The Wind From Nowhere

The wind blows from the east, from lands
beneath a man-made sun.
Jonny flies a kite to amuse
his prison guards, who laugh
as they watch the gaijin boy run
on legs all gristle, grit
and bone. The paper kite tail twists
above him, yellow/red
in tangled tongues of flame. He makes
the sound of fighter planes
and wills his feet to leave the ground.
In games of Hurricanes
and Spitfires, he chases vapour
trails to England: dreams his way home.

The wind blows from the west and Jon
writes tales of astronauts
marooned in orbit. Their capsules
shine like stars and form new
constellations: swiftly changing
zodiacs for an age
of pseudo-science. But the pulps
demand that space heroes
should be as clean cut as cowboys
on wagon trains to Mars,
though white heat of technology
throws its pitiless light
on dark reaches of the psyche,
where aliens are close to home.

The wind blows from nowhere, driving
a sleet of cathode rays
and microwaves: subliminal
drifts of cortical snow,
in which fictional characters
freeze and Kopek himself
assumes the roles of trope and meme
within cryptic landscapes
of his own design. Plane crash blooms
in red and black create
a garden in memoriam
to love that once expressed
itself as mortido: An urge
to turn a graveyard into home.