![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Metal_House_Tin_Wind_Up_Astronaut_Box_Art-225x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It’s a day that smells of sulfur,
\nsemi-cooled lava and odd vegetation
\nthat will grow just about anywhere.
\nIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a chiseling-rock day.
\nA collecting-samples day.
\nA day of wandering through
\nmetals cast off by the deep interior.
\nI start it with a yawn,
\na stumble across the bedroom floor.
\nI can hear my co-workers, already up.
\nfilling the corridors with coughing and complaining.
\nIt isn’t what I signed up for
\nbut I own my situation just like I do my chin bristle.
\nOnly the job doesn’t come clean
\nat the edge of a razor.<\/p>\n
Wedge a fist open, find a coffee cup
\nstained the color of a molting rat,
\npoke gook out from under eyelids,
\nthen slump in chair, suck caffeine into
\nevery vein in my body
\nto waken all that blood sludge –
\nthose are my body’s orders.
\nAnd reach for a cigarette of course –
\nlike a mime because there are no cigarettes
\nbetween here and Epimetheus.
\nNASA don’t want me breathing in nicotine.
\nBut they have no problem
\nwith the fumes of Mount Copernicus.<\/p>\n
The guy in the room next door flushes a toilet.
\nThe woman on the other side
\nhas brought her family along for the duration.
\nThey argue like scientists with contradictory theories.
\nOver nothing really. It’s just how they are –
\ndoomed to bring the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcf\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 word
\nto the far reaches of the galaxy.
\nA snarled “Don’t you talk that way to me”
\nis like an alarm clock around here.<\/p>\n
Must be time for my second coffee.
\nOr my second phony cigarette.
\nThe day’s instructions spill out of my bedside
\nmulti-function unit.
\nThe agenda is the same as yesterday and the day before.
\nAnd always, in bold lettering.
\na brusque, “Don’t forget to turn in your reports
\nby the end of the day.”<\/p>\n
So here I am.
\nMore light years from home
\nthen there is light.
\nI was out of university
\nand Big Space was hiring.
\nThey stuck a helmet on my head,
\nequipped me with the latest in rock hammers,
\nand let me loose in the universe.
\nI’ve been sealing and labeling pebbles ever since.<\/p>\n
I could have been a doctor like my old man.
\nOr even a musician like my grandfather.
\nThey’ve never been beyond the stratosphere
\nand their imaginations haven’t complained.
\nBy the time I see Earth again, I’ll be middle aged
\nAnd half the people I know will be dead.
\nYes, with all that back pay, I’ll be Croesus rich.
\nBut there’ll be no one for me to spend it on,
\nleast of all myself.<\/p>\n
The team meet in the mess hall for breakfast.
\nThe conversation is muted and without eye contact.
\nThen it’s suit up, wave goodbye to oxygen,
\nand do your best to ape
\nexactly what you did yesterday.
\nYes, I’ve witnessed much that others haven’t.
\nSo wake me up when it’s time for me to testify.<\/p>\n