Flying Deeper into the Century

Flying deeper into the centuryis exhilarating, the faces of loved ones eaten outslowly, the panhandles of flesh warding offthe air, the smiling plots. We are lucky to be mature,in our prime, seeing more treaties, watchingTV get computerized. Death has no dominion.It lives off the land. The glow over the hill, fromthe test sites, at night, the whole block of neighboursdying of cancer over the next thirty years. We aresuing the government for a drop of blood; flying deeperinto the century, love,the lies are old lies with more imagination;the future is a canoe. The three bears are ravenous, not contentwith porridge. Flying deeper into the century,my hands are prayers, hooks, streamers.I cannot love grass, cameos or lungs.The end of the century is a bedspread up to the eyes.I want to be there, making ends meet.I will not love you, with such malice at large.Flying deeper into the century is beautiful, likecoming up for the third time, life flashing before us.The major publishing event is the last poem ofall time. I am a lonely bastard. My brothers and sisters havehad sexual relations, and I am left with their mongrel sonswriting memoirs about the dead in Cambodia.Flying deeper, I do not remember what I cared for, outof respect. Oh Time, oh Newsweek, oh Ladies' Home Journal,oh the last frontier, I am deeply touched.The sun, an ignoramus, comes up.I have this conversation with it. Glumly, glumly, deeperI fly into the century, every feather of each wingabsolution, if only I were less than human, not angrylike a beaten thing.