What Can We Do With A Captured Asteroid?

Help it escape. Wear a fake mustache
& bluff your way in to the sunset desert facility
or sneak yourself in hidden in a giant cake.
Once inside, pretend to be a scientist,
the kind who’s an expert in space rocks.
Say things like “heavy metal” & “string theory”
& “modify a series of anodyne relays
to attach directly to the power module.”
Tell the meatheads guarding it you need to speak
to it alone. Pass it the key card, whisper
it should meet you under the old clock
tower five minutes after the stroke of midnight
or when the moon rises, whichever comes second.
Whistle a tune on your way out, ask the security
guard how things are back home. Once free
of the perimeter fence, make your way to the rendezvous
& practice praying in the language of meteors.
You don’t love it for its rare minerals
or what it could reveal about the fate of the dinosaurs
but because it is your neighbor, because it’s human
just like the android on the television show
& the lovable misunderstood movie monsters
really anything can be human if your love
is wide enough, if losing it would be felt in the gut,
if you could see it on the news & hurt
when it’s hurting. Sure, many these days claim love
does not exist, because it can’t be seen
just like viruses or ninjas or bitcoins
but isn’t air transparent? Isn’t gravity
always tugging on you, isn’t your own face
invisible when you close your eyes & fall into deep dream?

John Paul Davis is the author of Climbing A Burning Rope (University of Pittsburgh, 2024) and Crown Prince Of Rabbits (Great Weather For Media, 2017). His poems have appeared in numerous journals including RATTLE, Bennington Review, Spiritus, Maine Review, and others. You can find out more about him at www.johnpauldavis.org or find out too much about him at @johnpauldavis.bsky.social