Parallel Universes

I miss my home planet sometimes, and hate myself for

walking around on my hind legs just to avoid being

ostracized, burying a third of my eyes and having

conversations just to pretend I can't read people's

minds. Your sun is so far away and the nitrogen wears

on my lungs, and the carbon clutches at my heart.

Sometimes at night I look out at the stars and it seems

that the universe isn't much larger than the vacuum

between flexion and trigger, and I can't deny I

sometimes get a glowing trigger finger, and I can't

deny I've rehearsed in my mind the existential rush

of beaming me up and it out to everyone I completed

my study of earth the moment it was dead and done.

Just to fuck with ground control I once pretended to

snore during countdown to launch, and once chilling

on the dark side of the moon I started radioing home

alien grunts, and said I didn't know where it was

coming from. I got sick of astronaut food and mixed

in with the soil samples some bits of my dehydrated

food stick, to prove extraterrestrial life exists, and

because as I've always said a laugh a day keeps the

abyss from closing in. The slog of science is never

finished, and I pity the plodders locked in with it.

Why did our biosphere give us life, if not so we

could fuck with it? What in the end but his primitive

tricks separates man from the unmanned spaceship?

Such at least were the probing thoughts in orbit of my

domèd head as I bounded from the depth of a crater to

a high uncharted ledge, and beneath the blue Martian

sunset saw something prowl the dusty red steppe.