{"id":430,"date":"2015-09-10T15:52:53","date_gmt":"2015-09-10T19:52:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fortneranderson.com\/?page_id=430"},"modified":"2015-09-10T16:12:50","modified_gmt":"2015-09-10T20:12:50","slug":"selected-poems-annunciations","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fortneranderson.com\/?page_id=430","title":{"rendered":"Selected Poems — annunciations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Belly Into fire <\/strong><\/p>\n

We each emerge from a fiery wound
\nbloody and wailing and move for a time
\nbetween vacuum and the light
\nbetween laughter and the dust
\nbetween ashes and the wind
\nas quickened presences set against the nothing
\nbefore returning to a shallow darkness
\ncarved into implacable silence <\/p>\n

herald of thunder
\nherald of smoke and jagged tooling
\nherald of debris and earthly din
\nherald of wailing absence
\nas I speak of seven
\nseven stars burning
\nseven stars falling \u2028seven tarnished stars pinned upon the torn firmament<\/p>\n

Seven today I sing of seven
\nwho drifted belly into fire
\nwho tumbled into a thickened present
\nseven bearing witness
\ntorsos marked as those who would hasten
\nto the stars
\nto the stars<\/p>\n

13 hours 52 minutes 5 seconds: Greenwich Mean Time <\/p>\n

Seven slip through enthalic winds
\n shearing apart nothingness
\n proclaiming \u201cwe are, we are\u201d
\nenthroned like gods upon the flaming chariot of the sun
\nyet men, their tiny ember illuminates only emptiness
\nas dawn debrides the night from the rising blue horizon
\nin the 8 minutes that remain<\/p>\n

Qbar 34
\nyaw moment off-nominal<\/p>\n

The doom moment rises this doomsday
\nabove the awakening Thanopolis
\nbright in the southern sky as
\nfire, holy star fire enters unfettered
\nseeping into a darkened plenum
\nthe burning bright arc eats and eats corrupts and consumes <\/p>\n

Commander, seat 1,
\nholds the synchronous rotating spheres
\nthat unleash an ever-widening gyre
\nactivating switches validating data
\nstreaming multiple frames into voice loops far below
\nCommander, seat 1
\nmaneuvers roll reversal number 2
\nas alloy pyrolyses in the belly starboard
\nas liquid transmutes to gas
\n4 pressure sensors off scale-low
\nas separate redundant hydraulic systems fail<\/p>\n

13 hours 59 minutes and 32 and 126 thousands seconds
\nin ever increasing atmospheres
\nevident upon data reduction
\nin a final uncorrupted downlink frame <\/p>\n

a machine annunciates its warning
\noff-nominal corruption, error and loss <\/p>\n

Aileron trim plus 3 degrees
\nelevator deflection 8.11 degrees (up)<\/p>\n

Calibrated above Sonoma
\nin video archive Mesquite
\nvideo archive Arlington
\nevents occur, brightening, puffs
\nas the form ablates pieces fail and fall <\/p>\n

Now alone entering
\nthe chasm between uplink and downlink
\nas shock-shock interaction accelerates
\nthe plasmatic arc severs bundled hydraulics
\nflight control surfaces go slack <\/p>\n

Littlefield Texas
\nthe Bill Clayton medium security detention centre,
\nthe world\u2019s largest windmill
\nimmortalized by Debris Shedding Event Number 1<\/p>\n

The nose drifts high through the degree seconds
\nCMD and PLT watch
\nSeats 3 and 4 watching
\nthe horizon shifts
\nthe master aural alarm sounds
\nthe spin begins
\na slow highly oscillating flat spin
\ncharacteristic of ballistic flight
\nPLBD Sensor BP0439T indicates off-nominal increase
\nfollowed by loss of signal
\nfollowed by Debris Events A, B, C
\nrolling. pitching, yawing<\/p>\n

04 and 82 hundredths seconds
\nincreasing rotational forces push eyes in eyes out
\neyes up eyes down
\neyes left eyes right
\neyes in eyes out
\nseat 2 moves the left-rudder transducer assembly
\nseat 4 fumbles with the 5 point buckle
\nfallen between seats 3 and 4
\neyes left eyes right
\neyes left eyes right<\/p>\n

CP Seat 2 switch positions indicate subsequent
\nSeat 2 APUnit re-start seeking residual pressures
\nshowing remarkable aplomb capable still
\nof human action
\nin the violent push-pull
\nyet there is zero pressure zero quantity<\/p>\n

Aluminum 2000, 2024, 2219, 2124 vaporize
\nDebris Event D as the left wing separates
\n14:00:18
\nPLBD tear from the body of the craft
\nthere is darkness mid-deck
\ndisplays go blank
\ncomm-links silent
\ncrew visors up
\nthere is shouting and confusion<\/p>\n

Here is the annunciation of the survival event
\nburning plasma surrounds the craft
\nfeeding upon its precious metals
\nthe x.582 bulkhead buckles
\nfolding the starboard mid-body panel
\nas the forebody CM skin splice unzips
\nthe starboard x-link fails
\nand the craft is torn in two
\ntumbling over Texas past Nogodotches past Hemphill<\/p>\n

Video Apache captures the double star
\nin a bright blue sky
\nas gravities shift creating large instantaneous G-force events
\nwhich remain within the range of human survivability<\/p>\n

Conscious and alive as the pressure vessel shifts crushing fore-body Volume E perforating the CM there remain 6 seconds of useful consciousness before blood boils in this dark place illumined only by the red burn of plasma
\nshown through the triple glaze windows and the glow of the cyanlume suit lights as star covered flight patches found in Storage Locker B spew out over the Texas plains<\/p>\n

Slumping forward as if to work consoles as if to activate controls as if to speak as if to scream held to seats by lap and crotch restraints as a giant invisible hand takes them by shackled legs and shakes right, left, right, left, up down in the dark interior of the tumbling rolling craft till bones smash and skulls crack inside their polymer casings<\/p>\n

Now little is known ground-based video lost data inexistent as they enter the atmosphere<\/p>\n

Friends and shipmates lovers and fathers mothers and children sucked out into the debris cloud as the mid-deck departs from the fore-body tearing asunder seats 6, 7, 5 entering the hypersonic blast watching with sightless eyes the mid-deck floor, aft FD panels, CM forward bulkhead flying into a molten cloud as mortal trauma number 2 the mechanical extraction from seats occurs no later than redacted boots failing redacted the soles stripped away as pressure suits oxidize and they are naked naked they are falling falling to earth to home falling falling falling 14 hours 35 minutes <\/p>\n

Total dispersal impact all debris. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Belly Into fire We each emerge from a fiery wound bloody and wailing and move for a time between vacuum and the light between laughter and the dust between ashes and the wind as quickened presences set against the nothing before returning to a shallow darkness carved into implacable silence herald of thunder herald of … Continue reading Selected Poems — annunciations<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-430","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fortneranderson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fortneranderson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fortneranderson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fortneranderson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fortneranderson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fortneranderson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":436,"href":"https:\/\/fortneranderson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/430\/revisions\/436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fortneranderson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}