Songs of the Saiiban- A Poetic AAR

[Chilango2]

We Just Wanted to Say

We have taken
the star systems
you could have used
to expand further

You see,
we needed them
for we are expanding too
and there is promising science
further on from them

We are kind of sorry
(although our apologies are mostly formulaic)
we know it’s more than an inconvenience
especially since it leaves you
between us and murderous death robots
that want to kill all organics

We hope you can forgive us
The star systems were important
so necessary
And so warm.

 

[Chilango2]

Knock Knock

You find you are
in front of two doors
Locked by unknown lore
Do they go near or far?

If an open door says
“Come in”
And a closed door says
“Stay out”
What to make of a door
Closed by an inviting lock?

“Unlock us please”
The locks say
“But what is on the other side?”
We reply.
Silence, only silence,
But why did we expect locks to reply?

Madness? Money? Science? Insanity?
The locks tempt, they invite,
If our flock has one central weakness
Curiosity to learn what is on the other side.

We do not know the key,
We barely understand the door,
But our talons quiver with the scent of prey
One day (not yet) we will open them
And find out more.

(Who’s there?)

 

[Chilango2]

Mote in the Eye of the Universe

 

[Chilango2]

Breaking down like Fractions

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction
So we suppose as we grew larger it was inevitable we’d break into factions
Try not to crack under the stress, we're breaking down like fractions
Politicians singing various calumnies without retractions.

It sure was nice, It sure was nice
When we were all on the same side
It sure was nice, It sure was nice
When we put aside our ego and our pride

Look back at our founding
Won’t you listen to my advice?
It sure was nice, It sure was nice
When we were all on the same side.

Look, we’ve tripled our number of planets,
Our original arraignment wasn’t made out of granite
Back when we had just one planet one bird could run it
But now that we’ve grown that can’t work anymore can it?

It sure was nice, It sure was nice
When we were all on the same side
It sure was nice, It sure was nice
When we put aside our ego and our pride.

Look, I know that our government was founded on science
But on it we have placed far too much reliance
Do not mistake our argument for some sort of defiance
We just think it’s time for a little more commoner compliance

It’s time to stand up for our sacred sovereignty
And admit that not all wings are fit to power’s solemnity
Time to look the truth in the eye and face the lie,
not all are fit to wield the power of scientists.
Time to bow down to the Hierarchical Union!

It sure was nice, It sure was nice
When we were all on the same side
It sure was nice, It sure was nice
When by politics we didn’t divide.

 

[Chilango2]

First Interlude: Taking Flight

Look now to this dawning day,
As we take anew fearless flight
Having finally found our way,
Out of our egg into new light
We stretch and spread our wings,
Let them taste the devouring dark
The silent universe to us softly sings
As finally on our flight we embark
But we know what we shall find
As we fly fast into the vast void
Shall forever change our kind
As with new things we are joined
Ah, very well then let us then be irrevocably changed
Only by such evolution can the sublime be attained

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

First Saiiban Confederation Census: 2210

Second Saiiban Confederation Census: 2220

Third Saiiban Confederation Census: 2230

Population Breakdown in 2230

 

[Chilango2]

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

The condition of being alive
(at least as we understand it)
Is that one day you will be dead
Death is there from when we arrive
we practice it when to sleep we submit
Since sleep is the cousin of death.

To be, and then not to be,
That is our condition,
Every hatched egg follows the rule of three
It neither creates or destroys energy,
As it interacts with the world it creates entropy,
And this entropy ceases once the bird ceases to be.

But is this in fact the way it has to be?
What of these beings here?
When faced that most certain end,
They choose instead its cousin rather than to disappear.

In that sleep of deathlessness,
what dreams might have come?
Did they (Do they?) dream of coming awake anew?
Did they (Do they?) dream of metallic bodies free of rude sinews?
Did they (Do they?) simply dream to cheat fate, pass the time and then renew?
(Do they?)

We do not yet know the right song
To give form to their doomed hope
But when we do, should we also go along,
And from this rude flesh elope?

What was dead may never die,
But may come back, harder, stronger,
If we but sufficient science apply,
Then death will stalk us no longer

But if we will that they should live anew,
And join their metallic flight, stretching, straining,
Our new joyous forms,after our scientific breakthrough
Will there be anything of what is us remaining?

To sleep, perchance to dream,
Dream of machines which we might be,
Lasting for all eternity,
But no longer the birds that we used to be.

 

[Chilango2]

Skipping Rocks

To think that not to long ago
.....A asteroid flying towards us would be
........A disaster unparalleled and a mighty blow
...To every nest and egg that could ever be
But the winds of time have picked us up
..... Thrown us into the unknown and uncaring sky
.......They care not if we break up blow up or burn up
...They only demand that to the past we say good bye.
And so a day of doom imagined flies by
..... And to the doom what we have learned we apply
.......Lasers, missiles and the speed of light defied
And what once would doom is now but pebbles in the sky.

 

[Chilango2]

Who Tells Your Story?

When I was young, I dreamed of glory
I founded a nation voyaging into the stars
I created marvels and made planets ours
But now that I’m gone who will tell my story?

My time is gone and I am done being old
My song has stopped, do its echoes take hold?
My last flight done, my wings are still and cold,
By who and how will my story be told?

I am planted now, a tree becoming
To which new hatchlings will be coming
Will this new flock be my legacy?
Legacy? What is a legacy?
Is it new nests for our flock I never get to see?
A young hatchling singing of the past by my tree?
New knowledge unlocked by scientists who sing of me?

Who will sing for me?
I am silent now, feathers fallen
Who will keep my flame?
Who will remember my name?
Who will tell my story?

New beaks break from new eggs
New songs sung with new melodies.
My time’s up, wings up, rise up,
I go into the sky.

 

[Chilango2]

Remains


Wandering the dark, idly singing
What do we find here, idly sitting
Graves and ghosts and ghouls perhaps
Of what was dead and what was not.

Fevers and fights and frauds and failure
All in one small compact container
One little ship crashing into the dark
And all that is left are but some remnant remarks

Defeat despair defection and desiccation
Fevered dreams delusions and deceptions
A world full of drama and woe for such a small spot
Of a crew lost and losing themselves in the dark.

Could any become such taken by such an ill wind?
Could any kill their own and feast upon the flock?
Could any murder become naught but a murder wrought?

Probability probably plays favorites not
But our response to its outcomes determines the next lot
Remember then the role of random events in your lot

When the universe rolls we only pick some of the dice
And must roll as best as we can with whatever comes up
But sometimes your outcome simply means your time is now up
Then fold your wings, bow your beak, sing your last note
And hope that what remains of your remnants rises into the sky.

 

[Chilango2]

To Discover, To Dream

To Boldly Go,
Explore new worlds
To accept the flow of the
Unknown, Unknowable
To accept

A division of science
Knowing that the division of science
Is to divide by zero, the infinite
an impossibility
a science division
With infinite remainders
Which must be taught

In an Education Polytechnic
Making out of many one,
And out of one, many,
Splitting and combining knowledge
In infinite varieties
Having to trust
That the seemingly random
Will resolve in time into
Quantifiable realities
So you can then put

Faith in Science
Oxymoron and tautology in one
To know that our senses and instruments
Tell us what is really there
But also what we wish to perceive
To know that these limits in us,
Our tools
Are the start of wisdom, not the end
Connecting what we observe and
measure into our

Databanks Uplink
That tree and nest and egg in one
Where knowledge is placed and born and goes to die
Sloshing around like so much
Ooze, promising life
Breaking through from mere chemicals
To nucleotide sequences a

Technological Ascendency
From matter to life
Self replicating, evolving, changing
Flying into winds
Unknown.

 

[Chilango2]

Songs of the Precursors II: A Near Distance

A whisper blows in space
Like waking from a dream
It’s possibilities full
Of half remembered nightmares

Echoes of the past
sound like distant clangor
Sounding into the future
Into a present so still.

A distant crime of war
So far gone into history
That the nearness of this place of peace
Strikes us with awe.

So far! So near!
To go into a half remembered past
Now here in the future!

So near! So far!
To investigate out in the distant stars
And be brought by the winding echoes
Back here home

The silent song is not done
Let us listen, sing, and continue.

 

[Chilango2]

Expanding like Gas

It is well known that
pressure is inversely
proportional to the volume of a gas
Then how is it possible that our new friends, our continuing experiment,
Have doubled, and expanded such that they seek an entire new gas giant to colonize
Then how is it possible that as they expand new frontiers we do as well as we expand in space
The pressure our own neighbors forcing us, like gas, to find the gaps and expand outwards to fill whatever void remains
How is it possible that that, just like us, they have annoying, petty problems such as a regret at moving to a new home even as
their species expands and grows in a marvelous new frontiers a new possibility expanding outward taking the available space hoping that
our ever growing number people/molecules will have enough space to spread out because if they do not then the pressure will build up and then
explode.

 

[Chilango2]

Post 35: It's Just a Matter of Time

As we fly through space
the bow bends and time's arrow flies
forward into the unknown
or so you would think is the case
but time after time, time lies.

As we fly into space
our voice, so certain once, now dies,
gravity bends, swallows all into the unknown
and then time's arrow is erased
and shows us its false guise.

How can the future influence the past?
How can the arrow fly before the bow even bends?
How can historyphysicscosmology function
when the rules bend and break or are outright ignored?
How how how ? woh woh woH

As we fly through space
we find two arrows where there was one
and then we fly and then flap our wings
backward into the unknown
let us never forget, sooner or later
time will lie to us
it's just a matter of time.

 

[Chilango2]

The Fire in our Hearts

There’s a fire, deep inside our hearts
To search and discover and light up the dark
We have come here, in search of fables told
Of a hidden cavern with secrets to unfold

Perhaps it’s treasure?
Or something new to measure?
Perhaps it’s everything.

The scars of the past here, cry out and sing
Notes cutting through time with a clamor and a ring
Deathly secrets, hidden beyond fire and stone
Founds amidst ruins crowded with the past and yet alone

Perhaps it will reveal the past?
Or answer questions yet unasked?
Perhaps it will change everything?

Memories of singers, echoing through a maze of time
Singing to us, without reason and without rhyme
Why go through this? Why create this?
Why bury memories behind a fiery abyss?

Perhaps these are memories.
Perhaps these are messages.
Perhaps they were the only means to echo
An echo into a silent future so we could hear the past?

 

[Chilango2]

Diplomacy by other Means

What makes a community?
Is it when we all sing in common song?
It is being able to act in unity?
Or feeling that we belong?

What makes a community?
Must all members feel like they belong?
And what happens if a member acts with impunity?
What if they refuse to sing along?

Can this thing before us be called a community?
No common history, no common story, no common song.
There is no common purpose here, no unity
And yet its discordant voices rise together.
To form a strange new sublime sort of song

Or is this then but a field of war?
Not of ships but of ideas?
A way to create a discordant flock into a murder
Singing songs that demand for more?
Is this then but a different means
For the strong to dominate the weak?

Now a thesis and antithesis are presented
Perhaps a synthesis can be attempted
It is like cells born out of the primeval ooze of the past?
Living to murder, seeking but to outlast
And yet working together in blind purpose to survive
Inventing thousands of strategies for life to derive
Red beaks dripping with blood; singing together
Creating a community
Seeking a sublime symbiosis
Singing of unity
Cackling murders, cacophonous, chaotic,
Evolving towards the rational,
Creating a community
Out of a shared past
Of survival?

 

[Chilango2]

Infinite Beginnings

In the vastness endless of space time
We stop a spell, to ponder a sublime design
And have a conversation with infinity
It ponders us, itself, existence,
And asks if we time for a question
You see, it says, we aren’t sure, where we start and where we end,

Is our existence but a means to an end?
After all, on a universal scale, what is time?
It’s a really vexing question
Even if, like us, you solve hard problems as if by design
It’s difficult to know the start of existence
And where to start or end measuring infinity.

It is so inconceivably small, this Infinity
In fact it never seems to start, only end
Always on the verge of coming into existence
If simply given enough time
But it's starting end seems as if by design
To bring the reality of existence into question.

And yet, it is so large, this existence, it begs the question
How can a mere word, infinity
Possibly capture the infinite design
From start to end
Across the infinite reaches of space time
To the beginning of the end of existence?

But how do you measure existence?
You are part of it, asking yourself the question
Going forward (backwards?) through time
Part of its infinity
Not knowing how it will end
Not knowing it’s design

And yet, here you are, your questions demand you design
Instruments to measure, define, describe your existence
So that one day perhaps you will find an end
To this seemingly endless question
Of the size and nature of Infinity
And the nature of time

To demand an answer of your question
Of the endless, expanding, ending filled void of Infinity
Of a galaxy exploding into being, into nothing, given enough time.

 

[Chilango2]

Our Brethren

Our Brethren,
Accursed be thy names,
Your own feathers red
With blood you have shed
In both our nests and in the heavens

And on this day we sing your final rest
But forgive you not your trespasses
For we also sing for those
Who no longer fly with us

You, who would send us into damnation
Instead, find your song beyond retrieval

And yours is death’s kingdom,
But ours is the power, and the glory
Forever and ever, again.

(And yet, an echo lives on,
And though its fate is foregone,
Duty demands we fulfill it’s song)

 

[Chilango2]

Red in Beak and Claw

Red in beak and claw
We tear apart
the carcass of the past
to build the present
And whether we fly or fail,
The universe doesn’t care
It spins around regardless


We live and then die
It’s a question of time
And of means and mode and meaning
We must eat or be eaten
In our race against time
to eat our way past entropy

Planets and stars
must be ours
Lest others grow strong
And deny us our sustenance
Red in beak and claw
Taking what must be ours
For others will use it against us

Is this how it must be?
A galaxy of greed?
A life of wreckage and war and gore?
Some try to sing
In harmony
But a discordant song still rises.

As so as we fill in the blanks
In our galaxy maps
We find peace and profit and pillaging and plunder
And so the shape of the song
Lies unknown and still undecided

Raise then your voice
Let us sing as we go forth
Whether to war or warning or welcome

Red in Beak and Claw
But wings spread in song
Ready to meet each unknown harmony.