Eyeball Planet

a freefall verse tale (autumn 2021)

I. TRAVELLER

It was the Exocomet did it.
Real number, he was.
They always are.
Sling from one arse end to another,
gravitationally unbound,
with their fancy hyperbolic excess velocity,
their eclectic composition,
their infuriating patience.
And showy, too -
Ooh, look at my ice: it sparkles!
Hear my outgassing, witness my coma.
Hinge your religion upon me.

What Exos fail to mention,
is that in their pointless journeys,
they cross some sundry strange.
They skirt forgotten halls,
dark arches under nebulae.
Caves of nothing so vast
that, from there,
everything seems starless.

Orbits highly eccentric,
they recklessly venture
past dwindling dwarves
and their hidden engines of wrong,
where accretion disks twist covetous,
emitting nonrepeating,
creepy x-ray songs.

This Exo had cruised gingerly,
his epic mane a-sloughing,
crystals lost to black,
with no light to reflect.
Pretending all is good,
that it’s just another alley
and not an in-turned corner
of the cosmic duvet cover.
But those crossings leave their mark;
grav waves wash all over,
things, they get inherent.
Exos play it loose.
But their particles feel it.
Their particles’ particles feel it.
Stuff gets rejigged.
Properties entangle.
Blowing clean past counterintuitive
and smack into forbidden.

Exocomets have no business
caressing singularities
and ranging back around
provincial solar systems.
Because simple, humdrum planets,
hopelessly removed
from the mad workbenches of existence,
well, they get excited.
They know no better
than to keep on having mass.
So what gets jettisoned up top,
gets lassoed straight on down.
Washing light across traffic cams,
and attracting teenage wishes.
Which add yet another layer
of crazy bullshit
to the proceedings.

Thus, by orbital mechanics,
searing bits of space strange,
whose elements and compounds
have had their meanings messed with,
descend upon the planets,
sometimes ones with life.

One of these was blue,
guarded by one moon.
Golden threads and pinpricks
clustered in its night-side.
Satellites and shrapnel
swirled over its clouds,
and a carnival of signals
pulsed concentric out.

The Exo streaked, uncaring,
letting something go,
which severed and arrived,
never to be found.

II. OUTER

Many eons later,
the Exo is still far flung,
way out the other side.
He’s got a wobble now, the coma’s weak
The gases will last to the end, surely.
Party’s still ongoing, right? Somewhere?
He trucks on.
Orbit now frankly outrageous,
he enters another system,
boorish, under his own steam,
never hitching star-pull
to draw him in and guide him.

This star is meagre, anyway,
so the Exo hews quite close.
and — Oh? What’s this?
Another little planet?
So very close to Parent?
What’s it look like?
Lemme check you out -
Come, turn, little planet,
show me your — Oh.
I see.
It’s not turning.
It’s not turning at all.
It’s tidally locked.

Same side to the star.
Same side to the darkness.
Like the moon around that blue one,
all that time ago.
Oh well.
Catch you next time, little planet
Flick of the tail and -
Here,
have some shed,
No need to thank me, I have plenty.
Here’s some ice, and a few pebbles.
Close enough? Maybe not.
You have so little gravity, little planet.
You’re wasting all my…
There.
You got some.
See you around, I guess.

III. SHED PEBBLE

Now one particular shed pebble,
detaching from the Exo,
is actually quite sizeable,
thank you very much.
It had hoped to stay on journey,
longer, with its mates,
up in the comet’s head.

Then again, its real friends,
the ice pebbles it trusted,
the particles it cared for,
the ones it had held on to,
through the All-Hands-On-Deck times,
the Did-You-Feel-That-Too? pauses,
and the Is-Causality-Reversing? bits…
…they had all been spurted, way back,
over some heavenly body or other.
So maybe it’s not a bad time
to be let go by Exo.
Pebble makes the best of things
and falls into a moderately degrading orbit,
so it can get a look.

IV. ORBIT

This new planet is odd.
Hypothetical, one might say.
One side a bright circle,
parched to desert, and a mean one.
But around the dome of its horizon
come tendrils of rivers like veins,
that whisper into capillaries,
slice the limestone hills,
and crawl simmering out onto
the mauve blast oven of a rock plain,
where they evaporate — wow, fast.
Condensation and convection
pushing those adorable tiny clouds back to -
Hold on, a blue-green crescent?
No — a ring, that sings around and -

Holy Moly, Vegetation!

…Riding with the Exo
they’d seen the DNA dance
maybe fourteen times
in all their countless journeys,
and only ever from above.
At the very thought of biomes
the Pebble feels a pang.
It pushes it away,
for that is old pang,
and it does nobody any good.
But the thought won’t stay away
of that one time over
that third tetherball,
the blue one swinging its parabolas,
tidal moon in tow,
around that creamy yellow sun…

Pebble burrows in awed fondness,
recalling the vivified hue,
the canopies of chlorophyll,
the impossible lushness of possibility,
the demented cheery mania
with which organics clambered
over every stretch of everything
not above a tree line.

One of Pebble’s mates
had told him something once.
That life will sometimes swarm
deep beneath some oceans:
ancient lurking multitudes
joyful, weird and shrouded,
down where stars are faint…

…But now, this half-world beckons
winking its emerald sickle -
and Pebble tumbles towards it
bracing, in a flutter.

V. DECAY

Orbit is a dithery falling.
But it’s time to pierce the thermosphere,
hopefully a bland one,
The angle changes -
The universe fades -
The magnetism tickles -
And then -
the solar wind is gone -
the friction grinds up:
the drag and the burning,
ablation and hurt — hurt!

Microscopic chunks
are getting superheated
all over the damn place.
Molecules giggle,
vibrating bonds loosen.
And blazing Pebble
feels parts of itself,
parts of itself that are as it is,
fractal miniatures of it,
shearing off its pebble skin,
blinding incandescent
from the torrid shred -
It feels them peeling off
and once again, the pang -
Flashes of that planet,
the one with the moon -
And the gaping vacuum when
the most special of its friends,
the one who’d frame the stories,
tore off from the Exo,
arrowing away
towards a cobalt ocean
and a continent of ice.

But this is different — it’s fine,
the meteoroid assures,
We’re all in this together,
me and my own shear.
On this unmoving new dominion
that we get to see.

As full forever nightfall
closes in ahead,
Pebble’s parting flecks
ignite the indigo dimness,
flares streaming woozy
through the high vaults of dusk

Goodbye particles!
See you never!
Enjoy this half-world!
Maybe you’ll get to sink through its oceans
Or maybe I will
Wish I could see what you’ll see -
Wish we could comment -

This world, it looks like an eyeball.
An eyeball planet,
staring lidless and unblinking
at its never-setting sun.

VI. SPLASHDOWN

Focus, strap in, do not disaggregate -
Keep some you with you -
Burning, burning, not too bad -
Cooling, cooling -
It is cold on the nightside -
Funny gravity, too. Real whack -
Keep falling this slowly, I might even…
…There. There is the termination zone again:
the edge of the eye.
Will you look at that forest, oozing out of the night?
Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?
In all the galaxies, in all the vast traverses?
Oh, Exo, I can never thank you enough,
I’m so glad you didn’t fall here,
wrecking this place as your kind do,
wiping out entire swaths of creation,
with the hubris of remaking the place
in your own shining image,
when it worked so hard
to get just the way it is.

Not this time.
It’s just Pebble and sub-pebbles now
We’ll just light up the sky
and make our way down

OK, here goes,
easy… easy.
Past those rocky outcrops
that nation of treetops

that yellow melted delta
that long tongue along the mangroves
Just — there
The gravity well swelling,
stronger near the surface
Shit.
Leaves slap, sudden and fanatical —
and vicious, vicious branches,
cracking and snapping
at the soft-boiling texture of its belly.
Ten, hundreds, even,
breaking the fall but -
Trunk. Trunk. Damn
Branches, Bushes, Splash.
Silt?
Tearing through silt…?
Silt has no stopping power -
It’s viscous and cold -
Kind of thrilling, in a new way -
Feels like it’s speeding Pebble up -
But it isn’t.
What it’s doing, is preserving Pebble’s integrity
as it ferries it, slowing it down -
Slowing it down not fast enough.
So that it slips and squelches, spraying.
Until, almost offhandedly,
it gurgles to a stop.
Right in the middle
of perpetual sunset
on the Eyeball Planet.

VII. STATIC PLANET EVOLUTION

As you were.
Or about an eleventh
of your former mass.
Pebble sits still, takes stock.
There are sounds here
wet, whirry and tonal.
Paws crunching, things hooting,
and the running of water
like incredulous questions
asked while being kissed.
Pebble just listens
for a hundred thousand centuries,
its forest clearing grows familiar,
nailed to ever-twilight,
easefully unrushed,
even as everything changes.
Some paws get smaller
some buzzes get louder,
the innovative rustle of wings.
Low light re-dappling
as centenary trees
jostle for attention.
The feeling of wind,
fluting through leaves -
So this,
This is the dance.

VIII. VISION

The Eyeball Planet circled its star
many, many times
A fat, untroubled ellipse,
eliciting seasonal stasis
over a geological afternoon.
Pebble settled into
a pleased, contemplative mood,
until, one day -
(Though there are no days on Eyeball),
out of the blue -
(Though Pebble’s strip of sky is always purple),
something out of nothing,
something misaligns,
and crackles in the minerals
inside Pebble’s porous bulk.
Like lightning — fritzing, arcing,
it courses grain to grain.
Neural, it delivers
a form in hushed penumbra,
an image, crisp and fierce:
claws, shell and antennae…
In a liquid medium?

Aside from the sound
of the stream trickling nearby,
all Pebble knows of liquids
is from when the Exo grazed
that low-grav liquid gas cloud
back in ‘82
And Pebble knows of static lifeforms
from all its time on Eyeball

But this sight,
this sight does not
intersect with credibility
in any stable way.
This creature wafting over coral
with more grace
than Eyeball’s atmos would allow
cannot be seen here.
What is going on?
Pebble cowers in its pebble self
for a thousand million years:
no sounds allowed, no sensate,
no longing lick of breeze.
What is going on?
He occasionally whimpers,
Have I been submerged?

IX. CONTACT

Eventually, Pebble grows to miss
the simple pleasures of its clearing.
So when the universe
has stretched its legs a bit,
Pebble tentatively ventures
to peek out once again.

The creature’s gone,
but there are others,
equally astounding.
Pebble opens up more,
and all of a sudden
they all come crowding in.
Shapes in myriad poses
beneath the simpering silver lips
of the underside of surface.
Their colors clashing wild,
their variety imperious and forthright
in how it announces
the unbridled fucking
of species over generations.

Pebble watches in amazement
this festival unfolding,
these lives from somewhere else.
Drunk with discovery,
heightened with thirst
Pebble feels the wavelengths
begin to shift upstream.
Blue fluffs into violet -
Violet pants to pink -
A reddening and warmth -
A heat bloom in the water -
And then it turns to yellow-
Yellow, yellow light,
glorious and relentless,
lapping with the waves -
Glimmers touching Pebble,
here and there and Oh -
could it possibly go faster?
These gently thwacking gleams
How could they change in hours?
How could they make Pebble harder?
How could it feel like sweetness,
stinging as it melts?

And then the rush is rushing -
The swirling of cold currents -
Fleet shadows from the fish -
The rumble of a day-tide -
That is what this is!
Daytime is unspooling!
Enveloping, illicit,
impeccable delight.
Improbable, deniable
but daytime nonetheless!
How could this be?
Has Eyeball gone rotation?
That would make no sense.
All would be uprooted -
But Pebble has no time
to ponder basic physics.
Something new is coming:
a sleek and perfect apex
cartilage and teeth,
it loops around a boulder,
bearing down on prey.
The bite is fast and loveless,
the blood-cloud billows,
the gulp is indifferent,
Death has come to play.
Pebble stares in horror,
dying to retract,
desperate for safety,
for reason in the fray.
But somewhere deep inside,
swooning bliss still lingers,
new hunger has been born -
So it stands its ground
until the shark sashays away.
Reeling, Pebble opens more,
it just wants more,
it reaches out its senses,
taking it all in.

The fluid all around it
thumps at it with surf.
The ocean is a muscle
clenching on all sides.
Salt scrapes in the wetness
feeling very right.
Pebble parries with momentum
losing its stone mind
and losing it again -
And now? What’s this?
A whirl to new dynamics -
The fauna roster switches -
Crepusculars writhe from nooks -
Animals don’t alternate, do they?
Why would they?
And that’s when Pebble feels it
a yawning transposition -
anemones disclosing -
seaweed brushing light -
plankton glowing coy -
wavelengths, waves and wavelets -
pushing sliding on each other -
light and water coupling -
dumb with thrust and drive -
fondling, twisting, sucking -
vortex squeezing tight -
colors flowing blueish -
as daytime moans to night.
It’s a revolution
a world wholly remade -
Pebble delves in, fearless,
the climbing darkness holds it,
carries it through instants,
heady teetering en pointe…
…until photons cascade -
and then it can’t be stopped,
this flood of swooping night,
that pulpily explodes
into black release.
Pebble, newly minted,
honey dripping from its soul,
throbbing from all atoms,
achieves a certain clearness
and sees how this could pass:
Pebble is on Eyeball,
but this experience isn’t.
These are not its beasts.
This shadow-play’s exotic.
It’s that other planet,
the third one, with the moon.
The earth that spins a flourish
each two dozen hours.
The one it saw from orbit.
The one its mate was shed to,
all that time ago.
And Pebble understands,
against all understanding,
that it feels that planet’s ocean
because its old mate feels it.
That it sees it here and now
because it’s being shown

X. FLASHBACK

Pebble stares down the pang
and sinks into the memory
of when memory began,
allowing the inland chasm
to widen all it needs to.
It was long before Eyeball.
Long before that other Earth,
on one of Exo’s weirding jaunts
near a supermassive black hole.
The ruthless chant of gravity
from its event horizon maw
bellowed darkness, galaxy wide.
Even the Exo was jittery that year,
and this, in and of itself,
had been cause for concern.

To the pebbles inside them,
Exos are royalty.
Smaller than planets,
way smaller than stars,
as archaic, but free.
Designers of trajectories,
Pollinators of the sideral barrens,
Knowers of ways, piercers of skies.
Douches, no doubt.
But still they’re the shows
everyone waits for,
and few get to see.

Pebbles find pride in this,
even though Exocomets are nothing
but an organizing principle,
a hijacking idea.
Exos are nothing
but the pebbles they’re made of
and the impact history they share.
As the black hole snarled on,
the Exo surfed hard
on the lip of the brim,
smaller dust sweeping
past his surface and tail.
Warily watching
whole systems get swallowed,
Pebble huddled
next to its brethren
in the zooming ovoid
of the comet’s head.

All the other pebbles
were semi-fused but distinct,
like the dirty ice drupelets
of a mile wide raspberry.
Collected by collision
amidst early storms,
in the epoch of volatile delivery,
that begat planets -
that begat stars.

A community of pebbles,
each touching a dozen,
each dozen a dozen,
and onwards and outwards
throughout the puckered volume
of the comet-head.
Exchanging mutters,
glances, opinions,
long-term hugs and chafing disputes.
Some disappointment,
shifting allegiance,
boredom, reliance,
and a sadness of time.

Occasional shedding
would change things around;
patterns redrawn
as some pebbles parted,
leaving others to cave
into new slots.
But that year
everyone was quiet;
and keenly focused
on princely Exo’s navigation.

Because one four-dimensional degree off,
one moment of distraction,
one extra spin to catch a glint on an ice scale,
and they would all careen
into the crushing void.
Into the place
no info escapes.
Silenced forever
by cosmic censorship.
So folks kept mum
in the soft-flying tension,
trying not to hear
the eerie background tinkle
of those damned x-ray lullabies,
that atonally shudder the soul.

XI. CARBON

Everyone quiet
except one rock,
herself an agglomerate
of carbons and nitriles.
Covalently bonded
to none but herself,
friendly and witty
whenever she deigned.
Occupied lightly
with the business of living
in a travelling circus
of suitors and friends.
Back in the safe zones,
away from abyss,
Pebble would eavesdrop
as others would probe her -
as Methyls and Protons
elbowed and wisecracked,
posing to look
buff, gaunt or cuddly.
Scrambling to sound
outrageous, unique,
or dirty, unfettered
minded or mindless,
fiercer, more rugged,
or humble and decent
and all other colors
they’d read of online.
Sometimes it worked,
or sometimes it seemed to,
at any rate sometimes,
a diamond or gas ice
would chemically bond
with Carbon the Rock.
Pebble would muster
and try for itself -
essay a comment,
force out a laugh.
Desolating in its inauthenticity,
a copy of copies
nobody needed
and nobody heeded.
But now, in the strangeness,
all warriors kept silent.
All artists stayed shut.
All husbands clung close
to their mothering wives.
While old Carbon she hummed
along with the x-rays,
seeking out lonely
peripheral fragments.
The outcast, the truer,
the otherwise lost.
Asking them things
they enjoyed being asked.
Giving an ear,
a laugh, or a beat.
She even drew Exo’s
attention awhile -
but he wisely ignored her
sensing her strength.

Pebble inched closer
its elements groaning.
Carbon, she noticed,
but she let it slide,
and let Pebble sit
beside her a while.

XII. OOPS

Blasted Exo
and his overt narcissism.
Just as he was trimming
the supermassive black hole,
he saw a galaxy.
A whole fucking spiral galaxy
sailing straight into doom,
at a speed
that had to feel pretty itchy
to everyone involved.

The Exo couldn’t help himself
all of those minds,
all of those bodies,
all of those senses,
stricken in terror,
frying with awe,
while rushing to die.
Yes! In their dying
they’d get to see
the Exo in all its glory,
tearing out fiery,
flashing his ice!
Never mind that the spectacle
behind the Exo -
the accretion disk devouring
itself and existence -
was a significantly
more potent sight.
The Exo eggs accolade
so he just went and did it.
Split second, with gusto,
he altered his mass,
ejected a rock or two,
(their “no’s” hooting, as they fell away).
He spun on his axis
flailing the coma
so that the light
hit it tangential,
igniting a torrent
of symphonic shine.
And as he adjusted
his course and his yaw -
that’s when it happened.
Relevant angular momentums are too calculation-intensive to be described here,
suffice it to say
that unbeknownst to the Exo,
said fucking galaxy
contained its own black holes,
with their own intricate backstories,
which made stuff bounce back
that otherwise wouldn’t have.
As the banquet of systems
crossed the horizon
and sunk to oblivion
from whence none returns,
everything unfurled,
affixed to a spacetime
itself stretched and twisted
beyond recognition.
Black holes plopped
like boulder-hit puddles
of gloopy molasses.
Curvatures steepened
shrieking out hailstorms
of conflicting reports
that regurgitated and ouroborossed.
Everyone yelled at everyone else.
Hierarchies were briefly abandoned.
And this unholy active mess
this moshing of concepts
is what the Exo and pebbles
were thoroughly washed in.

XIII. INHERENT

Pebble felt it.
They all did.
The Exo shut the hell up,
re-focused — and spun away.
Masterfully, it must be said
For despite his shortcomings,
and all his vacuous vanity,
it was this presence of mind,
this vestige of Apollonian
situational awareness,
that spared them all,
and in sparing exposed them
and the rest of creation
to the supreme wrongness
of that thousand-year day.

Nauseous, they all hobbled away
into emptier space
into safety and silence
Or so they hoped,
for the damage was done -
and outcomes were pending.
Pebble remembers
hearing voices
for the first time.
Wait — Hearing? He’d thought.
How can a Pebble hear?
Voices of what? Of whom?
Pebble feels off.
Pebble is… peckish?
Pebble worries. How can rock be peckish?
And what is worry?
What is happening?
In fact, what does happening even mean?
Pebble is… an entity? A Self?
Pebble reaches out,
and finds something in the darkness:
another, outreaching.
It’s Carbon, she’s there.
Trembling in the Exocomet’s head
with Pebble and the others.
Wait, what?
Pebble and Carbon hold close.
Pebble? Carbon? What are these names?
What’s happening to us?
As Pebble now knows,
they had all been dunked
in a static of data
that doesn’t belong
among inorganics.

Complexity intelligence
had grafted itself
to basic components.
To electric relations
between atoms and crumbs.
Something changing.
Something really changing.
Even the Exo was shaken,
(and deeply unsure
of what it means to be shaken) -
he’s a lump of ice and dirt, for shit’s sake.
And then it got worse -
way worse –
- worse way ,way
,reversing started Time
— way neat a in not but
.sense making stopped Things
consciousness Newfound
.retroactive went
,pebbles his and Exo The
,aware become suddenly had who
,were always suddenly
.be will always suddenly And

XIV. AFTERMATH

Eventually, everyone
chilled the fuck out.

It took a little minute,
but they did.
Eventually,
the fact they all now had thoughts
became everyday.
The fact that all their previous
chemo-mineral interactions,
stretching back to the gateway of time,
now had intention,
and memory,
and self,
was shrugged off
in an it-is-what-it-is way.
Or rather in a way
that is what it always was.
Sure, it was uncomfortable.
Nitrogens would peer at Heliums,
recalling that one evening
they had all experimented
with heterodehydrocoupling.
They’d clear their throats,
somewhat embarrassed,
turning away
and changing the subject,
under stern looks
from their strontium electrons.
Friendships were made,
families born.
The commune was different
but somehow the same.
The Exo shrugged.
It liked itself better now, anyways
Or rather not quite,
because the way it worked out,
he’d now always been himself
from the beginning of time.
So he liked himself just fine,
and always had.

Satisfied with this,
he tacked away
from central galaxies,
cranked in a low gear
and made towards
sunnier climes,
looking for something -
anything, really.

But Pebble and Carbon
would not let it go.
They’d wait for the moments
when others were sleeping -
or talking too loud,
and hush to each other
about what they had learned.

XV. CARBON AND PEBBLE

Where does it come from?
This being someone?
This remembering things?
Was it always codified
in our building components?
Did it get activated
by the sloppy insanity
of black holes tesseracting each other,
like coworkers outside a Christmas party?
Or have we just slung back
a coating of memories
over all of the time
we have ever existed?

Carbon’s questions
make Pebble silent.
Then it looks up
at her,
and ventures,

I don’t know.

Carbon smiles
and lights up a cigarette.
Pebble shifts,
a little less uncomfortable now,
and smells her smoke
as others look in,
pause, and walk on.

No, she says after a while,
It must’ve circled back from somewhere,
this awareness.
It all fits.
it can’t be made up.

Pebble shifts again
and she asks,
Do you know about oceans, Pebble?
Do you know about reefs,
and storms out at sea?
Ridiculous groupers?
The stare of a moray?
The chorus of kelp?

Pebble just wants her
to keep going.
But she is waiting
for an answer,
so Pebble says,
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
She holds this
and then,
a minor portion
of Pebble’s mass
stops being fearful.
Its dust moves closer,
and allows warmth
to emanate from its core.
Tell me, it says, truthfully.
And the way she looks at it
changes a little.

XVI. EARTH

The travels were long.
Stretches of void
with nothing but spacetime.
They spoke in the dark
of things and opinions.
Carbon patient and steady,
Pebble wobbly, but game.
They cared and got bored,
and excited again,
but mostly got used to
having an ally,
someone to stick to -
or so they thought.

For they’d reached that system
with the eight planets:
the stormy red gas giant,
the green gold one with the rings,
the cocky cold rocky fourth,
and the third from the star.
The third one with the moon.
And the coastlines.

The Exo felt chipper
and wanted a boost,
decided to shed
some weight near this Earth.
The moment arrived,
the house was a-bustle.
Who’s going, who’s staying?
Pebble was nervous.
Carbon, electric.
It’s this one, she said,
The one that I dreamt of!
Look at the seas!
Look at the greenness
they foster and grow!
So Pebble looked,
his insides compressing.
Look at that beast of a hurricane, gawped Carbon,
see how it’s powered
by temp differentials?
Meanwhile the Exo
had grown somewhat weary
of overhearing her smarts.
So he smirked, looked away,
said You’re up, honey.
And then he started to quake
the whole head of the comet.
Suddenly, Pebble
felt the realization as a blow.
Like smashing your face
onto the sidewalk
from a one-storey fall:
she is going to be let go.
The Exo is shedding her and
she will be gone.

Come with me, she said,
her cohesion dissipating
crumb by glowing crumb -
Now, she said,
Now, Pebble, goddamn it!
Detach!
But Pebble froze
for that moment\
that lasted days.
Or weeks.

The Exo coasted
and the solar wind bathed them,
in bunchy, invisible drapes,
until the last
two or three motes
unstuck and uncoupled.
And then she was gone.
Tumbling away,
instantly tiny,
falling towards
the blue and white swirls
of life and adventure

Shed me, Pebble barked at the Exo -
Fucking shed me!
But by then
they were slinging around
a different planet.
You sure? Mused the Exo,
Pebble stared
at the wrong planet,
with its acid sulfur sky
and its inappropriate name,
and Pebble was silent.

Inside, Pebble raged
at anyone,
at physics,
at fate,
at his mates beside him,
at the Exo, at Carbon,
viciously at Carbon,
and finally,
at the stunned emptiness
unfurling for light years
in every direction.

Pebble had no idea
the cosmos could stretch
inside one’s belly.
That the wonders
of eternal discovery
could churn into slog.
Pebble had no idea
all could reduce
to a sterile debate
on whether to let
all this fade into pang.

XVII. EYEBALL

But that was then.
Nowadays,
Pebble is on Eyeball.
The Exo is long gone.
Everything is long gone.
Pebble has been here
millions of years.
Yet Pebble is not fully here
on this constricted world.
Pebble is also among
the chrome sideways rain
of barracuda stems,
the salty sucking protestations
of surf draining rocks,
the clicking of shingles,
the prayers of whales,
the jizzing of fishlets
over trembling eggs.

Occasionally, Pebble
snaps back to reality,
back to Eyeball.
But increasingly,
it doesn’t want to
and stays in the thought-sea.
Sometimes, at night,
when the wave crests glow milky,
he dares ask himself questions
intended for her.
Is this really you,
showing me all this?
Are we entangled
through silence and space?
Or was all of this always
inside, with me?
And if so, if this wonder,
if this heartbreaking beauty
is only from me -
Did it come with that strangeness,
with self-ness, with life?
Did it come from the black hole
from mayhem, from strife?
And why if it’s mine
if it’s here at my call,
why doesn’t it matter?
Why not at all?

But no one replies,
for whatever gods there are,
that’s not how they operate.
And so, as the Exo somewhere
cruises to a fusion finale,
and Carbon — who knows?,
Pebble sits in its dry clearing
on the Eyeball Planet,
somehow also adrift
in the soft green gleam
of a slow swarm of plankton,
away, on Earth.

XVIII. FLIGHTLESS

A flightless bird
steps onto Pebble,
the bird perches,
struts, murmurs, and shits out
a white acrid splat.
But Pebble is so sunk
in the hot neural goop
of its own maritime reverie,
that at first it barely notices
the bird-cack affront.
For Pebble is no longer curious:
all questions have long since
lost their serrated fangs.

Moss covers its surface,
roots tunnel its backside.
Pebble just wants
to watch seaweed sway.
Then comes the caw,
the intolerable caw.

Pebble had heard it
before, from afar,
and didn’t like it then.
But now the bird’s talons
have needled the moss,
conducting soundwaves
straight onto rock.
It’s piercing, exhausting,
this sound drilling in.
Makes the watery dreams
frazzle and sputter.

Fuck off, caw-bird, thinks Pebble,
I’m trying to watch algae.

But the bird keeps
padding around atop Pebble,
cawing and clicking
the tips of its claws
into the rock.
Into its mind.
Pebble wishes it could yell -
or move -
or shake it off -
or lift itself up into the air,
and arc down, Newtonian
exploding that dumb caw-bird skull
to wear its blood and brains, like warpaint.
But sentient though Pebble may be,
and bitter, and older,
it’s still just a Pebble,
unable to move.

Fly away, caw-bird,
leave me alone,
Pebble thinks.
I don’t have time
to wait the three minutes
until you get bored
and click off to caw
at some other dumb rock.

XIX. EPIPHANY

The idea gushes up from chaos.
Pebble feels its downroar
rising from a deep whorl
of ancient blackness.
A murmuration of concepts
that coalesce numinous
into an alloy of logic
that will not be ignored.
Throat-chanting up, furious,
through the magma chambers
of Pebble’s awareness.
Flightless, the bird -
Flightless is Pebble -
Sentient — but flightless.
Like Carbon,
Like all Pebbles and compounds
in the travelling comet.
Like the Exo…
…Right?

Wrong.

The Exo could bank.

The Exo could pitch.

The Exo could shake.

and the Exo could shed.

Motherfucker shed Carbon, didn’t he?
(Caw)
And the Exo shed Pebble to this godforsaken shithole…
…But if all of them minerals…
…Acquired their minds…
(Caw Caw Caw)
…at the same time…
…And the Exo is nothing…
(Caw)
…but a sum of its parts…
…an organizing principle…
…Then…
(Caw… CAW!)
…No. It can’t be -can it?
(Caw)
…it can’t.
…But it could.
…Nobody ever said…(Caw — heckety heckety — CAW!)
…I can’t influence matter…
(Caw)
…Nobody ever said…
(CAW)
…That I cannot fly.

XX. EXOPEBBLE

To be fair,
for the first few instants,
the flightless caw bird
stuck to its guns,
as madness unfurled
beneath its claws.
Pebble was vibrating,
dust fairying off,
roots tugging
at Pebble’s underside.
Gravity watching
with shock and awe.
as glowing lemurs
and multi-pronged worms
weep in holy horror.
Finally, caw-bird hopped off
(CAW CAW)
and scuttled away
annoyed, on its talons -
straight into the gnashing jaws
of Eyeball Planet megafauna.

Back in the clearing,
the wonder revved up.
Pebble’s million-year mind
had fully repurposed
all cognitive power -
focused on forces
the strong force, the weak
the grav, and electro.
Squeeze the polarities -
Toggle the ions -
Make parts of yourself
lighter than atmosphere,
by transferring mass
within nucleal cores.
Then cycle it back
faster and faster,
so that quantum guardians
sit up in their booths
and drop their beers
and elbow each other
and mutter check it out.
Pebble’s relentless
energy is thrumming
beyond all reason,
tensing and tensing,
crunching the numbers.

Here is a rock,
been thinking for ages,
and never once thunk,
that it knew how to -

Now.

Roots rip off screaming -
Moss cooks away -
Summoned by bosons,
ragged punk lightning
whiplashes down
from nine miles up -
and anoints Exopebble
with arcing sparks
of violet silver.

Fuck. Yes,
thinks one billionth of Pebble’s mind.
Pebble is now
ten feet off the ground
spinning in lightning -
its superheat flensing
the clearing around it -
melting the trees,
anger, and anger,
and hope,
and love,
and sadness exploding -
to joy, exaltation -
a controlled outwards blast.
As Pebble calibrates,
it learns this.
And learns this better.
And spins harder.
The lightning now
belonging to it.
So that Pebble gets ready,
grits its thoughts,
and with a sonic boom,
ramrods straight up -
into the sky.

XXI. GOODBYEBALL

Like warm water and cold,
the fear is entropically mingled
with the absolute absence
of any fear whatsoever.

Panic flickers into power
and back.
Vertigo nosedives
and ricochets up.

Sometimes they blend
into a state
of stable observation,
that lasts for a scoop
of grainy seconds -
and then begins
to separate again
into a whomping tornado
of exaltation and completeness,
which, in forming,
strains out its curdled opposite:
a hot, dark mind-burst
of rotting terror
wounded to the gut.

Pebble is suspended
up above the clouds
managing the jet stream
and daring to look down.

The Eyeball Planet has changed
since the day Pebble descended.
Change is in the patterns of decision
taken by the veins,
in the edges of the desert,
and in where it cedes to rock.
The fertile ring has narrowed
but deepened to be thicker,
its green an octave lower.
The translucence of its sky
is disturbed by whooshing swarms
of mindless golden specks
that jingle in the wind-wail.
All is foreign and familiar
spelling time and shift.
Pebble flies over the planet
dodging the question
that gets face-slapped
back and forth
by its toggling dread -

Now what?

To embrace acceleration?
To fulfill this premise?
To cross the liquid boundary
where the brightness
acquires the stark end
drawn by blackness?
It doesn’t have to -
Pebble could slow down,
let spinning quarks relent
and let itself fade down
in controlled return.
Perhaps to another clearing -
to settle and observe,
while maybe reconnecting
with the oceans in its mind…
It could do this for forever: island-hopping,
to the limited newness
of some other spot,
in some other time,
on the stilled hum
of the Eyeball Planet -
But the universe is older,
and when you’re a sentient rock,
ages are minutes,
and the other way around.

Soon, Eyeball’s star will start
devouring its own fumes,
swelling to engulf
incinerating all.
In the lead-up,
Eyeball will change,
new lifeforms evolve,
DNA scrambling
in the slow blinking days,
as the radioactive fever creeps up
and the crescent withdraws,
like gums from teeth,
leaving only
crawlers with carapaces,
clicking and munching
on extremophile lichen.

Surprises? Maybe.
Worthy? Hard to say.
Depends on one’s outlook.
But maybe this procession
from inert chunk
of an inert comet,
to reasoning Pebble
at Prince Exo’s moveable court,
to broken deserter,
to ejected passenger,
to viewer of seas
and now Flyer Resplendent
with craven bravado -
maybe this journey
shouldn’t be stopped.

Maybe, regardless
of where awareness wired,
Pebble ought to follow
the rabid, gleeful, farting sleigh-hound pups
of its own imagination
to wherever it is they’re dashing to.
Yes. Anyplace,
is both good or bad,
but I’ve been here long enough.
So Pebble waits
for a moment of courage
to sink into fear.
Its instinct suspects
that that is when to leave.
When insides are cold,
soaking, torn, tender
and twanged with apprehension.

Pebble sucks in
from the base of its center.
Metronome positrons and muons
rasp off their deck chairs
and warily stand,
trading a glance,
shaking their heads,
and stomping one foot
after another
to the accruing rhythm
of a cantering taiko
whose tooting rumble
blooms like an aster
in a dawning field.
All the subatomics
cowering by fire
in the tunnels and caves
of the City of Pebble
are summoned -
to stomp,
and chant,
and raise,
and gather,
and spin,
around and around,
banishing shame,
banishing self,
allowing
this dervishing folly
to gloop in and fill
every interstice,
every available chamber.

And then, simultaneous
with up-charging intention,
Pebble moves again -
lifting further -
pressure unclenching -
Gravity groping
like a desperate child
at a nightmare bedroom doorknob
with the grip of a madman.

The sky darkens
a deeper maroon
as Pebble crosses
into a whistling tidal dynamo
of extinction-level wind.
Electrical fury
unleashes a lashing,
those gold flecks now pelting
like a thresher tsunami.

But Pebble is steady.
Pebble is moving.
And whether it cracks
in the liminal strain
between forces to fly
and forces to ground,
will be footnotes to stories
no-one will write.

Right now is the now.
Right now is the upper atmosphere.
Right now
is near space.
And right the fuck now -
Pebble is back in orbit.

Alone.

With no Exocomet.

No map.

And good to go.

Cargo hold loaded
with emptiness and filling,
flickering slowly,
between the latter and the former,
like a hanging lightbulb
in a summer brownout.

The Eyeball Planet beneath
is a marble of madness.
Frozen and glaring
like a drug-addled morning.

Everywhere else,
chittering stars
pester the silence
of a spacefaring fate.