Negative Return — a poem about a shuttle launch and/or a failing relationship.
Channel: Angela Brett
Date: 2015-05-27

By request, this is me at Open Phil (an open mic night that happens every Tuesday at Celeste Jazzkeller in Vienna) on 27/5/2015, reading a poem I'd just written about shuttle launches and breakups (not shuttle breakups) in order to have an excuse to wear my NASA flight suit again. I used audio from a tour I took of Kennedy Space Center in 2011 (I hope the tour guide doesn't mind), and a shuttle launch from https://archive.org/details/NasaAudioHighlightReels to spice it up a bit. It was a little awkward at the end, because there is a clip of launch controllers saying 'negative return' at the end, but it was a little bit after the end of the poem, and people clapped over it, so I wasn't sure whether it had happened yet.

I was putting together that sound clip at home a few minutes after Open Phil was supposed to be starting, and I finished writing the poem not long before that, so there are probably things that need changing. For one thing, I don't think 'disaffection' means what I want you to think it means. And there are some ridiculous rhymes in there that I hate and/or love (aren't there always?) But I'm wearing a flight suit and you can hear a space shuttle launch, so all in all it's not terrible.

Here are the words:

First you see it, then you hear it, then you feel it.

First you see it.
The shuttle slipping up into the sky,
The subtle disaffection in her eye. 
The blooming smoke that seems it's painted on.
The lustful fire you can't believe is gone.

Then you hear it.
The solid rocket booster firing noise.
The falling out of love that's in her voice.
A sound so loud it can destroy its very source.
The sound suppression system dissipates the force.
Unsound depression wisdom yells it back to her, 
Resounding hate-you-toos destroying everything you were. 

Then you feel it.
The shockwave that can shake your every cell.
The rocketing heartache you'll never dispel.
Explosive blast of air across the water from the pad.
She knows you're stuck down there, weighed down with everything you had,
Feeling all the blame in lover's rush to be set free.
Searing in the flame trench in the crush of gravity.

You see her thrust toward nothingness as shuttle engines burn.
You hear the launch controllers saying Negative Return.
You feel your inner hollowness do nothing else but yearn.