Penrose-512 (Scouting Ship)

A Signalis Poem

Steel rivets drip from my bleeding hands,

Nose pressed to red snow,

As I choke my last

Amidst the rot.

The chirps are silent now,

Sheet metal once danced in

Trembling arms

Now rusting by her coffin.

Achtung, burst lung,

Systems failing, critical.

Sobs swallowed hard

like pills.

Hands long gone from chilled controls,

Once running through that sloughing hair,

Now quiet in my groaning halls,

Tumbling to their dreams down here.

As I remain, the doomed ship

Fetal as my charge.

Laid in a ditch, night grows chilled,

Take my remaining warmth.

She’ll come for you,

Joints creaking, cracking,

Skin cold and lonely.

Each cycle I wake

To an error screen,

But the hands on the clock still move

Backwards.

My arms are shaped for you,

My body formed 

To be your home,

The shell of my skin empty,
Brittle.

Now she claws back,

Do you hear her?

The mangled husk bouncing off starboard,

A bug repelled on a windshield.

She made you a promise,

I was your keeper.

This world grates,
It crushes,

It peels back your skin
And rips the life out of you
No matter how you kick and you scream.

But you,

Even as I’m torn apart

I reach out,

Joints cradled gently,

Warm with love 

And auxiliary power.

Because I am soulless,

And so is she.

Yet somehow you're her soul’s mate.

Der beschützer,

I’ve held her for you.

Your dance is still

Unfinished.

Hands on throat unbidden,

Welcome back technician.

I’ve fulfilled my mission,

Penrose powering down.