From Gray Morning to Grayer Afternoon

From Gray Morning to Grayer Afternoon
by Dan Raphael

Like a sunset reversed 180, sun going the wrong way on its one way boulevard—
you gonna give it a ticket, ask it to pull over and show ID—sun gives its sly smile
you’re just a crispy cinder, like ash on the end of a cigarette but the sun’s too hot to smoke
how would you like to never be able to shine your fullest, keep your volume at 2
coz just a second near your potential could clear this dance floor of dancers, music and floor.
sun stays small so its not alone, not needing to call distant constellations to come over,
lay out a nice table of asteroid chips, comet dip and milky way frappe’.

who does vacuum the vacuum of space, who keeps the comets on schedule,
when mercury goes retrograde who brings it back, when a wet green planet
turns brown and dry who notices—at least they’ve stopped sending out those pesky satellites,
no one wanted to visit there cause you had to wade through all that trash in orbit,
get even close your screens are jammed with their left over visions, speakers abuzz
with orchestral clutter: you don’t know bass til you’ve had a pulsar in each ear,
not really seeing til your eyes can go to downtown sun—like new york,
tokyo, berlin & rio combined—its blazing galleries of constant transformation,
tenured geniuses raging about what they’d have done with the big bang,

planning for the next time time and gravity come in for a tune up,
some after market physics to make this a universe nothing can out race
or out sparkle, time warp express lanes so other stars can shop, party,
and get back down the spiral arm before their galaxy gets the bill,
realigning spectra & constellations, upping the elemental ante,
the biological soup ignored on the back burner escaping with plans of our own,
pockets full of what they told us not to touch