AN ODE ON MY 41ST BRIRTHDAY



          Earth is beautiful
when it’s not trying to kill you.
Infinite Earths interacting weakly
          defy seeking
     one in which we can
prove our worth, our own skin.

         I liked being young.
Not having plans or random pain.
I still like it; still looking out from
          the proscenium
     of eye socket, nothing
has changed except for everything.

          Murmurs at night
become recognisable in retrospect.
Memories of mouths like the “o”
          in “gold” not “old,”
     oculogyric in the moment,
fighting for breaths as if drowning.

          Orbit of the eye,
forty-first orbit of our small primary
wheeling through, displaced,
          the random universe,
     arbitrary, finding in its arc
a purpose between dark and dark.

          Orbit of the I
blessed with blissful anonymity.
Wisdom born over overseeing
          PR and marketing
     crush the fine wine of hurt
talent from many an introvert.

          Entropy increases
despite biology’s digressions.
A bolthole on failed Mars
         no confidence inspires.
     Life died there. Three billion years
later we evolved here to care.

          Here now tumbling
from the cradle, endlessly orbiting
our unexceptional sun
          until cremated once
     and with Nova Sol, twice,
if there is a Big Bang, which is nice.

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