In 2012, I started a writing challenge for myself: write a poem for each season of the X-Files using each of the episode titles of that season. Why? Because…I love X-Files and I love writing.
This was the first one (and the easiest!) – episode titles are underlined.
Pilot
I found you in your corner
On a cloudy eve of spring
Half-forgotten, scorned, bemused –
Determined not to be deceived.
You started with your crazy,
Swinging in your chair;
I caught my thoughts, belated
And wondered what I was doing there.
Watch my hero campaign down the hall
Roland in a suit and tie assumed as armor
– Tall and strong;
My pilot through the monsters,
The lies,
The E.B.E.’s.
So set a course for your Aude,
To the space left to eternity;
Squeeze through time,
Beyond the sea,
Beyond the stars
As they burst apart – a wondrous scene!
But, oh, what it leaves…
Born again in the wake of your shattering shadows
Lazarus springing out,
Up from the flowers into disdain
And these cold, dreary showers.
How did you become my signal –
My cue to smile,
To love,
To fight?
With those ravaged wings,
The arrogance
Icarus-bound as your pride ignites!
It feels like we’ve stood here before
Ice on the ledge, sky on fire,
Looking into the void through two shafts of light.
Sweet fallen angel,
Bruised and used,
Savage as the Jersey devil –
You call to the thunder,
Cursing the night
Deep-thoughted,
Deep throat,
As the darkness falls,
As it tooms the heavens,
Abandons your sight.
You drop to your knees
Full of contempt and scorn,
Yet you can’t turn away –
I suggest going home.
Pilot me beyond these monsters,
Beyond the stars,
Any semblance of life;
The busted dreams
And all the shady shapes they leave.
No one ever told me, no one ever said
The whispered ghost in the machine is a miracle man
A conduit of conspiracies.
Dusty streamers rippling,
Exploding in your eyes
That plutonic mask revealing a past
Young at heart – and how it glows!
Basking in the misting gold,
I collect the fragments of you in my Erlenmeyer flask
Ever-bold,
Fates sew you to this genderbendered soul
Through the universe’s glory
And all histories retold.
Dragon-Ballistic 