Dreaming in Code

Fanfiction
Title:	Dreaming in Code
Author(s):	Ellen O'Neil
Date(s):	1992
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Star Trek: TOS
Relationship(s):	Kirk/Spock
External Links:
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Dreaming in Code is a Kirk/Spock poem by Ellen O'Neil.

It was published in the print zines T'hy'la #11 and Nome #12.

Reactions and Reviews

1992

I have so little formal knowledge about poetry that I am usually hesitant to comment on it. However, occasionally a poem will strike me in the heart, and I can't help but say something. "Dreaming in Code" is one such poem. I find this work to be incredibly beautiful, with striking images and words so lovely... and the insights here are new too. The third stanza manages to convey all of Spock's divisions and doubts, his struggles in a fresh, new way. "To calm a race that scarcely knows me, but still I go on/ Claiming. And yet, I am held in place by the pulse's needs:/" This is marvelous. I'd never thought of Spock's insistence on being Vulcan in just this way. The fourth stanza is even better. The author's image of the strength of emotions to the inexperienced Vuican is so vivid: "...I have lived in vast silences,/Knowing certain words spoken in truth held the power/to burn flesh, to destroy worlds, to consume and devour./" And better and better, his quiet yearning for those words, and the knowledge that all during his lonely life, somewhere in his isolated soul, he has been saying then: "... they are rehearsed in the/blood, they have been whispered in the bone." And finally, that lonely, lovely plea "Touch me." Wow! There's a lot more to this poem that I simply don't have the technical skills to comment on. For example. I found the way each stanza was begun, with just spaces between words, to be very effective. But I suppose that it isn't the technique on which any poem should be finally judged. It's the tone, the impact on the reader. Spock. and all that he has only dreamed about for years, become very real to me. This is definitely one of my very favorite K/S poems.