Call This One Paper Moon

9000 paper balloons were hand stitched by small-handed children at a school taken over by soldiers. 34 sand bags on each balloon, and one bomb—dangling like a shiny pear on a metallic chandelier. Bye Bye: The balloons were jettisoned off a cliff, to 30,000 feet! shoved en mass towards America. Jelly fish floating in a blue sky over the Pacific.

—that was May ?, 1945

at night when the temperature cooled and the balloons sank in the atmosphere, an altimeter triggered a fuse to burn, that’d cause a sand bag to fall—and so the happy jelly fish bomb balloons bounced up and kept floating in the swift jet stream…

and so maybe …

problems are secretly departing

small apocalypses seldom reported

shhhh, don’t tell any one, ever

(text to steward) “Tomorrow I won’t be at work. There’s a banana at the desk where I sit and I might have left out rainbow trout sushi and seaweed salad—none of us are infallible. My boots are under my desk, soaked in diesel fuel. My father’s father helped lob the nuclear bomb. I’m reading a paperback book, it’s lying face down, page 58-59, spine cracked, on my desk … could use your help, think I left my paycheck underneath the book. Missed nine days last week, but still could use the cash, text me if you are going in. You could grab it. You could be a pal. Throw the seaweed salad out.”

(Response) “K….get btr”

Tomorrow I’m off/I’ll be at:

a) the movies, something scary enough to be  an A+ distraction

b) visiting two doctors. one will tell me I have brain cancer, the other will say I’m fine. They are Ying and Yang motherfuckers, these universal doctors

c) a haircut: shave half my head, make me half beautiful and half fucked up. Half offense, half revenge. Half sick, half thriving. Half old war, half new calm ignorant apple pie. All American.

The water tower behind our high school was a metal jelly fish with a setting sun and a bonsai tree air brushed on it. The real sun was gone. I was on Kura, pressing down in her back seat and she said, “You can cum in me, I can’t get pregnant.”

But I didn’t do that. I pulled out and got some on the seat. Later, we looked out at the sky and she said, “I saw a UFO last week.”

“Where?”

“Floating over those trees.” She pointed over the water tower.

“What’d it look like?”

“Big. A lost moon, maybe, not like this one, not a pussy little crescent. This one was tough, fat—round, shaky. Not the moon though. Or the moon if it was parachuting. Then I saw a flash. Danny’s car shook. We put the peddle down.”

“Why can’t you get pregnant?”

“Because I already am,” Kura said.

A boyfriend from another school, who I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. A foreign enemy. Looked different. Ate different. Different god. Different  school mascot.

—That was May ?, 1999

I heard their kid was born without any hands, but gets along fine.

(text to steward) “Tomorrow I’m off. Remind the boss. Eat my banana if you want; piss in my boots, hahaha.”

(response to text) no response

here’s a list of maybe’s 
 —maybe come back
 —maybe never coming back

—maybe too many sand bags
 —maybe not enough sand bags
 —maybe shouldn’t have started some shit

—maybe float across dark ocean, altimeter dropping sand bags on old life/strange ocean, sharks getting slapped in the head; each night all my helium cooled, but calculations keeping me going towards Oregon! and California! and Revenge!

therapy is probably self-terrorism

you were funny till you got numb, dummy

even grandma helped the war cause

I won’t be at work tomorrow

If all goes well, I will land in a grassy field and not detonate. And I will lay there and I will wait. And nothing will happen. And no children will come running, laughing, singing the songs that bring the sun up and set the moon to sleep. There will be no explosion.

9000 ballons were pushed off the cliff

It’s estimated that 400 survived their trip.

A trip/a normal, quiet, calculated life

a life of floating

a drifting confidence

in another life I want to be a non-electric jellyfish. I don’t want to hurt anything. I want to bob beneath silent moonlight, absolutely no honor, absolutely no pride. no students. no soldiers, or scientists–all chance. just sit here for-fucking-ever, ma.