Folded into a bar
watching an astronaut on the TV,
I think about space.
Space in air locks
With pretty rooms for pilots enduring G-force on giant leaps.
Space to sing ‘over’ in orbits of epistrophe.
Space for space walks stepping from the human realm on a human lead
In the most expensive extra-curricular activity ever conceived.
Space for philanthrophic explorers on atmospheric vacations
Who do not live up to the loving of ‘philo’.
Singing ‘over’ where no one can hear you,
When nothing has ended.
Some say “Public don’t care for space no more”
But I could sure do with some under this table.
I read the menu,
To humble the possibility of “printed, typed and written words”
I think about leaving the Earth
To nourish my appetite for the “free, unoccupied dimensions of height and depth” in all of its emptiness.
But right now my bladder is full of piss.
I think about the atoms of our bodies.
Won’t you make space in our clotted veins and clear them of sickness?
Won’t you suffuse our bankrupt arteries like elevators spurning aged and crumbling flights?
Why, despite the insendious curling of metal
When a rocket ship explodes
Everybody still wants to fly.
I ponder so long that the moment the launch actually happens
I’m watching a cockroach below a bar stool roll its simple eyes.
I hear someone say
“Truly man just ain’t happy unless a man dies”
I finally look up and see the television screen.
References
Sign o the time by Prince
Recessional by Rudyard Kipling
The Canonization by John Dunne
Hymn by Taylor Johnson
Goodbye to All that by Joan Didion