Last Known Location of Snr Wil Flowers, Director of Intelligence, NWF

You always want it to make sense, 
Like knucklebones, like how swallowing works. 
Simple eye of mechanics developed 
Over millions of years of failure. Humans
Are the success of their failure time and time again. 
That’s what’s truly alien. Truly unnatural
As the sky opens up, the black roll of stars, planets –
Some like necks on the gallows, some like an arena stage. 
The maw is the medicine with death as a common side effect. 

Then, nothing makes sense. Its a fugue state, lips dripping 
Words over delayed relays. Mission specialists
Still sitting in Ohio struck mud like American-made pigs, 
while you snort down wildlife powder and hope the TOG adaptions 
They gave you don’t go liquid in your stomach. Survival 
Rates of surgery in orbit aren’t what they used to be. 
You, your own scalpel and organ donor, doctor, and lawyer. 
But, the flurry of debris and matter that circles the craft, 
Can only be described as divine or a wish gone wrong. 
The code says Note3 – Contact with verbal communication. 
What you hear is screaming notes, hissed words – Mychelle, 
Mardat – nothing ever had names that clear, that middle coast common. 

Heaven was already disproved. That flashing, that train 
Slamming pull of details before the plip, not. Offloading was the new 
Name, a powerless second where every point of data 
In the brain becomes available: Nina and her hours 
Of drawing the last sequoia, your brother Seattle 
Beckoning you to put your whole head in its mouth, the agony 
That followed for days, moments in the 0th Department, 
What Nozka knows, his skin like dancing unburning flame, 
The promises of stars and profit, and safe children
On streets, and then loneliness, decades of fake 
Images across the reality of open range that never ends, 
Never wanted you, and keeps finding ways to stop. It never stops. 

But, now your nose is bleeding, penny lipstick, bubbles float 
Towards the cargo bay, towards the plastic walls, maybe 
You pop them, maybe outside begins to make sense, 
An hour begins to feel like claw marks, you sweat, 
The lining absorbs it, but it keeps coming and you get cold, 
Your breath shows where it shouldn’t and now everything 
Is coming out of everything. Nose and pores, and eggs, 
And red powder, and the inside is a blender. The outside
Is now the inside, as the debris and matter pull 
Everything into a blue state. And you are empty, not dead, 
You can still see your life monitor. The motion of your 
Heart lifted by the empowerments. Lifted as you are. 
Lifted and dissolved. Not dissolved. Separated. No retired.  

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C.L. Liedekev is a writer/propagandist who lives in Conshohocken, PA with his real name, wife, and children. He attended most of his life in the Southern part of New Jersey. His work has been published in such places as Humana Obscura, Red Fez, Open Skies Quarterly, River Heron Review, and Vita Brevis. His real goal is to make the great Hoboken poet/exterminator Jack Wiler proud. So far, so good.