Surviving the Black (Take Two)

The ship is crammed tight with people I never would have met otherwise,
From places Apocalypto saw fit that I’ll never see.
This metal shell, filled with recycled embryonic air,
Is like an intricately woven piece, stitched with each story,
Growing larger by the minute as we search for a new home out here, in the black.

A fruit vendor sits by the bulkhead.
He was the last out of the market and saw the lemon sky grow angry.
Roiling, rising clouds of gold and lime blotting out the double dwarfs
Purple earth packed beneath plodded feet began to tremble.
His wagon of fruit overturns, yellow blood staining the road brown.

A soldier, picks the remains of his protein ration from his teeth with a knife.
He had been on patrol, his first out of the city, smelled the burning in the haze
Before great spears of rock from light-years away pierced the blue sand,
Tore his life away, the vermilion blood of the planet bubbling from smoking wounds.
When the orange flood-waters receded, the world left for dead, the sand still thirsted.

A little girl, not so little or innocent now, watches the stars pass from the cockpit.
She was picking emerald flowers when she heard the red grasses hissing in the rising wind.
Vicious chartreuse clouds flew across the plains towards her.
Electricity making her hair rise as blossoms fell from her trembling hands.
Lightning cracked the mountains behind her, pulling their shoulders down across the pass.

As we approach the next planet we pause, staring down wondering if it will be next.
And in this pathetic group of strangers hands clasp,
For how else can we survive the black?
The vendor looks up, looks at the world spinning below us and shakes his head.
“It looks like rain.”