Odyssey

One-shot. Poem written from Jacen's perspective, post-Vong, pre-Caedus. A transition.

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There are holes behind the stars
Every time I turn
I barely catch a hole out of the corner of my eye
But they're there, believe me, there they're

I mix up semantics
Until the X-wing stands on shaky ground-
Metaphorically, of course-space warping beneath its wings
Until I seem to fall out of the sky- The stablest
Position in space, as orbiting is just an endless free fall
When you think about it
Meditate upon it for a moment, an hour, a year

Sometimes I jink the nose of the starfighter in the opposite direction
Just to see if I can catch a star
Shooting away from its hole and uncovering something behind
For a second while it considers itself
Insignificant,
While it thinks the galaxy is ignoring it

Something, my conscious knows,
I wouldn't want to see I'm not meant to see,
Something of unholy knowledge
Lurks behind that star

But as flashes of unreality in the darkness
My subconscious still twitches the controls
For an idea in which I laugh at and don't believe

And I shoot off through space

The next lesson: How to train the caprices of the mind into something worthwhile?

A question indeed.
There is no way.
Just lean and pare and burn them away
A mind purified of all humanity
In the cold blue flame of necessity

I go to the next lesson, the next planet, the next life

But does variety really teach anything?
I am no longer an empty sponge.
How can I listen and trust and learn
Just like when I was a child?

It's different now. All technique, no
Philosophy. And they expect me to go
Home full-taught, stuffed with the
bland dried fruits of their knowledge
until I, tasteless in a foreign culture,
Declare myself satisfied and thanksprofuselyelders. How can I be?
I will never be satisfied until I know why- on my own merits.

I will never be satisfied. Why death? Why pain? Why peace?

The next lesson: how to
Forget the first
And ask these questions all over again with the dramatic intensity of youth
So ask more convincingly:
Why? Force, why, Anakin?

In bed, I used to wake up out of nightmares, feeling myself
Falling through the cold metal of a reactor shaft
Into the soft down of the
shimmersilk sheets of my bed, surrounded by luxury while others starved.
My parents would comfort me: "You're
Fine. You're awake and safe now."
But they were wrong: We are all falling.

At least we are all falling together-but that does us no good!
If I could only stop the universe-
stop it for a second and think-
please...just...
and I'd save you all if I could only stop to figure out how
I need more time-

Isn't five years plenty of time?

Please...just...
darkness grips my soul right now...
I could cast it off, wrestle with it,
Bathed in the light of those facades of stars
if I could only just have a second to think...

and an eternity to weep.