Space, the One True Conquest
by William C. Burns, Jr.
In the exaggerated swirls
that have become my days
I watch the diamonds fading into the ebon jet
of the coming night
And I wonder if those stars
Those far
far distant stars
Call out to one another
And in that calling express a desire
written in blood and fire
A desire to touch
and no longer be alone
I ask the Night
if we are the children of that desire
If we are the flesh of stars
made mobile
And filled with the desire
to leave this safe place
So that through us
Those distant stars
might indeed touch
And our every act of reaching
every act of touching
Every conquest
Is but a fiery echo
muted in the waters of our flesh
An echo
Of the one true conquest
Of the one final frontier
Copyright © 2004, William C. Burns, Jr.
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M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy |
William C. Burns, Jr. was born circa the early fifties and raised in and around the rolling hills and glens of the eastern part of the planet and seems to think he functions equally well in both right and left hemispheric modes, creating across a wide spectrum of media -- graphic art, poetry, auto body repair, music, theater, sculpture, raising children, microprocessor interface design, computer code, etc.
Bill holds lots of degrees (mostly Celsius, some Fahrenheit some Kelvin) in areas such as electrical engineering, biomedical engineering and education. He keeps the hounds of starvation at bay by teaching electrical engineering and electrical technology courses for various colleges. He has written thirteen plays that have made the stage and been published in over 100 hardcopy magazines, as well as a metric bunch of web page zines. Bill lives with his bride of twenty-seven years and their three children.