A pineapple cookie in both shape and taste

8000 feet below are souls I’ll never meet

The newly wedded groom has beer, his bride, vodka

Three hours has exhausted polite small talk with giddy strangers

Shades pulled. We are a fuselage of midnight

Crossing coordinates our bodies cannot understand

No matter how patiently the brain explains

Night swallows the East as the West basks in gold

We glide ahead of shadows on the shoulder of Apollo

Classes separated by diaphanous curtains

The sounds of crystal, silver, smiles

Drift back in a cloud of gourmet aromas

To the starving ears and noses of the budget proles

Hush! London is sleeping. New York yawns.

The stomach of earth churns and vomits

Molten sick into the shivering Pacific

Eons of uncomforted turmoil and viola, Paradise

Salted nuts and a cold martini, sudoku, a movie

Words yet unexperienced assemble to be written home

On the pale paper underbelly of a stunning view

I dream of white noise in sleep’s fitful lap

Stiff, restless, motionless at the speed of sound

Sipping black coffee in heaven’s blue parlor

I smell an exotic flower blooming in the travel guide

Her ancestors adorned waving, brown bodies

Welcoming His Majesty’s brave sailors

Ravenous with ribs showing, thirsty mouths agape

Months adrift in Neptune’s wilderness

Surviving on salt pork, beetle and grog rations

We dine on pasta primavera, white wine, salad

The nectars of dry land restored a sailor’s faith

Finding God waiting for them in a heathen paradise