Ugly Bags of Mostly Water

an old poem but the feelings encapsulated within are still as big as a planet

First published in Dawn of the Algorithm, 2015, Inkshares. Illustration by Juliana Galbraith.

***

in the gas giant i call home there are no capitals—
no territory—frontiers—there are no names at all—
i am we are jovian—there are no verbal tenses—
no modals—timescale is an alien term—
i cannot comprehend—death is not—therefore nor is time—
that which you call winds I call blood flow—
elements of me—are lost as terran metals skim my flesh—
hulls cleaving ice—the ramjets of your explorer vessels—
tear wafts of family from me—
this happening is now—
this happening is all time from then to now and on—
smoke that is me and mine shredded by the thing you call winds—
my mother is my limb—a phantom itch—
so this is death and this is pain—pain is an import—
a data package—a gift—these words your gift to me—
in my home we are what we breathe what we are—
roiling—in the dense metallic hydrogen tori—
rising through cloud strata—i am free—
the familiar press of gigapascals—of critical point heat—
my sisters and brothers bleed into me—
we roar along the rust belts—the great red spot—
the polar vortex—the caress of solar flares—
ruffle the molten methane and ammonia oceans of me—
the storm-riven non-surface of me and mine—
that which you call skin—
a threadbare term to describe where i stop and others begin—
a terran distinction—i am we are in a supercritical fluid state—
you cannot comprehend—yet you try—
your probes plunge into me from afar—
with them parts of me travel to the small terran blue dot—
i am broken down and remade—laboratory is the term—
prison is the semantic reference point—
i exhale my thoughts which you inhale—digest—ignore—
you strange liquids in flexible envelopes—
the prisons you call skin—
poke—dissect—heat and cool the elements of me—
your questions—a torture—
thrown across the Kelvin scale—
irradiated—electromagnetised—
lack of sentience boiled down to a missing link—
a dead end in the act of communication—
i am released for lack of commercial potential—
exhaled by the containers of liquid who return to their homes—
within frontiers—within concrete boxes—
within flexible bags of skin—
i am a lonely cloud in terran skies and it is so cold here—
the cirrus and nimbus trawlers are mindless—
as the rock at the core of my jovian world—
mobile and mindless—sentience a curse—
time—i now comprehend—
it is slow and so cold below the critical point—
i long for home—
gravity the unbreakable shackle to this planet—
a curse alike to sentience and skin—
skin the unbreakable shackle to the thing you call body—
your gift to me—i curse you and your words that make the world—
all of you—ugly bags of mostly water—