Member Poem

While you, a fork-tailed swallow, zip to Mars
on winds that energize the emptiness,
I founder under imitation stars,

lamps turning night to day, so minicars
and men can snake their way amid this mess.
While you, a fork-tailed swallow, zip to Mars,

relishing rocket salad grown in jars,
enjoying a low-gravity caress,
I founder under imitation stars

to nap with rats, surrounded by the scars
that score this town of broken bricks — unless 
you, swallowing your grudge, will zip to Mars

with me in tow. But, no! Our stormy spars
have flung you to some faraway address,
and left me foundering beneath fake stars,

a body renter, loitering in bars,
compelled to let the suits in charge possess
my brain and swallow me. Go zip to Mars.
Why founder under imitation stars?