Day Thirty: ‘Astronaut’s Blues’
April 30, 2013
At ease, Spaceman. Congratulate yourself
for climbing through the junk of atmosphere.
You’ve arrived — the stars presented on a platter,
the moon white as a flame. Your spoils gleam as crystal.
Every calculation, crunch and heart
endurance test all finally worth
the grime and duress of interstellar voyage.
But there’s the earth just out the pod window
as blue and bright as God and just as mean.
Why, Spaceman, why do we insist on dying?
Your lovers, friends and folks oceans from war,
but you know better. The breath inside this blue
floating lung is glazed with gasoline.
One day, the fireworks. Now, drink the stillness.
April Is The Cruellest Month 
[…] Our hero misses cheeseburgers and Camels. The return voyage’s weeks longer than advertised, but he knew that. Somewhere, in a deep crevice inside his bloated suit, still beats a heart that longs for petty human quarrels like traffic and knocking a drink accidentally and keeping sloppy marital finances, the lot of which you can’t find among the stars. As the board blinks and receivers echo in his ear, he’s back in Alabama consuming the black vastness of a night where multitudes of stars blink fast and bright. The girl, the sunburn, the flattened black hair all swirl skyward now as his vessel, tumbling, arranges itself in no particular manner, the memory the heaviest item in the antigravity orb. Spaceman, as a spaceboy, crushed lips with blackhair behind the central hub where mustaches slept, then knew he’d never breathe her air again. So spaceboy left a message, a hefty, breathy whisper — we won’t be long. Indeed his craft descends. Two weeks to go. Who really ever gets what he may want? […]