I look up..into an blackening sky
and imagine a wonder as I fly..
gaze upon Cygnus the swan
and think of X-1 residing inside..

A spinning hole of fourteen solar mass
as black as the devils devious ***
enshrined in belts of orange and red
energy stolen from the star that has bled

Into its fierce companions consuming hole
gnawing on the sun like deaths own toll
blasting out jets like an angels glowing trumpet
swallowing stars like a streetwalker strumpet

Its partner a sapphire star seriously suffering
the loss of mass with no way of buffering
its pull into the black holes continual maul
matter tattered like an old beautiful shawl

six light years away from our Earth
as a massive star its original birth
as a super nova mass playing its role
shrank into a carnivorous black hole

X-1 sprawled as a devouring creation
cruising through the Cygnus constellation
event horizon spinning 800 times a second
even as it grasps and continues to beckon

deadly beauty dancing in an obsidian gown
wearing the stars matter as an elegant crown
energy it has stolen and devoured whole
lost forever to the mouth of a black hole

I am a beautiful song
Humans do not see me
But the stars besiege me
And my vision is for they.

For they see me truly,
In the night sky we play.
The humans beneath are nothing
I forget them now.

(A sign for us alone
We who see beyond
The swans we are are seeping
Into the great pond.

Past the way of milk
We've lost the bounds of silk
Woven for the lost souls
Yoked to sirens' ilk.)

We see.
We sought.
And not for nought.
We sing, we.

You remember that cow they told us about?
The one that jumped over the moon?
Well.
It never came back.
It’s hind legs were so powerful,
it’s hooves so sturdy
that he jumped from here,
on earth,
all the way over the moon.
All the way through the asteroid belt
past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
and even Pluto,
that tiny little sphere of ice
those *** holes at the International Astronomical Union
declassified as a planet in 2006.
The cow died before it got there though.
Maybe because there’s no oxygen in space
though I’ll never be certain.
But his body kept on floating.
Still propelled by the force it left earth with:
a dead black and white cow
sailed out of our solar system
and into the Arm of Orion.
But the light from Rigel and Betelgeuse
chased him away.
Blue-white and red supergiants have that effect on people.
Or cows.
Even dead cows.
And so, our travelling hero, who I’ve now named Frank,
spiralled through 0-gravity
and ended up
on the other side of the Milky Way.
Cygnus. Cygnus’ Arm is what caught him.
Cygnus and Frank became good friends.
Who could imagine!?
A dead cow and swan made of stars!
How preposterous.
But eventually they spread apart
(as all friendships eventually do)
and so Frank was left without a companion
and drifted off through space once more.
And we haven’t heard from him since.