Poem Spam.

[aquabean]

Creative Writing
by Michael Van Walleghen

One of my students
has written a story:

It's the end of the world
and an alien spaceship

is circling the planet
trying to make contact.

Hello? Anybody down there?
But it's just as they suspect.

After the atmosphere ignites —
nothing. Not a whimper. Even

our germs are dead. Now
they'll have to start over.

What a drag! Other planets
in the galaxy are doing fine

but you and I, the human race,
we just can't get it somehow.

Perhaps reptiles might work
or something underwater…

And so it goes for fifty pages —
fifty million years in fact,

one dimwit, evolutionary dud
after another — until finally

Homo Erectus! our old friend
back again. Talk about irony!

The best minds in the universe,
eon upon eon of experiment

and here we are, right back
where we started, doomed —

perfectly ignorant, oblivious
to art, language, metaphor...

yet hearing voices nonetheless,
the genius of creation itself

mumbling at us from a cloud.
So what can we do after all

but sweat blood, struggle,
learn to write it down —

never mind the spelling
the ribbon without ink —

the lords of the universe
are circling the planet

like moths around a desk lamp
and the whole dorm is asleep.