MY BEST LOVER I REMEMBER

My best lover, I remember
From the days when I traveled an h-space ship.
One I met, paid for, and slept with during
The Festival of Alpheratz Nine's Ringed Moon.
She a refugee turned whore; me a dumb young
Navigational Tech with an Augmented mind and
Credit to waste.

Ex-lover to a thousand aliens, she had
The most kindly and original eyes.
She had been bit-by-bit altered by each
Purchase, rape, or seduction.
Her genetic code sliced open and arranged like
Some weird and ancient flower.
Her mind's dreamcore cultivated and
Ornamented by curious telepathic enchanters.
Her emotional mechanisms stretched and re-tuned
By multi-minded and unhuman rapturites.

In my arms that night she
Flickered and shapeshifted,
Now a vampiress, now a saint,
Now a lioness, now something
For which humans have no names.
Then she undulated in TimeChange,
Becoming a budbreasted adolescent,
Then a Breeder, then a Charismatic
Goddess, finally a Hag exacting a 
Toll for Wisdom, all this in my arms,
Exuding pheremones made redundant
By Language and Sapience,
Rendered all the sweeter by strangeness.

In short, my friends, I got my money's worth,

And have ached with wishing a thousand times since
That I hadn't Shipped without seeing her again.

Now if I still had use of my arms and legs,
Still had my government issue Cyber-brain,
Still had Citizenship or enfranchisement in Credit,
If I could once more ascend to the star fields,
Leave pastoral Earth where all old women and men
Are ritually carried to rest then die,
If human-alien love hadn't been rendered
Sinful by the priestesses of disease,

I could go look for her, ask her about the thousands
Who came after.  Compare with her
Consolations regarding what she had many times,
What I had once but didn't recognize, what we all wish for,
The mad desire which drives us into each other's arms:
A lover who could change us.

- Charles M. Saplak

Links to other sites on the Web

Charles M. Saplak's Homepage

All rights to this poem belong to its author

This page hosted by GeoCities Get your own Free Home Page


1