Seventeen years of life under dirt
cicadas collect and in quiet clicks
skittering, creaking, burrowing down
they mumble about the apocalypse
seventeen years to gather thoughts
and cooking pots, and preen their wings.
Forty feet up a cluster bomb wings
over heads with tongues tucked in hot dirt
teeth drawing red from gum holding thoughts
of mothers and lovers in movie reel clicks
spun flammably out between gossamer lips
they supplicate up, but keep their heads down.
(We’re hauling water down
to the ship as she swings
in the black brackish slips
of salt that sat forty years locked in dirt
now lift our Lady for fifty-five klicks
sunburned, we sing to flatten our thoughts.)
Selkies shed fins as they slide into thoughts
silking their mythical hips down
cools the bursting sun who tricks with clicks
of deliquesced, cracking wax Icarus wings
we weep for firm ground, for tillable dirt.
We’d trade liquor for her, and skin for cowslips!
Flung from the globe with a lisp on his lips
pricking the stratosphere shatters his thoughts
the rocketship sloughs her terrestrial dirt
while Commander’s breaths drip slowly down
his helmet. No sun on his wings.
Just a vascular clock ticking red and blue clicks.
Seventeen years of these star-spangled clicks
turning purple with unspoken fears on his lips.
Seventeen! Three to go. His wife in the wings
waiting underground, spinning slick thoughts,
her green drying wings drooping flimsily down,
heavy with battle, coated with dirt.
She weaves dirt with her wrists, joints clicking
cosmological threads held with windchapped lips,
humming thoughts of biplanes with aluminum wings.