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What on Earth
took you? Do we dare land?

A lark of descension. An aborted beginning.
Moon trills.

Captain is dead
at the controls.
Mother gives birth in the airlock.

Trouble in the passageways.
A struggle to name it.
A drink before eclipse.
All that's wrong with the world
sounds like harmonium in the (wishing) well.

First flight over Hölderlin's Archipelago,
creating new and stranger versions
in the sandclouds.
So this is
Tharsis Rise?
Life without a trace.

Non-terrestrial Martian field.
Halcyon flowering seas. A rock with no trees,
no urban hopes.

Yet, the whole universe inside
wants to be touched.
I love you in zero gravity,
pushing tender buttons.
*** as solution.
Moon trills.

A kiss of atmosphere.
This alien womb.
Those android embargoes.
Our children are born echoes of astronauts.
Lunar schedules
their first words.

There's a lightspeed sensibility
to this type of marriage and parenting:
no leaving the hub,
no exit procedure.

The Sol they sing
is a harm hymn,
moon trills,
subject to the ladder and the weight of breath
this outside Earth.

But I love you in the veil of a twilight moon.

We're monuments
burned into moments.
Moments without a beyond.
 Jul 2022 Caroline Shank
Crow
time steals up soft in autumn’s haze
through fallen leaves and frosted morn
no longer smiles through summer days
bears dreadful gaze of mercy shorn

scribes lines upon youth’s winsome face
and brings the ache of stiffened joint
gives halting stride and slower pace
age piled like leaves does thus anoint

yet in thine eye dwells springtide’s bloom
in ardor’s dance is lightened tread
warm voice dispels autumnal gloom
at gentle touch are decades fled

for love knows naught of count of days
let the years flow as they will
unclouded passion’s flames yet blaze
I shall be thy lover still
I'm in a room without recovery area:
a room of intermission, a room
of collapse. Where are
the convenient little windows
to release a wicked bird of thought?
The quiet there is monk-like,
rogue, and slightly unpleasant, guilty
of moments spent with shadow.

I want to build a clock
that ticks once a year
—more dark than shark,

my confessional capacity
time-stretched,
like the heavy intoxicated *******
of the witching hour. And I'll
make soup from the leftover prayers
of the day before, all in hopes
the rooms of me, then so clear,
will one day be faraway suns
in the temple of heaven.
Money may not
grow on trees
But far too many people
are willing to go
out on a limb for it
Janus-faced, she sits in her
Sinister bathing tub
Cleansing herself from
Fallen lovers

The very ones
She devised subtle ends to
Lest they should claim
Her heart for a kingdom

Vandals of her plumage
Whom she allowed
To drink from her stream
Once or twice

A god of vengeance sent her
A message in a bottle today
To prove the origin of her flow
And remind her that time is

Fly-by-night
oh sorrowful
barbary coast
they took your young daughters
and sold them to sheikhs
of the sand as water

not so unlike college girls
from the mainland
disappearing now
during spring break
as midnight contraband
~
Ada's got a scheme
a flying machine
constructing wings of
paper, oilsilk, wires, and feathers
faster than light
in all kinds of weather
Ada's going to fly

~
For Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), daughter of poet Lord Byron and renowned mathematician. She valued metaphysics as much as mathematics, viewing both as tools for exploring "the unseen worlds around us."
Dangerman
—a buyer and seller
of mostly himself

Petticoat
—a ***** on the take
and about to slip

Each made promises to the other
but both loved journeys
and valleys
and limericks
and turntables
and spirits
and skirt-raising
and slowdives
and lip-biting
and come-hither
more than their here-and-now vow

Trigger-happy begetter
with an ax to grind
killing captives slowly
with jagged little things
it's the strangest sound
in spite of the plight of
the ringing in his ears
it never fades away

I reckon numbers and lead are arbitrary
to a button man
whose wheels turn circles
mainly in his skull
revolving/rouletting
as infinite go-around

Never mind though, the time must be now
for a show of hands

Motherhood waited in the ship's hold
until the treasure hunt
brought her to this final island
a choice between gold
and the aging ******

The young who suckle at her breast
might one day run mum through
with the sword at Payback
—that unsteady little homestead
where profit and loss
share the same face

Never mind though, the moment must be now
to ring the bell

And raise redemption
like a burning flag of regret
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