Dishpan stars

Don't leave me, I think, or possibly
don't let me go. But in truth we do
because leaving is something that happens.

We are travelers.
We carry our belongings on our person
in the out-about wonder of an airport
people smile and carry arms
whom?
where's?

mom and dad are forgotten, but not forgotten,
these are new people here, blue and ready.

soldiers stink/slink between cities,
going home, chasing adventure, bold-
ness, as it arrives, shivers

like sharing snow-globes with each other
peppers or a bit of remorse or tears
i'm really crying here, she said,
i have remorse.

but the pills don't blow us up
and the sex didn't kill us so homebody
somebody take me or leave me. Leave me.

Post-robotic revolution.
Cyborgs on drugs. The acid people
skate on monkey-leaves and throngs of food
surround us when we want. We gather
together here, like this.

I made you something, I said,
trying to hand it to you. But it's a complicated
thing. A sail unfurling itself. Maybe it's
not even a sail. Maybe it's a setting
or a Kanamycin parade. Maybe somewhere
somebody is hurting, please.
So do not play with my camera, boy,
or look here when I'm talking to you,

i've just been to Jupiter and I must talk about
the moon, it's alleys, how the dust spoils
the (just-now) atmosphere already,
we are travelers.

I always wanted to be glad to have you,
which was true. And I was:
glad, at least, happy to have done that
which I am least able to imagine living without:
human touch, the myth of fingerprints,
love shared or love sold or love for sale.
Sharing without humbling ourselves. Lovers
are the eaves of tents,
milking it for all it's worth,
hiding in the dispatcher's booth
in a rainstorm; the morning's kettle;
the dishpan in the rain.