Day 310

BRENDAN MCLEOD

I’ve reached the state of the pandemic
where I’ve started to believe
 
in UFOs. You’re thinking ha ha, idiot,
but you’re not up on the latest.
 
It’s not nutjobs with frayed hair anymore.
It’s state department officials, Harvard
 
astrophysicists, Navy commanders
with 18 years experience – even the guy
 
who purportedly worked on alien spacecraft just off Area 51
seems legit. Don’t blame me.
 
The Pentagon released videos. It was front page
of the NY Times. I’m concerned it’s not catching hold.
 
Visitors from space! We’re not alone! Etcetera!
It’s rare, worrisome territory for the world
 
to have bludgeoned us to the point we can’t muster
the gift of curiosity. In May, up in the Arctic
 
they found ghost particles that pass through matter,
and it didn’t make a blip because Trump was high
 
on hydroxychloroquine or something.
I send friends video of Mars in 4K “no biggie,
 
just an alien planet in high definition” which elicit
few to no emoticons. People are scared
 
of being pushed over the brink. I came back
from a run after one too many podcasts about little green dudes
 
and told Julia to reel me in,
instead she sat me down to watch


every documentary. Don’t feed the beast, I yelled,
but her disposition seemed to be, why not?


It was a wonder, after all this time,
play acting the part of being alive,


to sit with her and feel her spine tighten 
as we learned of aliens living amongst us


since the dawn of time. Think of all the amazing shit
we’ll never learn if we blow ourselves up like idiots,


she surmised, driving home the point:
what the universe holds is nothing to be afraid of


compared to the torpor of curiosity, our lives reduced
to the halfhearted fiction of the known.



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