Rocket Science
Ahead of human test subjects
Brief astronauts to test the water, blow on the soup before swallowing
Into the substance: an evolving arrow with sudden green buds/ atremble
Not from the sky, no
But through it, a sub-audible whistling not for our ears
Animals across the horizon, down below it’s summer with no preparation
The shattering of windows (canaries of the sound barrier) precedes the actual impact
Has that ever struck you as odd?
An object falls from the sky, as it was meant to be
As if it thought it was the first to escape
Downright comforting though
Compared to what happens when it vanishes before detonation leaving only shattered glass
Nobody knows
Where they go, these iron causalities
And (just between you and me)
Most civilians don’t know the difference
They may as well be ghosts
To be safe, clean and cost-effective
Nowdays it’s rockets and children first
Headfirst into the future
Because firing one backwards takes a lot more effort and we just don’t have those kinds of
resources these days
Still, there’s that mosquito-pitched air raid siren that hums: someone has/ someone has
So for the sake of stability we memorize in catalogues the bodies of Orpheus and Lot’s wives
(only one of whom had a name)
And we need the ripe human machine, always moving ahead
Plucked gently from the rodeo, never looking behind
Where every clown is a winner
Slow talkers need not apply
Someone has/ someone has, not I said the pilot
It is assumed that the origin point is the Trinity Site
But what if the trajectory goes back farther?
Patient zero frequently renamed, reassigned
Patients One (maiden name zero) and beyond are fuel for rumors and nutrient-rich, black
garden soil
Anything will grow
Between wished-upon falling satellites
Anything at all (even wooden horses)
Just be sure to buckle up/ the indicator light has come on meaning there is no more smoking
allowed in the restrooms
Because time is fickle, a fickle liquid
And these are shallow days
Public swimming pools too crowded to swim
Antiseptic/ half naked
In a nearby highrise apartment: Eurydice plays cards with Medusa not looking up from her hand
but unsure if she should be afraid/ if an ending is predetermined, may as well make it strip
poker
Someone has dared/ loose a rocket into the substance: fire is always a breached birth
There’s a science to landing on your feet but that is not our science, against the limit of sound
and light you can live in a year longer than it actually exists but be prepared for that familiar
whistling: incoming
Look at them/ looking up/ at us looking down: closer/ someone has dared
In the beginning we would send dogs
A Volunteer
Someone say yes before I float away
Before they let me be an astronaut/ say yes before they do/ I’m demanding a witchdoctor to be
present at my last meal/ because I keep writing letters to NASA and eventually they’re going to
break and say yes first/ someone to either wave away the smoke or spin it into pleasing shapes
I tell them again and again that I’m 25 years old and I’m going to live forever/ if I go up there,
mortality is down here but up there/ they have most wonderful floatation devices in space/ I
part ways with science, play devil’s advocate by pointing out mechanical innovation as potential
evidence for creative design
As punishment for my big mouth (and because I asked for it) they’ll put me in a spacesuit and
tie me to a chair sitting on a pile of a thousand fireworks in the middle of the prairie/ childhood
home of abandoned trailers and pastures where the cows eat weeds growing from their own
feces/ infinite fuel or at least enough to achieve escape velocity
And if I survive the atmosphere (which I will) I’ll be expected to send smoke signals even though
things don’t burn so easy out in space (so you see why I need a tutor) and to take photographs
with an old automatic Kodak camera and developing them in gamma rays/ not a soldier but an
escapee even now/ there is a vast alarm clock in the center of the galaxy/ I’ve seen it
The worst part is that I’m going to survive/ I should believe in the miraculous given how many
times I’ve jumped and just dusted myself off and slinked back home/ up there I’m going to live
forever/ the subconscious resides in the gut, like bacteria
Alright, probably not totally forever (I’m past that delusion, however convincing it might be) but
a long time, a very long time/ not starving but getting hungrier and hungrier
I’ve dreamed my ignition like a car accident/ slow motion impact, striking the match on
scrubland/ a straw of it between my teeth under dark glass (golden remnant)
Or the death of an acquaintance/ not someone close but not too far away either/ a distant blue
dot, my old friend/ if they’d never shown me that picture from the moon, that picture from a satellite
I’d not have thrown a pebble rippling outwards/ unconnected singularities add up like beautiful
people all getting the same tattoo/ all the hoofed animals at a watering hole lift their heads for
a moment
Someone/ Houston/ the upholsterers/ those in orbit, those with horns and those camouflaged
in the rainy season
Deciding as a group without any words spoken/ whether to run or keep drinking the brown
water/ on some far off planet/ somewhere warm in the sunshine and cold in the dark
Someone, anyone/ pyromaniac or engineer engaged in a parasitic cycle
Before I learn/ before I tease the miraculous again like a lion in an accidentally unlocked cage/
eyes golden in a place with no oxygen and his footprints sound like drums
Someone/ I’ll need a volunteer from the audience/ anyone with steady hands
Say yes before I learn to swim
Preemptive Strike
A crack appears in the machinery
Quiet unlit wound
A break in the façade
Disproving infallibility once and for all
Like a curtain opening on the magician early
And yet
It is there
Spread open over gears and wires like something coming out of the sky
A crack appeared in the machinery, a bluebird began to sing
And then stopped
Like electricity
Even devotion has its limits
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