Poem: "Anomalies of Mind and Time"
This poem came out of the April 5, 2011 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from ellenmillion and sponsored by kelkyag. Oranaan is a Torn World character with a light and flaky approach to science, who has appeared in various stories including my "It's Not Magic, It's Science!" (To learn about the anomalies, read the article "Others.") Now that it's sponsored, when I submit this poem to the canon board, it'll be marked for publication visible to everyone.
Anomalies of Mind and Time
-- a Torn World poem
Oranaan's wits are undeniable,
but thwarted for lack of an interface.
When he tries to push them onto the tip of his tongue,
people wrinkle their foreheads in mute confusion
or laugh at the jumble of ideas tumbling forth.
When he tries to print them out on paper,
the poor words fare no better;
they drown in the ink and die on the page.
When he tries to push them out through his fingertips,
everything he builds falls apart
and people are too busy scolding him to notice
that it was too working for a moment there.
But they're real, his wits;
and it's real, his science --
even though nobody else understands --
as real and as powerful as the anomalies
drifting invisibly throughout the Empire,
changing everything they touch.