My roommate and I
were talking about
The Barrel Roll the other day.  

Now, the Barrel Roll sounds incredibly difficult,
rolling around the outside
of a giant imaginary barrel,
but you can do it.
Apparently.
In one of those rickety World War Two fighter planes.

The Aileron Roll sounds even more difficult.
You roll around an imaginary needle…
of infinite length.
To avoid the Germans or Chinese or whatever.

Even more difficult than those, of course,
is the “****-Off Roll”
wherein you stop the fighter plane
in midair
like a hummingbird.
Then, turning sharply,
you spell out the words “**** all of you”
in luminous green smoke
and then you explode
into a million purple cubes that then fall to the earth
and bury themselves upon impact.

Then, with rain and sunlight and so on,
up grow an assortment of tall, unlikable trees
that bear unpleasant fruits that fall to the earth
and decompose until the seeds plant themselves.
From these, more trees grow,
hundreds of them,
thousands.
All growing inward and converging on one point
over the course of many years.
The dew of twenty summers winking
and sparkling on this forest of wonder.

Until one tree grows
in the absolute center of the others
and it has this huge fighter plane dangling on a little stem.
The plane breaks off
and flies up into the sky
and the pilot alternates between shouting “*******!” at the Germans
and raining stagnated walrus carcasses down on the Chinese
who have forgotten all about the second World War
and the fact that it was actually the Japanese who were involved.