there are a thousand people inside my head and each one of them finds something wrong in every thing i do except for when i fly because in the stomach of this metal leviathan the only man in the sky is me

_And once you have tasted flight, you will [forever] walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you [will always long to] return._

_John Hermes Secondari, The Saga of Western Man, 1965_

my breathing matches pace with the idle spinning of a turbine

this artificial animal running on handmade time

i listen to the roar of the jet engine until it resets my heart

this airfield is my church from which steel angels depart

an overhead pass that rattles my teeth

hammerhead, cobra, falling leaf

stop turn, dynamic deceleration, rudder stall

hit vertical takeoff and a skyward fall

metal makes machines and there’s metal in our blood

there’s metal in our blood and there’s blood in me

i and we and me and you

you and me see we are no more than metal with a heartbeat

HUD heads-up display

hey you kid get on your way

heads up get up

eyes up wake up

six o clock

tally two and let up

kill the engine, nose dive

a biplane spiral is a wish to die

we are the raw ore that makes the hammer

that forges the flesh of beasts skybound

up here twelve-thousand feet in the air

the face of god is found

anything will kill you, so pick something fun;

the only constant right choice is jumping the gun

there is man in manufactured, kin in kinematics

aerobatics is one letter away from acrobatics

and my blood tastes of iron

that’s the metal in me

i am metal

metal makes the machine