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.
