God you look beautiful from here.

I see you peeking out, your blues and greens winking at me beneath the white-gray blankets.  A hint of India, a twist of Tunisia, Italy's boot piercing the cloud-curtain like a strippers', taunting, taunting . . .

I see the moon and the moon sees me . . .

You see me as well, don't you, behind your telescopes—at least you see my domain, a shiny pimple rising from an acne-cratered face, ready to burst, ready to dissolve, ready to die.  No, not ready to die, never ready.  Just resigned.

One small step for Man, one giant leap . . .

They lied to us, they lied to us, liar liar pants on fire, those dirty bastard soothsayers with their quicksilver tongues, their lightning-struck eyes, their shaggy grey heads nodding away like ancient lions.

June, spoon, honeymoon . . .

And here I sit in a bubble of foul air among the flagrant ghosts of the dead, watching my home spin by over my head and under my feet and everywhere I can't won't be, everywhere I once was, everywhere my memories are free to tramp over soil and street and sweet cement.

Moonstruck . . .

You'll be a hero they said you'll be a pioneer and they calculated time and space and matter with the tools of scientists and alchemists, strings of mathematical magic spells conjuring greenspace and airproduction and necessitiesoflife, calling up the djinns borne from Mother Biosphere and Father Dyson to create a perfect facsimile of life in a lifeless place.  They just needed a facsimile of a lifelike man to complete the spell of illusion.

They say it's only a paper moon . . . .

Call me Caretaker.  Call me Ishmael, I don't care, just call me.  What's going on down there, why do I see sparks and sparks and sparks, why are fireflies dancing across the shrouded face of Home, why do they fly so fast?  My memories spark and die, burn up in the atmosphere as they try to make their way back to you.  My own little fireflies, impotent, wingless, shot down, forgotten.

Once in a blue moon . . .

The trees are dying.  The dome is still sealed, no miniscule holes from passing meteoritites, no sir, this is good old American know-how with some Japanese hanky-panky thrown in.  But the green is not greener on the other side, friends and neighbors, it's pretty damned yellow and brown if you ask me.  Maybe this rocky dusty orb is sucking at their tender tendrils, rutting with their roots, birthing cold gray children under a blanket of cosmic dust, who knows, who knows?  White-maned bastards need not answer.

There's something wrong with the air, not enough oxygen, not enough life for this lifeless thing I am.

There's a moon out tonight . . .

Oh my oh my oh my I see a girl outside the dome white as moonbeams and black as the darkside deep as the craters tall as the mountains of the moon la luna a la lune and she beckons to me come down come down below the surface below the poison air I will show you a world beneath the crust, beneath the grinning green-cheese face you squat on, there's a whole world underneath and I cry and find a diamond-tipped pick left behind by one of the dead two dead three dead four, we were seven right I thought we were seven but it's only me I could be wrong so I hit the dome one-three-seven times and she laughs and beckons and her face is the face I left the face of my love love love and I cry and howl and beg her for forgiveness because I should be down there with her not up here with her I'm so confused so sick so sorry and the fireflies are everywhere . . .

I see the Earth and the Earth sees . . .

Wrong wrong wrong nothing is wrong everything's wrong the ground has opened up before me the moon-men are coming we missed them somehow with our pit stops our scans our science and now this beetle digs its way up and opens its wings to fly fly where? nowhere to go bug! and from beneath its carapace something wriggles out god I need air she's back darling loved one and she kisses me with her lips and then a mask and I breathe the flavor of her breath and ignore the canned taste of compressed oxygen, because I was wrong, so very very wrong . . .

Shoot the moon . . .

. . . because the fireflies are here, and they shine shine shine for me . . .