Where Shapes Wait
Ed Nobody
In the permanight of space a shape blinks.
Not a sun , no, not a star.
Something stinks out there,
Hiding in cold flesh,
Residents of airless breath, all skeleton and spine,
Monsters that chew on old NASA ships like lime rinds.
Observers of this earthbound human race:
Do they laugh when we crash our ships in outer space?
Or do they wish to lend a hand?
So that we might land in closer reach,
For ease of their consumption.
We’re dinner friends,
Just washed up lumps of meaty jet propulsion.
And hardly will we scatter seeds across this poisoned galaxy
Where cosmic freakshows sit and wait to make a feast of gravity.
You get the feeling this old race won’t make it to the stars–
Our eulogy, dear friends, is what they’ll read to us on Mars.
