Peeling fingers can mean nothing but shingles,
and human-sized amoebas lurk in every tunnel,
like the time a bear of a man emerged
in the dusk to ask for directions, then change,
then what to do when galaxies collide
and we rip from the pressure, crotch to throat.
Are we a new species then? Or are we gone
the way of ancestral mammoths, those giants.
Quirks of survival leave us roaches
but not pterodactyls. So much for majesty.
So much for writing a letter to your best lover
and explaining his pulse on your back makes up
for rising in the dark, suiting up to step out
into Milky Ways, yes, but also into nothing that you can touch.
Slick with cayenne and stardust, let’s make an advertisement
for despair:
Welcome to planetary warfare!
Do you know much about lasers?
Where do you see yourself in five hundred years?
I see myself in a spacesuit riding a mammoth,
trying to diagnose myself from fever and scabs,
and according to the internet reports,
I may not even be human. It’s that bad.
