Fingers tip-tapping on keyboards
dance the dance
of dead poets before them.

Artificial, yet an artisan,
Pontifically partisan,
She raised her eyes to heaven high
And chiseled my heart with steady hands

She carved her own intricate façade,
And painted her mask to earn applaud,
Beneath her father’s right-wing feathers
Brought up to pray to his decreed god

He crowned her with his finest gems
To show her off to all his friends;
Helped her gild herself with gold
An aristocratic wright in the truest sense

“But I specialize in counterfeit,”
She said, as I saw under the definite
And skillful strokes, the expert notches,
A messy sketch yearning to freely acquit

“Then be free,” I said, as she let me in
Her atelier. So I scraped from her skin
The china-doll gloss and regal glitter,
And drained her blue blood of cyan tint

She smiled—the laughter lines made cracks
Through lips of plaster and cheeks of wax
I took the gleaming jewels from her eyes,
And saw new life glimmer in rolling tear tracks

She was a tempest of color, splattered and spilled
A muse incarnate that could not be stilled,
Chaos unveiled, but beautifully alive
With soul redeemed and freedom fulfilled

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

I used to be afraid of the dark,
but then I discovered the light of the stars.

The astronaut’s behind the wheel of ’91 Saturn
(Aristotelian, a machine of all the elements:
silver paint like water, the lingering smell of earth,
a driver of air, an engine of fire),
with quintessence, the road.

I forget which came first: gravel or stardust;
we’re trying to get lost but can’t seem to shake the Big Dipper.
I’ve one hand on the leather and the other on your face;
we’ve parked somewhere by Neptune, cold and blue, always morning.

We should pretend to be real people for a while, waste some precious oxygen;
stop trying to remember we’ve been here before.
Remember that uncharted was the point.

The New Mexico sky is alive,
redder than a child’s wagon on a dusty front lawn
and the stars blink like forgotten Christmas lightswhile constellations shift, dissatisfied with their placements, sending ripples through mythology with every new shape they make.

We have blankets and enough hope among us
to keep the morning star burning above the far hills—
I am flanked by mountainous profiles;
the crag of a nose, the devastating valley of a lip.

We are wondering if someone out there could read our thoughts
if someone would take an interest in what puts our bodies together.
Misguided, we gaze upward.

It’s crazy to believe we’re alone in the universe, someone says,
and I smile into my shoulder, considering,
of all things,
space:

the starry unknown
between fingers and words.

Going nowhere?
Wrong.
The earth is spinning at 1038 miles per hour,
whipping ‘round the Sun at 18 miles per second.
Our solar system is travelling the galaxy
at 155 miles per second,
and our galaxy is sprinting through space at 185 miles per second.
You’re sitting on your bed and you’re travelling the universe
faster than you can ever imagine.
Every millisecond of your life
you’re somewhere new—
so take a deep breath.
You’re going everywhere.