Less Than Human

 

Crash landed on this barren planet

Twenty seven forty three

Co-pilot killed on impact

And eaten eventually

There’s no food in the food hold

Incinerated by the heat

I’m trapped here in the cockpit

With the bones of Corporal Lee

 

Got out through the meteor shield

By use of a sharpened shin

That I made into a passable axe

By very careful honing

On a piece of shattered dashboard

That was inches from my chin

Escaped in one piece

But shredded lots of skin

 

The wounds are now infected

In this alien atmosphere

But luckily for me

There is an intact medi-sphere

So I started having sessions

In the ultra complex gear

That acts as nurse and surgeon

On deep space missions beyond a year.

 

The cyber-doctor has suggested

That I recycle all my piss

And save my excrement

For nutritional re-genesis

You see I’ve explored my environs

And my conclusions simply put are this

There is no food or water

On this planetoid abyss

 

The medi-sphere diagnosed

That my toes were first to go

As my body started dying

From the lack of healthy flow

And it got me kind of thinking

Which other parts were just for show

And which could be amputated

From my quickly failing torso

 

Over the weeks that followed

As the distress signal was sent

The spaceships medi-sphere

Cut off all the bits I’d consent

To let it harvest for my larder

And my desperate attempt

To stay alive long enough

For a rescue event.

 

Lips were cut and chewed upon

A liver was sauted on the heat

Coming from a plasma vent

That I had used to boil my feet

As all the bits were harvested

The medi-sphere was neat

In the way it spliced together

All the bits I couldn’t eat

 

At first I stipulated that the surgeon

Could only take one of any two

But as the weeks grew longer

I knew that just wouldn’t do

So my eyes and ears were taken

And my prized testicles too

Only the necessities for life

Were allowed to stay for rescue

 

By the time my saviours came

I was nothing but a brain

Connected to heart and lungs

Nothing else remained

And when the rescue crew

Saw the denuded co-pilot I had slain

They shot me for a cannibalistic alien

I had no voice to explain