Stare at The Moon;

it’s marketing,

the grandest advertisement ever seen

for American exceptionalism,

for The American Dream.

So shiny, they seem,

all three,

the body, the duty, the dream;

one giant leap wasn’t as big as it seemed;

there’s beauty in possibility,

one giant leap to avoid the whole thing,

but

small steps are what we need;

small steps are the easiest to follow,

small steps are the easiest to repeat.

Small steps are easiest to teach small feet.

The Moon used to mean something more than

marketing

howling

extra-terrestrial bicycling

prowling, but

now, all I see when I stare at her shining up there is

conspiracy.

The Moon wasn’t the set;

the people we claimed to be,

empty of body

empty of duty

empty of the dream we named after you, and me,

for us, for them,

empty of the memory of our history,

empty of empathy,

despite us awakening to the reflection we’ve seen and seen and seen and seen and seen and seen and seen and seen and seen and seen and seen,

Americans are asleep

(if they’re lucky, horizontally, and not behind a wheel, driving from job two to job three while taking a selfie plea for their GoFundMe chemotherapy),

sleeping without dreaming,

awoke without action,

empty of imagination,

guilty,

cardboard posing as mahogany;

we are fearfully, profoundly, revoltingly guilty.

The Moon wasn’t the set.

America was the trickery;

The American Dream was a fantasy and

Americans want to believe,

badly,

so badly,

we want to believe that, if we play by the rules,

there is no limit to what we can achieve,

beside believing different than we believe,

beside illiberal policy and systemic racist reality,

to name three — the patriarchy — okay, four,

among a list of infinity,

the possibility of our reality,

manifesting destiny built on belief is folly;

cannibalism or autocracy or democracy;

why not all three?

America is reality, despite belief, and

The American Reality is manifesting,

finally,

and unfortunately for so many so badly brutalized by The American Dream already,

now a nightmare of necessity,

a storm surge awash over body, duty, and dream.

Destiny is bleeding.

Reality is reeling on the end of a line of time like thread,

cast up

up

and away,

to the moon, up there,

where it once flashed,

advertising,

but,

no longer, not tonight,

it’s blank,

possibility waiting to be written;

what next are we selling?

Remember,

even when you shoot for the moon,

even if you landed,

you’ll still end up among the stars,

floating, lifeless, and dead-ended.