Relic Environments Trilogy: Book I, Part 1.xv

from Book I, Part 1, Mystery Tramp Eclogues

Age of Monsters 

A finger-prick draws blood

at thirty thousand feet, asking,

Is it safe up here, a sugar-romp then sickness,

or maybe safer lower down, blood sugar bumpy,

the glucose strip an altitude check…

here on the redeye, L.A. to New York, the pump

jacking insulin, a sick Jew maintaining middle life,

a discreet remote

to close the loop, telling how much, and when.

The screw of pressure indicates the change,

altimeter up, or down: that’s the catch.

When I check my sugar, I see the past,

a reading of conditions a few minutes gone, the insulin

not hitting for another thirty.

Last summer in the desert, near Elroy

on the Santa Cruz flats, a carbon decay-pulse

confirmed the age of monster bones.

How far is then – as high as now?

…It was all in my report…

Clearing time zones, waiting for the kick

to separate the colours in my head – corn gold, blues,

a snakebite voltage discharged across

the sky’s emulsion –

the genealogy ends here, in memory, in dreams,

or where dreams were, this lizard spoil of baited tech

deep as the ash at Birkeneau, the fires,

my parents, earthed

on humming wires.