Life on Mars

Down through flesh into the body’s own hell. Sometimes
It takes forever for that song only the animals know
To climb back up into air as if to burst the throat.

You know how, shoulders hiked nice and high, chin tipped back,
So the song has to climb its way out like a man from a mine

The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.

I.
I don’t want to hear their voices.
To stand sucking my teeth while they
Rant. For once, I don’t want to know
What they call truth, or what flags
Flicker from poles stuck to their roofs.
Let them wait. Lead them to the back porch
And let them lean there while the others eat.
If they thirst, give them a bucket and a tin cup.
If they’re sick, tell them the doctor’s away,
That he doesn’t treat their kind. Warn them
What type of trouble tends to crop up
Around here after dark.

What

Would your life say if it could talk?

The future isn’t what it used to be. Even Bowie thirsts

For something good and cold. Jets blink across the sky

Like migratory souls.

Time never stops, but does it end? And how many lives

Before take-off, before we find ourselves

Beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?

Bowie will never die. Nothing will come for him in his sleep

Or charging through his veins. And he’ll never grow old,

Like God, it has no face. Like lust,

It flickers on without a prick of guilt

IT & CO.
We are a part of It. Not guests.

Is It us, or what contains us?

How can It be anything but an idea,

Something teetering on the spine

Of the number i? It is elegant

But coy. It avoids the blunt ends

Of our fingers as we point. We

Have gone looking for It everywhere:

In Bibles and bandwidth, blooming

Like a wound from the ocean floor.

Still, It resists the matter of false vs. real.

Unconvinced by our zeal, It is un-

Appeasable. It is like some novels:

Vast and unreadable.