Interstellar Real Estate Agency

Sure, your agent is only trying to make you happy.
Her fondest wish is to see you cheerily esconced
Along with your dearly-wedded and earnest offspring
On some comfortably out-of-the-way but not too solitary
Nor typically touristy or trendy (shudders!) star base.
If that’s what you want, as you seemed to indicate
Two weeks ago when having consumed too much Scotch,
You screamed at her image on the screen, “Dear god,
You have to get us out of this backwater before I run
Screaming through the streets killing everyone in sight!”
Of course we do understand the conventionality of your life
The storms of vacuity raging in your home, the landscape,
Spinning dust clouds of mediocrity settling on your shelves.
So when the latest property adverts cascade like falling stars
Across the spinning dust motes inside those baby blues,
And your head like as exploding star (and not the black hole
Your wife blames each time some household utensil disappears)
Burns brighter and brighter till it seems only a matter of time
Before it flames out leaving a cosmic trail of unrequited love,
Just make a quick call to Sal, your interstellar real estate agent.
Ask to see her advert for your little ten-by-ten Earthen cottage,
The likes for which some schmuck on the other side of the galaxy
Is even now salivating to the point of beating his five tentacles
Bloody atop his desk and raging about his angst, his ennui.

Read more by Thomas Reynolds

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