Jet Fuel

This is how it is -

twenty five planes spread across

the tarmac, waiting.

A dry cabin cell

removed from the boundless hills

and trenches outside.

Here where echoes die,

crinkling wrappers in my ear

like lovers' whispers.

Reorganizing

scuffed picture window postcards

and tiny taupe shutters.

Thumbs on plastic squares,

eyes face forward on faces

gray, worn and tired.

Twenty four have flown

and the last remain, removed

from earth, sick and sad.

This is how it was -

An arrow sailed over wall

flattening my breast.

I held the last pure

thoughts to the very last clean breath,

til I slunk under.

From whirley alley

To yellow light and slack tubes

and urine and shit.

They said it was rot.

Sterility made me sick.

Now the plane has me.

They're all here now and

waiting like me, vacant eyes

shuttered from the cold

Passengers' lost eyes

work past industrial glass

to lakes of pooled ash.

And how it will be -

Green pastures and forests far,

far below our feet

A two seat biplane,

tubes framing the wings and a

sky boundless as death.

Find a path through it,

curling round the maze of fire

swooping under guns,

knives, daylight and you.

High stone and violence, squalor

madness, life and you.

In the sky where souls

sick and drawn find respite from

wan, deadened hallways -

we will dream of it

while jet fuel fills our noses

staving the bitter cold.