SOMEWHERE LIKE THE MOON

i.m. Neil Armstrong

A palmful of moon-dust and rock opened my head

like a visor. My space-helmeted face exposed

to the vacuum; breath floating out my mouth in green

strata, drifting Northern lights to Saturn. I was puffs

of glittering powder scuffed from boot-steps and marine

in my leaps from one toe to the next, swimming through grease.

Who could have caught me? A helium swelled suit, a piece

of satellite junk bearing the hammer and sickle.

There is nothing out here in the desert. F-16's

gone to rust. The nose-cone of a boeing, crashed

on reconnaissance. The inferno gone out, ash

stains the sand with fuselage ghosts. Solar blown, 

I am somewhere like the moon, taking off my jeans

and shirt to shiver and yell, let the air prickle

my elbows and spine. I harden to graphite in ice drifts

that polish me. Diamond. An asteroid belt. Touchdown.

ON POPPERS

Inhaling molecules of ecstacising death

begins the necrotization of the flesh.

An oxygen thief that paints tell tale signs;

the lips thinned to two navy blue lines,

and the crescents of ash at the base of each nail

where once was white and healthy. All

for a rush of blood from the heart to the head,

thumping in the neck. A cock, soft, lolled

and bouncing in time to each thrust. An arse

that opened easy as a tub of meat paste.

Orgasms that bump up against one another

like fantasies mixing with acts in the ether

of dreams that smoke from these brown bottles.

The final tautening muscle. The screams. The wobbles

that tumble us from sheets onto floors

where we gaze into a gasping air pierced with stars.