Buzz Aldrin, Space Imperialist Poem by Percy Dovetonsils

Buzz Aldrin, Space Imperialist,
discovers a tiny brown lesion
on the end of his nose.
he uses his wife’s
concave make up mirror
to examine it more closely
and confirms his worse suspicions:
It’s malignant.
Coolly, he makes
one appointment with his dermatologist
and another in Samara.
After brushing his teeth
he takes another look
at the tiny brown Angel of Death.
It flakes off
-a brown booger.
Buzz cancels his appointments
and craves a celebratory drink terribly,
but summons his fantastic will power
and resists the urge.

II
Buzz Aldrin, Space Imperialist,
lands on the Dark Side of the Moon
and meets the indigenous Moonpupiks,
who are heavily armed yet friendly.
He has sex with many tribeswomen,
but fends off the attentions of the polymorphous perverse
tribesmen, and tells all that they must
dropp their religion and adopt the
State Religion of NASA, Tanglicanism,
which uses Tang for communion wine.
The natives say they don’t mind a bit
as they are lapsed Moonitarians
and were looking for something to fill the gap.
Disappointed they don’t offer more conversion resistance,
Buzz orders the leaders beheaded
and claims the Dark Side of the Moon
in the name of Rio Tinto,
an Australian mining corporation
whose logo he wears on his helmet
and ship.
Then he wakes up.

II(a)
Buzz Aldrin, Space Imperialist
takes another nap and,
against the advice of his fellow astronauts,
brings 4 or 5 Moonpupiks (MOON pu pix)
back to the Court of Richard Nixon, Imperial Vizard,
where they are presented to the potentate
as he sits on his throne
and broods. The Moonpupiks,
with their Bonobo-like sexuality,
create a sensation among the White House courtiers.
Charles Colson and E. R. Haldeman are especially lovestruck.
Imperial Vizard Richard Nixon finally draws a line in the moon dust
when some of the indigenous people
give Pat and Julie Nixon rare and incurable lunar STD’s.
The Moonpupiks are packed off
to quarantine behind glass
at the Washington Zoo, where they become even more popular
than the pandas.
Again Buzz Aldrin, Space Imperialist,
awakes…..this time with a two-day hangover
and a mindblowing thirst.
He craves a drink something awful,
but summons his inhuman, his monumental, his other worldly,
will power
and resists temptation.

III
Buzz Aldrin, Space Imperialist,
is hired to provide the voice for a hero,
Michael J. Moonwalker,
in a new full-length Pixar animated feature.
At the recording studio,
Tom Hanks, his producer/director,
suggests that his delivery is flat
and asks for “More gusto,
More verve, more je ne sais quoi.”
Tom shows him exactly how to
say a line. “Just copy that.”
Buzz Aldrin, Space Imperialist, mortally affronted,
takes umbrage and
coldcocks Tom, who lies unconscious
on the studio floor
for 90 or 95 seconds.
No showbiz flunky, no studio pantywaist,
dares to intervene.
When he comes to, Tom rubs his chin,
summons his fantastic, his other worldly, will power,
and says: “Thanks Buzz, I needed that.”
The recording proceeds cordially
and Buzz completes all his lines by evening.
He then relaxes with the cast
in a bar in Studio City
and craves a drink terribly.
Summoning his fantastic, his other worldly, will power,
he resists temptation for about 30 minutes,
then replunges into the familiar abyss of alcoholism,
which is something like getting caught on the
far side of the moon without your retro rockets,
only worse.
Meanwhile, Tom Hanks listens to Buzz’s recording
and realizes the whole thing is a wash.
He secretly trashes the whole performance
and has it redubbed
by a far more expressive, uncredited,
highly paid,
Buzz Aldrin voice double.
The movie is a huge hit;
Buzz, drying out the Betty Ford Clinic,
misses the premiere,
notices that his voice has been redubbed,
but publicly admits nothing
and is awarded a special Interstellar Oscar for Lifetime Achievement
at the Academy Awards Ceremony.
He boozily accepts, saying:
“One small statuette for man,
One giant ballbust for mankind.”
After his brief acceptance speech,
while humming 'I was walking on the moon one day,
in the merry month of May, '
he tees up several golfballs and beats them into the audience,
putting out the eye of a studio head.
The glittering assemblage gasps,
then cheers. The studio head
never presses charges or sues
Buzz Aldrin, true American hero,
saying: “I’ve still got one good eye, ”
and: “Who needs stereoscopic vision
in my line of work? ”
But Buzz Aldrin never works in Hollywood again.

IV
Buzz Aldrin, Space Imperialist,
is again, for the umpteenth time,
publicly heckled
by crackpots claiming
the moonlanding was staged.
Fueled by Jim Beam and HGH,
he decides he can take no more,
steps down from his podium,
and lays waste to 3 or 4 dozen of the rascals,
though he’s an octogenarian
and breaks every one of his knuckles
on their asinine jawbones.
Off to one side, Buzz Aldrin’s world-famed press agent,
who shall go unnamed in this narrative,
cries out to the hecklers, “Have you no decency? ! ”
but does not wade in to help his boss,
Buzz Aldrin, Space Imperialist,
who spends the next 6 months in hand casts.
His attack is captured on Youtube and gets
330 million hits. This fresh publicity
bumps up his speaking fees a hundredfold.

V
Relishing this fresh tsunami of worldwide popularity,
Buzz Aldrin, Space Imperialist,
goes on an endless speaking tour and
welcomes the many space groupies who approach him
hoping for a taste of geriatric sex.
He takes neither Viagra nor Cyalis,
yet has no trouble
satisfying the torrid needs
of their nubile, voluptuous, bodies, for he is
Buzz Aldrin, Space Imperialist.
After each encounter,
he signs his name on their buttocks
with his gravity-defying space pen.
At the end of his worldwide speaking tour
He has made enough to keep his
wife, his children, and his grandchildren,
and his mistresses,
financially secure for their foreseeable futures,
barring an ecological or financial apocalypse.
“My work here is finished, ”
says Buzz Aldrin, Space Imperialist,
and he falls back to Earth
in a swoon. His doctor declares the hero
terminally exhausted.
The world gathers ‘round his deathbed
hoping for a last, deathless, word.
“Tell the Moonpupiks I’m sorry, ”
croaks Buzz Aldrin, Space Imperialist,
'That Tanglicanism is BULLSHIT.”
Buzz Aldrin, true American hero,
gasps his last and is no more.
A grateful nation erects a gigantic monument to him
on the Washington Mall, marring the sightlines from
the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol
and dwarfing the Washington Monument.
The surviving astronauts of the Apollo Mission,
jealous,
park a truck packed with fertilizer explosives
near Buzz’s obelisk
and blow it moonward,
but nothing, not ever!
can wipe away the glory of
Buzz Aldrin, Space Imperialist,
from the space drunk memories
of 300 million
redblooded Americans.