This Devouring Hate

Dr. David Hethenbarg waited for

His son as a deafening roar

filled the room where he sat in fear

as his end, his doom came ever near.

Inwardly, he wrestled with his last hope.

So foreign a thing toward which he groped.

Such a laughable thing toward which to grope.

And yet across the endless span of years,

That seemed so filled with other’s tears,

He had never known a fear like this,

So sweet and pure, a gentle kiss,

Nor a hope towards which to reach

That did not wholly seem to leech

The color out of life and others, each.

Could such a ridiculous thing,

deemed so worthless by many a king,

be what quells this devouring hate?

Love…? Could it change our fate?

Across an empty familial space

A father reached toward his son and grace,

hoping to fill that hollow, empty place.

A rising hope swelling in his breast,

A father rose up dispossessed

Of his tyrannical driving pride,

That all his life he allowed to preside,

And walked across the empty space,

To where his son sat in a metal case,

And there he took him in love’s embrace.

Grady and Kelly ran down the hall,

toward the hangar feeling very small.

They had seen a view screen of outside,

“How have we not already died,”

yelled Grady to Kelly who led.

Kelly kept quiet as he ran ahead,

keeping his dour thoughts unsaid.

They reached the hangar and searched the ship,

“No doctor, no time, start the fucking ship.”

“We just going to leave him?” asked Grady

sitting at the controls, “Engines ready.”

Hitting the steel wall Kelly growled, “Damn it!

One last place to check, stay in the cockpit

Set the phase change, when I’m back we split.”

At a wild sprint he left the ship

“Alright Kelly lets make this a quick trip.”

Across the hangar, down a flight of stairs,

raced Lt. Kelly unawares

of the stowaway, its identity,

how it was a god-like entity.

Kelly ran muttering obscenities.

Bursting through the storeroom door

Kelly saw the doctor knelt before

A rusted droid propped against the wall

And watched the following befall:

The droid reached for the doctors face

and struck it with a fist like a mace,

knocking the old man back a pace.