threshold

when spending long amounts of time
in outer space (relative to earth), it's
good to be able to transfer one type
of emotion into another. and so it
was poets were some of the first
to explore deep space, sending
back their visions of what they
found as they traveled near
the velocity of light. these
deep space poets went
through rigorous am-
ounts of training
to be able to
be there so
far away
from all
fellow
humans
and still
maintain
what it is
that makes
humans human,
that spark of life,
that inquisitiveness,
that insatiable desire
to know the next thing.

or perhaps that's limited
to a certain few individuals,
certain word smiths sent out
among the stars in large space-
ships that look like canning jars as
in a steinbeck novel. tick tock. tick tock.
out here time approaches from many
angles as months at a time are
spent in the mind as the ship
barrels through space toward
the edge of existence where
it may fall off, often unnot
-iced.

oh the images sent back to
earth prime. words worth
thousand of images, and
faster to transport back.

now, though, new worlds were
found and chosen for colo-
nization and now those
poor poet souls who
were traveling in
the wrong direction
had to keep hurtling
toward the outer edge
of everything we know,
jotting down what they
see through the small
portal looking outwards.

it was debated by those
on earth prime and earth
two through twelve whether
or not to tell the poet-nauts
nought or something about
the discovery of planets super
suitable for human habitation.

when finally the word went out
through the wire to all those
word smiths traveling in all
the wrong directions (for
now anyways) - when
that word caught up
with them they ap-
proached the th-
reshold, the
edge of
whether
or not they
could weather
the solar weather
and continue in their
quest to tame the uni-
verse to other humans via
verses one after the other.

some went through that
threshold into the vast-
ness of space and be-
came one with it and
others went through
the inner threshold
and held on to the
little thing that
made them
who they
were at
the core
and the more
they thought about
it, the more the virtual
threshold became evident.