The Poor Thing Poem by Matthew Buchwald

Looming before a horizon,
Far from equatorial seas,
Of charcoal gray and indigo,
Repeating bars of ivory,
And tufts of senna and saltbush,
The pink Osseous Obstructor
Floated above a coastal plain
That smelled like a sheet of mylar;
Comas hung on the stratosphere,
Circling around the Obstructor,
Like a flock of listless lampreys
Too timid to make a landing.
The invisible diffusor,
Sweeping above the fractal spars,
Made on the megrims a green smear
And an orange stained swathe of
Radiation seethed out of it
From North to South over the low
Polyphonous gurgle of slush.
At night, the febrile Obstructor
Jiggled its trapezoideum,
While every spar and every strut
Throbbed with red neon in the dark,
Similar to a charred muon.
And, repeatedly, for long hours
It lurched sadly and queasily
In a choked universe of dread
Where fulminant ebullitions
Like uneasy souls, made it sigh.