We found a new world,
                          yesterday.

Ordained with holy numbers
and d-a-s-h-e-s-
by modern priests in

blanket
white
cloth.

Pious, singularly
unromantic men.

Reaching for this sphere
it is into an unnamed sea
amid unmounted peaks
                            I shall fall,

a willfully disobedient
boy who drowned
with a hunger
that surpassed
                all worldly sustenance.

Though perhaps it’s for the best
I’ll never walk its corrugated

G a s e o u s
                surface,
for an epoch of chastity
would be corrupt
by my abrasive soles, my cutting
words, my fallible conscience
and mortal skin.


600 light-years?
I’ll save us both the effort.





©*Thomas Gabriel