BELL JET

Crumpled wings and broken rotor blades
he rode upward, out of control, until the outward nerve fibers
multiengined over the tropical grassland like outraged beasts,
and the shoestring jungle of the new men, waste dinner in the brightly lit ship

we forget everything, where we are, that the tiny breakaway nation
can come from the sky and their student who felt no pain and died
with an angelic face lawless as his elders

he crossed the coastal mountains by his cracked undercarriages
rang venison, fruit and cream, the wine flowed and glasses clinked; towns
droned across immense open spaces where no TV or nightclub
repeated many times: bell, meat powder, salivation, bell.