EVERY STAR IS A KILL ZONE

I keep thinking many
times won't I be destroyed
and another day I think
please. I have this recurring
dream where I can breathe
fire and I use this power
to express myself. I want
to go to a restaurant, maybe
a secret restaurant. I want to go
someplace where people make
your decisions for you. I am trying
my hardest but the constellations
are an alien language. If everything
on the planet cried out at once,
even the moon couldn't hear.

__

ORACLE

You satisfy your needs one
by one, and mine cannot
be satisfied. I am not interested
in feelings. I want red mountains
and strange fogs, inhospitable
atmospheres that scar my face
or make me more handsome.
Don't describe anything to me
or else. Or else I could become
helplessly, uncontrollably more
complex. A full body skin transplant.
Neither of us is going to space
but this means more to me.
Everything I see is earthly—I will
never taste the fire of a foreign
star. It means nothing that I know
what you're doing. It is meaningless
that I see the new ribbon you bought
for your hair.

__

A lot of the ideas in these poems really started to click for me after I read Bill Johnston's translation of Stanislaw Lem's Solaris.