On October 1st of 2010
A baby girl, to Joyce and Glen,
Was
born in Chicago, Illinois
And broke the heart of many a boy
(Featured
in many hot dreams)
When she grew up into her teens.
Not only looks did this girl gain,
Also a rare, distinctive name.
Parents, strange, do sometimes get
So called their daughter Juliet
(From a certain play, you know,
That also starred one Romeo).
As well as looks and name we find
She also had a brilliant mind.
So,
one day, it did dawn on her
To move to California
Where she studied
hard all day
In the halls of UCLA.
An astronaut she wished to be
So majored in Astronomy,
Also math, including sines,
And spaceship innards and engines.
I'm
sorry about that previous line
But it's awful hard to make this rhyme.
She quickly gained
her Phds,
As well as sev'ral more degrees,
So SpaceCorps, therefore,
did accept
This girl with major intellect,
And Juliet was promptly mad
e
A scout ship engineer (3rd grade).
Soon afterwards her orders came
To take herself, looks,
smarts and name,
By a shuttle up to the moon
Where Pleides was arriving
soon.
She packed her bags and quickly went
Into the starry firmament.
At last the Pleides she found
And went aboard to look
around.
It was an old and battered ship
Held together with luck and
spit.
To be called a 'ship' it was not fit,
It was, in fact, a piece of
shit!
The crew, it seemed, were all inept
Which shows why it was
so poorly kept,
Still, they seemed a friendly bunch
They even brought
her up her lunch.
And so she spent a pleasant day
Unpacking things to
put away.
The change in mood was hard to spot,
T'wasn't till well past
Mars they'd got
Before Juliet did realise
Just how much she was
despised.
They bullied, pushed, and forced her to
Do all the chores
that they should do.
Pretty soon it came to pass,
As the crew sat on their collective ass,
Poor Juliet, that girlish slip,
Did have to run the whole damn ship;
Cook their meals and do their jobs
And wash and clean. The lazy slobs!
Now she was a woman, that was true,
And the youngest, she'd grant that
too,
But she was almost as qualified
As Einstein was (before he died).
So even though they showed her hate
She'd prove that she could pull
her weight.
Eleven months of thankless work
For Captain Snert, that
ugly jerk.
She flew the ship through starry voids
And mapped out loads
of asteroids,
And kept the reactor burning right,
All that on three
hours sleep a night.
The afternoon of June the 12th
Was no so great for
Juliet's health.
Her vital signs went for the worse
When the reactor
core upped and burst.
It blew her to a tiny heap
(But at least she
finally got some sleep).
She lay there in a pool of blood,
Which didn't do her that
much good.
But for Juliet, in her hour of need
The crew acted with
unusual speed.
To her aid they did run
(Once the Superbowl was done).
Into the autodoc they dumped,
The battered, broken, bloody
lump
And fairly quickly turned it on.
Then, as the 'doc began to hum,
They prayed it would not be her grave
(Well it's awful hard to lose a
slave).
The autodoc, with zest and zeal,
Carefully took out each
piece of steel
That had pierced her fragile flesh
Making her look a
frightful mess.
With drugs it filled her to the gills
Trying to cure
her many ills.
It ticked and hummed for days on end
Getting Ju back on the
mend.
The crew, that sordid bunch of goons,
Hoped Juliet would get well
soon.
(If that seems somewhat out of character
Remember, they had to do
some work without her).
Now fate, you may say, has not been nice
Treating Juliet with a heart of
ice.
So just for you we'll even score
And short out the computer core.
Off went the reactor w arning
And to the lifeboat the crew went
pouring.
As for Juliet, they neglected her
And jumped ship like the rats they
were.
Captains die with ships is the usual notion
So they gave Juliet a
field promotion.
Then as they fled into the void
They were atomised by
an asteroid.
At this point I think we'll take
A well deserved commercial
break:
Drink Coke, eat Spam, drive Ford's new car,
And brush your teeth
with Gibbs SR,
Get your gob 'round Wrigley's gum,
Use Andrex tissue on
your bum.
Let Beecham's Powders cure your ills
When you've
drunk too much Holsten Pils.
Buy some tickets for Les Mis,
And make the
BBC what it is,
Now after all that selling time
We'll go back to the
storyline.
When Juliet gained consciousness
She knew she was in a
dreadful mess.
Her muscles ached, her bones all cracked,
Her brain was
tired; she was completely whacked.
She lay awhile, just to revive,
Thankful that she was alive.
Eventu'lly she wandered out
And round the ship she looked
about.
She checked the ship from tip to stern
And realised there was no
one herm.
(I know that rhyme was a load of shit
But it's very hard to
make things fit).
She didn't really have her doubts
'Till she saw the
computer core had shorted out.
Now this may not seem so bad,
She was
alive, she should be glad.
But it don't exactly make your day
When
home's ten million miles away.
If that wasn't enough to put her in a funk
The radio too was a
pile of junk.
Also trashed; the astrogator,
Essential tool for a
navigator.
So, unless she wanted to be dead,
The math she'd do inside
her head.
Now if you're twelve yards to the right
A tower, of which, you need the
height,
A protractor to measure angles with,
A book of sines, some long
divis.
Trigonometry will do the biz
And say how high the tower is.
So Juliet set about her task
Of trying to save her pretty
ass
By turning the crippled ship around
And landing on some earthly
ground.
She worked the problems all about her
With nothing but a
calculator.
The positions of the stars she spied
And found out where
she was (or tried).
Some other factors did she need;
9 million miles a
day (her speed),
Her destination in the stars;
It had to be the planet
Mars.
She scribbled hard on pads galore,
Used seven
pencils, maybe more,
To work out what she had to do
Not to mention when
to do it too.
It's lucky Juliet's so bright,
Other folk wouldn't get
it right.
She fired the engines right on time
Changing course to a
Mars-bound line
Or at least where Mars was going to be
When she arrived
on July 3.
Hoping she was on the path
And not made a balls up of the
math.
Twelve days went past, really slow
And pretty soon she
would know
Whether she had got it right
Or if she'd sail past in the
night.
She'd have to be spot on time
'Cause these ship's don't turn on
a dime.
It wasn't 'til July 1st
That Juliet discerned the worst
Her course was perfect, but then
She hadn't enough oxygen.
It was
rather tough to believe
There wasn't enough air to breathe.
She sat and got real depressed
What a rotten, frightful mess.
So booze she got from the medibay
And got rat-arsed in a major way.
I know you're thinking it's not fair,
But then again life's tough, so
there!
With computer down and sensors none
Poor Juliet sat there all alone
Knowing she was about to die
And philosophic'ly wond'ring why
When 'Hey
you'!' from the speaker blared
And Juliet, shocked, fell off her chair.
'Get out the way, ya stupid dame
This is a major spatial lane.'
See
Pleides while on it's way
Had cut up a stellar motorway
And it had
almost hit
A pretty big container ship.
So in the end it all worked out fine
And Juliet became next in line
For engineer, chief no less
Aboard the Grissom (USS),
And so we leave
this tale my friend
At this point, which is the end.
Poem by D. James Sanderson, illustrated by Claire.©