A EULOGY FOR THE GOOD CAPTAIN JAMES MASSIMO

Many of the haiku written on this blog are collected from obscure places: time machines, internal memory banks of robot soldiers, ships found floating in the outskirts of uninhabited star systems, etc... others I've written myself. Fortunately, I've led a life so-far which has enabled me to either hear these stories and haiku from well-traveled men, or given me the particular opportunities to obtain them myself directly from their exotic origins.

The following few posts will not be haiku proper, but it will eventually become clear as to why they've been posted, over time, when the entire story emerges. They are the continuing stories of a man whom I came to know quite well, a man named James Barlowe Massimo, who captained a sailing ship named "The Pyroclastic Flow" on which I sailed for some time. How I came to find myself a sailor pirating the waters of the South Pacific is an intensely complicated tale.

However, the question of how Captain Massimo came to know and become involved with Doctor Benjamin Redstone, a time traveler from one of Saturn's moons, is perhaps even more complicated. First, we will begin with the Good Captain Massimo's death:

- A EULOGY FOR THE GOOD CAPTAIN JAMES MASSIMO -

I arrived home from Grenada only moments ago. I was there attending the wake of a very fine man... one of the finest men I ever knew in fact... one Captain James Barlowe Massimo (of the Massimo's of Rome who could coincidentally trace their lineage to Quintus Fabius Maximus born in 280 BC, making them the single oldest noble family in all of Europe).

A Sickening Wind

seen from the surface
our stars are starting to dim
the cold is coming

a sickening wind
blows north from the old city
where the millions died

Passing Through

From the journal of Ben Jackson:
"Passing through Eta-Signus, a star system with a habitable planet orbiting it, there were some radio signals coming from the second planet, and from its moon, but nothing left alive. So I kept on, without stopping. I do have a long way to go. One more year to Ursae, then three and a half more on the way back. I can't be stopping for every dead civilization on the way."

a reflective cloud
of quiet, astral waste is
all that's left of them

the twisting, dancing
broken archeology
drifting to nowhere

remnants of battles
and corpses orbit this star
nothing left to see