The Blue Angels

Like blue eyes hammered sharp
As daggers, they inscribe
Charcoal numbers on our daylight.
Their night-vision zeroes in
With pitiless precision
To bathe our infants in gasoline
And replace our brains with lithium.
From the eyes of the angels we see
Our tiny hateful bodies,
Pinioned prone as ants,
Clutching the dirt and dragged
Through the black snow of ashes.
From the eyes of the angels we see ourselves
Chained by wires to the clouds
That are not clouds, but massive jellyfish
Altering gravity with their venom.
We are the shadows of beautiful machines
With blonde electric flesh,
And that’s why archangels
Of dazzling sapphire deign to swoop
From galaxies unknown
To amputate our bleeding hearts.
From the eyes of the angels we see
Burnt hair scream in a blank fire;
The clockwork needles of their radar-screens
Reduce embraces to Euclidean bones,
And faces are credit-card-thin between
Their concentric lidless pupils.
Yes, we love the Blue Angels!
Their synchronized rapture mashes us
Into red jelly; they crown the heavens
With pure and childlike shapes
Too symmetrical for sin
And incommensurable with love.
And if we for a second hope
They might crash, and drop to the earth
In Luciferic flames, it is only
So they can scorn us in the end
By never swerving. And if they fell,
We know their fractions, white-hot,
Would slide through our bodies
Effortlessly with keen, fell grace
And grant us vivisection
In the spirals of their shrapnel:
One luminous moment of quivering release.