Flight

My world is gone white.
I am in the belly of a bug-eyed angel -
I know because I see its metal wing
cut jagged, slicing through meringue.

This is the attic of the earth
where whipped clouds lie like mattresses
of downy dust, but whiter, yeasty wool.
You'd slip through that floor if you dared
to step on air, through pulpy fibreglass
to sea below, a green sheen of linoleum
that hides a million squelchy, slippy lives.

I had nothing to declare. Swallowed,
I sit with my womb on my back,
fallopian straps, unwritten words inside.
I see a man with his heart in his hand
and a girl with her head in the clouds.
All the veins in here could circumnavigate
the world; a red score far below
like at the bottom of a swimming pool.
The angel dives and leans in turbulent sky
while we read, slurp, munch and cradle
wonder like placentas in our hands.

The seraph speaks - a voice we understand.
'I'm sailing out to space because the
weather's dire down there.' The boy with
eyes melting down his face Dal?-style,
he smiles. We're not going to land,
we're out of that beautiful, terrible place.

I wake with a jolt, with that feeling
of weightlessness; seatbelt-locked helium-
head. I am just a moth on a passenger
trail, looking for light and led by this
kite, this great metal albatross. My world
is gone black as, bowing, the Boeing
spits us into hellish-hot air and tar.

We gather our organs and limbs, stretch,
start walking; so fragile and small
to the towers, the miniscule people,
the ant-cars, the pencil-line roads
that mean nothing at all when compared
to the untended palace above - the sky
with it's cottony clouds and occasional
Argus-eyed angels. How we'd all love
to live up there like thunderstruck, wonder-struck
babies - free to look up at the stars
or down at the land and the sea.
It's all ours, it's all us, it's all me.