Heathrow

Sitting by a window at Terminal 4,

I can feel the fuel at my feet

flow up through the legs of the seat

as it fills Delta’s snub-nosed belly.

Everywhere, everything rolls with this;

everything replacing something

like tides of internal pumping

in an external clockwork orange –

yes, I was reading but now I am writing;

of the strrrr-dump strrr-dump of wheels

riding tiled floors on prams and trollies

and undropped baggage to be crammed

as crammed as us into sections of gut;

we are molecules – we depart and die

in Heathrow’s exhaled sighs,

churning screams of turbine lungs.

-------------------------------------------------

Then of the majestic grounded, stately

berthing with wheeling gates;

through the glass its size awaits,

an uncanny monster at rest.

Others roaming, roaring, rearing their heads

soon soaring into the distant clouds,

even as new alphas are inhaled,

to rumble and strip clean their bowels.