Little white cosmonaut
Waves from the foreign surface
Alone in a red pool surrounded by sandy hills
The turbulent weather grows still
As the eye of an awe struck storm god
Stares blankly at the hard white calcified object before it
A washing machine turns over furiously in the distance
Jerking hard enough to send cascades of rainfall
That birth shallow pools trapping the dirty twinkle of overhead fluorescent suns
An old man stands transfixed
Water puddling at his shoes and
Lifting tattered laces off porcelain
His gray cloudy beard quivers in confusion, staring at the thing in
his hand
The cosmonaut meets his gaze, implacable
While over the horizon, over the tendrils of weathered rocks
Reminiscent of Arizona, of home, reminiscent of fingers bursting from the earth
An enormous being unblurs into view
Flashing neon daylight becomes eclipsed by the unnaturally simplified geometry of a triangle being pierced by a rainbow
An ominous cat clock briefly falls into orbit
Eyes manically flickering back and forth between the existing scene and its encroaching apocalypse
The chud of the decrepit laundry machine strikes hard, cheap tile
Smacking down, permanently scraping off color, and keeping time with the distant words howling out of the brewing celestial force
Black
and blue
The storm god briefly recognizes that there is something more important on mars than a tooth
Meanwhile the tiny visitor is fearless and unmoved
Utterly apparent
It has always known it was at the whim of greater forces
And now privy to this perfect syzygy
Acting as both the precursor and witness
Notary and citizen
A straight line through space and time ultimately terminating in a collision
It says nothing
The storm god’s gray brow furls
Attention finally diverting from the impressively calm cosmonaut
To the meteoric fist rapidly hurtling towards its everything
All three figures are frozen in a moment
Observer. Receiver. Instigator
A disheveled old man daydreams about the bloody tooth in his hand
The tooth thinks nothing at all
And a different, but equally disheveled man wearing a Pink Floyd shirt aims a second punch at the jerk who stole his laundry
And who knows which is which
And who is who