figure here, a lover of mortals -- sort of a parallel between Zeus and his diverse human paramours. He gives birth to two red dwarfs, but is glad when it all ends, these forays into the limited, the earthly. Definitely some titanic imagery here, too. Perhaps Messier is both Cronos and Zeus at once, eating his baby stars, eventually overcome by his own progeny dwarfs, the narrators of the poem. Mother Nature is Gaia. These two old gods and their children, and their romance. Their human parallels.

That's the best I can do I'm afraid. Again, I think that this can undergo a 30% reduction or so, though the topic does lend itself to epic length. Good effort, but tortuous, fumbling.

Kylan

Realized I had this stored away in my drafts, and figured I might as well post it as is. Sorry that it's a bit unfinished.

Have you ever been down to the M82?
Where you find whiplashed stars,
shattered streams of light that whisp away
before they're seen.

This stanza drew me in like...like a...well, I don't know. But it drew me in. You start off with an easy, and yet at the same time intriguing, line, and from there get right into the imagery. I like it. I absolutely love "whiplashed stars." Beautiful. "Shattered streams of light" is pretty good as well, though not nearly as powerful as its predecessor. My only problem is with the last line. In a different, less amazing context, it'd be fine. But, surrounded by the mentioned phrases, it croaks pathetically, like you had great ideas for the other lines, but lost all of your inspiration for this one. Were you aiming for the long-first-lines-and-short-last-line technique? If so, it didn't really work that way. In fact, another reason it didn't work for me was that it was too short to be able to flow into the rest of the stanza, but too long to be considered a product of the said technique. At first, I had no idea what this "M82" character was, but a little help from Google the good ol' noggin informed me that it was, in fact, a starburst galaxy. Now, I'm an astronomy fanatic, so this is right up my alley. Because of my utter geekiness, I'm somewhat familiar with the term. Of course, my follow-up question has to be: why the M82? I suppose it kind of fits with the successive imagery (early stars), but I have yet to discover what the deeper meaning will turn out being. Oh, I just noticed something as I read through this again. "Whisp" sounds a lot like "whip," and, as it does not sound entirely intentional, I would consider fixing that. But I have twelve stanzas to get through, so I'd better get moving.

Stellar dust marks the tomb,
a rainbow burial of x-ray lights
in the space time sky.
Yes, down in Messier,
brighter than our Sun's soul,
where time stands still
as grandmum pretends when we
look into the scope; but do you know
what really happened?

You kind of lost me with this. You start off with a proud first line, but it's all downhill from there. "Rainbow burial?" Already I have no idea what to picture. And then you keep going with the awkward "x-ray lights." Usually they're referred to as simply "x-rays." And I have a few problems with the third line. "Space time" should be "spacetime," as in one word. If they're two, then it's somewhat confusing. Also, this line is incredibly simplistic. All you're doing is reminding us that space is four-dimensional. Facts should not be recited in poetry - instead, they should be interpreted and/or expanded upon. Having read both of your poetry, and knowing how linguistically dexterous you both are, I'm positive that if you put your heads together, you can think of another way to say this. The creativity lies in the perception, not in the recitation. Moving on, I liked the following line, but "sun's soul" sounds a bit off. Try saying "time stands still" ten times fast. Seriously, guys. Are we aiming for tongue-twisters, or poetry? And what does your grandmother pretend? The use of "as" in that line sounds off to me, not only in its meaning, but in its sound as well. I'm aware that its usage does not carry the sentence past its normal limits, but it has that feel to it. Naturally, if "as" sounds that way, strapping a "but" there is only going to exacerbate the problem. Again, I have no idea what you're talking about. Once in a while, and when executed properly, I suppose this would be fine, but as you have it, I couldn't like it less.

I think everything clustered together,
after they captured the sky,
perhaps that's when everything collapsed
and webbed out into spindles.
but legends are misleading;
so who knows if everything
faded to black?

Oh, come on. Those first four lines? You're not really that susceptible to such a cliched rhythm, are you? And even if that was what you were aiming for, you kind of flunked it with words like "spindle" and "collapsed." Well, rhythm aside, I do like the imagery you have here. "Webbed out into spindles," though it flows horribly, is very intriguing. One could look at this stanza as if it were a mountain, imagery-wise. It starts off slow, rises, becoming more and more interesting, until it reaches the fourth line, the pinnacle. After that, everything, for lack of a better word, falls back to the ground. As for flow, however, there really is no mountain. It just starts at the bottom and stays there. And what, exactly, were you trying to accomplish with the last line? Or were you even aware that "black" rhymes too much with "collapsed?"