Poem: "Time, Space, and Distance"

This poem came from the February 5, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired and sponsored by Stephen Laird.  It's based on a video about stellar motion within the galaxy and the italicized lines are quotes from the video text.  This poem belongs to the series An Army of One: The Autistic Secession in Space.

To understand the universe,
one needs parallax.

To understand the war,
one needs perspective.

Time, space, and distance
are not to scale.

Estelle created a holographic program
that showed the whole galactic plane,
the Sun swimming through space
on a spiral path like a strange jellyfish
making its way through a sea of ink and sparks.

The arms of the Milky Way
reach out through the stellar wind.
The planets dance around the Sun,
forever led by its luminous beacon.

It takes about 226 million years
to orbit the galactic center.

The notable battles of the war
appear like pinheads of red,
visible only at high magnification,
spattered along a short span
of the Sun's infinite looping path
and beyond, into the Lacuna
that lies between the Arms.

So small an impact,
one would think,
looking at it in the context
of all that lies around it.

Please read my notes in the video description
before posting a comment.

Look at this, you conceited imbeciles --
the universe made this masterpiece,
and all you can think to do
is FIGHT OVER one little piece of it?
And to think you call US "mentally disabled."

This?  Is why I'm against the war.