Sightings

Many of you can’t tell the difference between
sparkling dots in the sky (sometimes darting
every which way like a compass needle gone
wild) from any real Armada of Starships. You
think an Alien, barely visible, has to peek into
a window (conveniently posted on Youtube).
Or dash pass your lonely room’s door like Chuckie.
You can’t explain why we need to do a probe,
putting something up you ass or in your biceps
or tendon, as if there’s something we have to
discover. In some of your old abduction stories
you babble about hypnotizing computers (wallto-
wall, sole to ceiling). You feel the non-stop
beeps, burps, can’t escape the vibrating long
myoelectric arms. The tiers of flashing dome-
shaped lights are always there. You’re one inch
from being crazy, is what most people think. You
were wired and/or put to sleep in capsules or
honey-pods (you could taste things). You saw
Orwellian images, equations, and cosmic symbols
you were able to juggle in your hands like golf
balls. You learned all the answers, if only for
a millisecond. But today a palm-sized gadget
(needing one shifting finger) is faster. Of course
this message is coded like snowflakes or egg yolks,
and you won’t be able to decipher what’s right
in front of your eyes till the next millennium,
if not longer. Sorry; you humans are the butt of
our jokes. Did it ever dawn on you that you have
brains of jelly? That maybe we have set up colonies
(thriving, multiplying) in those silly dots you now
send in every text? That “in the beginning,” before
Genesis, there was light’s velocity and deep, luminous
space? Ever-after? No, we don’t need time travel,
robots to feed quadriplegics, bypass surgery, virologists.
But you are absolutely correct. We are here.


—Isaac Black