Radiation Plantation
by Winston C. Mars 

“Radiation Plantation,”
I spoke the information.

“Scott?”

Scott blew snot on a pink carnation.

“Ready the gammaram,
and prepare for floatation.”

“Aye aye, captain,”
he replied as he spied a crustacean.

So at last we’d found it,
in the deepest of space!

This holiest of grails,
the prey in our chase…

Who’d have believed it!
Real, and true?
Nobody! But you were all wrong! And screw you!

Pausing to blink in the thick radiation,
I surveyed the scene with a keen adulation.

The orange peaks protruding from a backdrop so drab—
“Scott, now goddammit! Don’t kick that space crab!”

Christ! On the cusp of a discovery so vast
it would make the wheel itself seem half-assed,

I was cursed with a first mate so wantonly inept
that I put down my somascope and wantonly wept!

No good! No use! Might as well pack it in!
My half-life had been wasted, chucked in the waste bin.

Twenty long years been spent in pursuit…
Now the ass of my dreams was being kicked with a boot!

The free energy here could boggle the brain,
with atomic atoms and radiant rain.

It could power a nation and make a man rich.
“Scott, stop rolling around in that space ditch!”

It’s useless, it’s hopeless! It’s patently absurd!
There he is throwing rocks at a space bird!

A competent crewman would be my salvation.
Oh, I picked the wrong weekend to ask for visitation!

“What is it now Scott? Can’t you see I’m distraught?
With no way to prove that I was here or not?

The mission’s a failure, no one will believe
that I ever found this place. Now let’s us just leave!”

“You found me a present, well yippie and woo-hoo.

Wait, this is the space shell of a radiant shrew!

It’s only found here… our failure undone!

Oh what a genius I have for a son!”