progress report

the astronauts never returned and neither did the news
in my hands i fold a megalithic pigeon
the take-home message is: the cosmos is a cold dead bitch
as you sleep under magazines, waiting for nothing.

in the shackles of a sterilized den, there's an actual
mastodon heart, pale and glassy pink, icy film
tightened like a fist;  - and the scientists despair:
   it's the morning of the opening,
then the few slashes of paralyzing waves.

like a sign we'd make when we were younger, a way to disarm
a bandit, or a preacher
                or the oncoming horde of space invaders.
but the drawings you sent to venus never returned,
 and now the crack,
          and the scientists at a loss before the angered public.

they release a report that states that the floodgates opened
        by themselves, that the valves erode
like the chalky sand that will swirl and hiss
           in the crater where once hid the laboratory,

that we're watching the tender stalks nipped
                     in a glass cage of language.
and no greenhouse can account for the atrocity we receive.

i infer that the answer to what's that noise is always silence,
you will recognize it in the fire alarm that wakes you up.
there is no text on the mess of paper that falls
from my hands into the orbit; but you wait for it,
                                    wait.