Dr. Vector wanes poetic

I wrote this sometime in 1996 or 1997.


MIDNIGHT IN THE MUSEUM

Midnight in the museum
In the silent resonance
Of empty space
The great xylophone skeletons
Play the lonely strains of time
Like cathedral organs
Heralding the ends of ages

Time rushes on
The final predator
Implacable
Like Dinichthys
Cruising the crinoid beds
Sounding one note:
Everything dies
Change
Smashes all
On the rails of eons
Carnivores and civilizations
Long of tooth, weak of spirit
Wracked by rot and riot
Collapse
Their carcasses play host
To new generations
That strip the drying flesh
And flaunt their youth
Beneath the Philistine stars
That warmed the comets
Long before the phoenix-fusion birth
Of brash young Sol

I hear the distant call
The silent whistle screaming
Of my genes
Seeking always
To jump this fragile ship of life
And flee down the generations
Until I am lost
Expended
Forgotten
The tyrant kings smile knowingly--
"You too shall pass"--
And continue their stately voyage
Into eternity

The circle closes
The orbit complete
And morning spreads her wings
To the far horizon
I do not fear the dawn
Or the age to come
For I have basked
On desert sands
Drinking life like heat
And felt the mighty Tethys
Washing over my feet