High
Altitude Bomber
He was on
a flightless
strafing
run from Planet
Weird,
his tie‑dyed
Hard Rock
Uranus t-shirt
torn,
grass and mud stained
blunting
the wild, bright
colors as
if he'd spent
last
night being dragged
behind a
tractor in a
cornfield
way past
East of
Eden.
"Say,
partner, mix me up
one of
your best High Altitude
Bombers. I'm
going to need
lots of
rocket fuel for a
long
midnight run."
I didn't
need to ask what
occupied
country that flight
might
take. His
cruising
altitude
was in a stratospheric
ozone
layer beyond search
lights,
no topo maps needed
for
targets, everything was a
primary
objective in this
comprehensive search and destroy
mission
of his life.
The
Afterburner
His interplanetary space
exploration
party was on the last legs of
a
journey in the dark, badly in
need
of fresh supplies, pure
oxygen, rocket
fuel that might propel them
beyond
the severe gravitational pull
of heavenly
bodies doped into a fourth
dimension
beyond star charts, maps of
the known
world and what lies on the
other side,
running on the last alcohol
fumes at
the bottom of the tank, the
captain striking
matches in the poorly lighted
bar, trying to
check the levels of
intoxicating fluids,
bank notes necessary for a
fresh supply
of whatever might keep them
going,
afraid of a crash landing for
everyone
aboard, a desert planet,
flash points
of their collective ozone
layers
flaring briefly before going
out for good.
Hell Cat
After dark she
comes
alive, emerging
from
shadow worlds so
Un-
earthly, so unreal
her
skin is almost
trans-
parent, defined
by
garments that seem
to
have no weight,
no
substance, no
existence
of their own, so
that
when she leans
forward
over the bar to
accept
a light, she never
seems
to have been
anywhere
else, not exactly
having
arrived so much
as
simply existing
wherever
she needed to be, her
voice
an intaken breath
held,
unspoken thoughts
co-
mingling with yours, a
heartbeat away
from
suggesting trading
your
soul for a week of
endless
nights on the town,
never
glimpsing the light
until
debts accrued were to be
paid.
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