Shenzhou 9

re­mem­ber when JFK
want­ed to show the So­vi­ets
just how big our dick was
be­fore the end of the 60’s
by shoot­ing our load deep
in­to space, so as to be the
first to ev­er land a man on
the moon?

mr. Kennedy’s time, we all
know, was fa­tal­ly cut short—
he did not get to see Neil step
out on­to the sur­face & mum­ble
his now com­plete­ly whored-out
sound bite,
many peo­ple who were too
young then to know what
was hap­pen­ing, or those of
us who hadn’t even been
born yet, nev­er got the chance
to un­der­stand what it was like
to feel like the em­pire,
whose bel­ly you lived in,
was at the tip tip tip­pi­ty top
of all civ­i­liza­tion,
de­spite the mass of cit­i­zens
who were be­ing de­nied
fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights
with­in the coun­try &
of course, de­spite all those
un­for­tu­nate folks, liv­ing in
coun­tries that we didn’t like,
that we didn’t like hav­ing a
re­la­tion­ship with the So­vi­ets,
that we saw nat­u­ral re­sources
in which we were gonna TAKE
one way or the oth­er, or
that we just want­ed to ex­ploit
the la­bor of to make the shit
that we buy do­mes­ti­cal­ly even
cheap­er, tak­ing away jobs from
those cit­i­zens star­ing up at the
sky, wait­ing for Neil to bab­ble—

things have changed &
now, as the em­pire sends much of its
mil­i­tary weight to the Asia-Pa­cif­ic,
in a last bid to throw its testos­terone
around, flail­ing mad­ly in the face of
Chi­na,
Chi­na it­self has sprung a big one &
with the dock­ing of the Shen­zhou 9
on­ly a few days ago,
with a goal of hav­ing a space sta­tion
ful­ly func­tion­al, by 2020—
hold­ing up a hand
with that spe­cial fin­ger flipped,
in the di­rec­tion of the ag­ing po­lice­man
of the world,
still sit­ting at the din­er counter,
stuff­ing him­self with dough­nuts,
hop­ing ev­ery­body else is gonna just
do what they are told,
de­spite the fact that one day
his at­tempt at run­ning &
get­ting em’, so as to dis­pel the
prop­er dis­ci­plinary mea­sures,
just ain’t gonna fly any­more—
it will leave him breath­less &
his heart will give out.