They arrived like moonbeams

spilling picturesque, creepy magic over everything:

hedges, TV cables, packet mix soup and because

once they absorbed it looked just like the other crap we

inhale, gargle, slather and swallow  everyday

nobody noticed

 

also because they’re smarter than us.

 

Nobody typed a letter to the government with their keyboard on CAPS lock

 

Air traffic control scratched their balls, yawned

poked mute antennae at weather balloons

 

Conspiracy theorists the world over dreamed simultaneously

that a muscled FBI agent with amazing tits was whispering in their ear

“Baby, you were right all along…two shooters, and Area 51?

It’s practically crawling with aliens in there. Just gets me so hot…”

 

Our bodies knew, and tried to warn us

but we hadn’t listened to those primitive conglomerations of

muscle and sinew strung over bone for decades

 

A tingling scalp, which clearly meant

“Far out! I’ve been invaded by a parasitic superior being!”

was mistaken for dandruff and doused in foam

 

Fingers danced at night like tarantulas

At precisely 3am a billion legs leapt in a massive spaghetti stutter of limbs

that required nothing more than

a powder at bedtime

one less espresso

a firmer mattress

a better quality of internet porn

 

The heart-breaking thing was the animals, who did their best, despite everything

 

They knew.

They bellowed in their feed-lots and screeched from their battery cages

The whales sung laments to the research boats

and all the elephants in Africa wept tears for the ivory hunters

 

The earth drew a huge carbon breath and sobbed pure oxygen for us

because it knew that when we marched ourselves like puppets

to the slaughterhouse –

 

dumb expendable creatures to the glittering, intelligent beings within-

 

that the Paradise Ranch wasn’t paradise

and the happy meals it dished up were cold

and just barely short of tragic