Cryo-Hell

The final poem of the week is a piece called Cryo-Hell. It was published way back in issue 18 of M-Brane SF magazine. They don't normally accept poetry, but made a special exception for this. It's a real chiller....

CRYO-HELL

by

Damon Lord

Brave travellers, they called us:

A million colonists firmly abandoned to the cosmos,

Firmly bound for a fresh, clean world,

A new home.

No turning back. Say goodbye, wish us well,

Let us go. Forever.

Board the cryo-ship, take the pill,

Settle into the chilled capsule, go to sleep.

Still, still, still.

Revered automatons to whom we faithfully and wilfully entrust ourselves

Tend us, and decide when we have arrived.

Then we will rise to a new warm globe,

Like getting up next morning in spring.

Yet four centuries have been harshly stolen,

Stolen by Old Father Time himself.

Lonely generations back home

Born and turned to cold dust while we sweetly slumber on.

But I am awake.

Failed icy medicines locked inside my body murmur falsehoods, ineffective.

I am awake.

Chemical impotence rends me from the safe grip of Morpheus.

I am trapped in cryonic solitude, bathed in liquid nitrogen,

Held awake for over thirteen billion long shivering seconds.

I call for help,

Frozen and dead,

Conscious and alive,

Knowing there will be no release.

I weep, a solitary shriek of terror

Loud, endless, yet silent,

Deaf to the still ears of those around me,

A mournful cry.

Alone in this crowded, frigid, interstellar necropolis,

I do not dream.

I simply scream.