The Thing

Is there other life?
       I stare out my shower’s window, through Orion’s 
       polygonal window       into deeper void.
And do they have something like ass hair
that they hate on themselves       and scrape away?
       My milky way of blood and cream 
       swirls down the drain.       I lie down
human and smooth       for just myself 
and this psychedelic gummy cube
       and the vibrator’s futuristic curve:       rocket
       me away. Think—      they might not feel pleasure 
or the chemical mirage that pleasure is,
or shame       or thirst. But is that conscious life?      Self-
       conscious life?       I need to know
       I’m not alone       in needing to know I’m not alone. 
The Hubble Deep Field’s      bacterial swarm of galaxies 
promises that life repeats a billionfold
       at every scale.       And isn’t it cruel not to feel 
       for their betrayals and firework histories
and arsenic-based emotions       just because 
they’re far away and might not exist?
       When I get high like this       I have so much empathy 
       it stretches hot toward eternity       and runs out
of things to enter. Is there       other life?
Only in this state can I 100 percent       believe there is.
       There’s the thing       from The Thing, hopping star to star, 
       no form of its own, only what it borrows,
sneaking into evolutions       to wear their jewels:
skin and wing and shell       and breath.       Then moving on.
       Ultimate space queer, all costume, 
       stripping off everything	    but knowledge.
Some humans, I think, could humble themselves 
to that invader.	    To kneel,	     be absorbed.
       To try on another body as it tries
       on yours.	I’ve seen the need in people’s eyes, 
that tiny wet gloss in the dark.	 I’ve shown
that need. It never quite	     comes real.	  We come 
       apart, still whole. The oily membrane around the self 
       heals shut.	  Once someone gripped a tangle
of my chest hair, said       I could get lost in this
and I was distracted from trying to get lost in the shape 
       of him,	    compact,	     requiring less
       from this melting world.	     Pressing him to me, 
I felt I was small, smaller	       than anything,
and also       I was huge,	    huger than him, as huge 
       as a world.	  Trying to escape the planet
       of myself,	I invaded a lot of different people 
for a time,	  and part of them
didn’t survive it.	      Their hearts burst out 
       and scuttled away from me on crabs’ legs.
       Their skulls opened      into fleshy flowers 
and tried to swallow my face      in vengeance 
and part of me didn’t       survive it.
       Some substance twirls around some star
       that is not flesh       or nerve       or brain       or throat 
but is what it is       and lives to live
and I am on the verge       of the verge
       of crumbling       into understanding it. 
       Tonight, how I adore all my former lovers.
I want to kiss       their foreheads while they sleep 
and pull their blankets up	a little bit
       as if it is my place to do that.
       My grand tour of affection before . . . 
before	   what? Before I go	    hazy and bright 
and float into the sky to become a constellation
       and sometimes	   at just the right slant of October 
       I am visible above the tree-ragged horizon
and they look out from their porches
and think,	   “We all loved him,	     didn’t we?” 
       Tonight, I am any	body and no       body at all.
       My pelvis is exploding into an infinity 
of crab nebulas	    that scuttle
into every nook	     of every heaven 
       we might never reach.

Read more from Issue 20.1.