danced on the moon and they say someday we’ll all be up there but in the meantime they snap up the projection screen and waste time filing us out into the halls on tornado drills.)
Feathers are shed, no longer enough; this body is now an airplane now a rocket ship soaring faster farther than light toward the sun the invisible sun behind that big bright moon blinking between the clouds. We are going there now—who’s afraid? Away, away.... Toward stars (we are starlings in space) planets comets constellations galaxies other universes lastly to heaven where we’ll sing and dance forever to wild guitar music, radio music. Escaped from the world I will try not to love anymore but to forget. A place where we’ll never ever die and be buried on earth in earth a trillion billion light-years—because we’ve flown past death singing Have you seen the ghost of.... So hahaha and tralala and goodbye all you below goodbye blackbirds and horses goodbye church and school goodbye brothers and sisters goodbye Mom and Dad goodbye goodbye goodbye forevermore. Olly olly oxen free....
Behind the screen door under the yellow porch light Mom calls Supper! Supper! Tommy hurry up soup’s getting cold! But no no no I won’t. Let the rest. They can’t won’t fly like me. Let them run to your table. Not me. Mom don’t you call me don’t you stand there yelling for me your cigarette pinpointing you in the dark when I am up here too far away to see or hear you. Tag and you’re it but not me. Your flashlights can’t reach me up here. One two three who’s afraid not me. Not me. (Think no don’t think.) Away away across the wide universe.... From up here it’s all just diamonds and marbles careening dizzy through space. Don’t call me standing now under the yellow porch light a ladle in your hand because I am really trying not to be afraid up here so high flying toward the sun toward that wild music into heaven into God over the wall and beyond. (Don’t say I’m that boy who never combs his hair, who rolls in the straw and dirt and leaves, not that small boy on a farm in the center of the world who will die someday too, die to become a man, but let me be ageless unborn unremembered.) So Mom go back to the table and all your children, don’t call Supper’s ready come home! across these darkening fields. I am flying so high high high high high high high above you no one will ever see me. And I am never never coming home again.
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