Mike Bagwell

An Origin Story

From The Skypenis Sagas

The arc of Mechaskypenis is a tragic arc,
the plight of the machined shadow
in the palm of a great forest,
a dead forest, a forest of rot and emptiness.
Flames licked at the curtains inside him, fire
in his house, smoke in his childhood bedroom
too thick to see through for 18 summers.
He could stand still and join the ranks
of medieval armor that line castle corridors,
like a Henry at Windsor.
He could be his own mirror body.
He could touch the stars and not burn,
just glow white hot with the image of an image,
pixelated heat baking his brain box.
He could eat the wolves and they’d only howl
in his tin chest like a heart and lungs.
Colossus, he puts his right leg through
the internet, trips and gets caught in contrails
like boxing ropes, rights himself through three states.
Outside the Trinity of the Skypenis, he refracts
the whole of the Trinity. He is outside himself.
Skypenis the Symbolic, Kid the Imaginary,
Kolaptō the Real. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Fire leaks out the gaps in his knees,
He creaks and lumbers back among the pines.
He has moon shavings for skin, sends light
careening back to its source. Ten stories tall,
absently raking clouds with his silver fingertips.
Mechaskypenis at rest. Mechaskypenis alone.
He hears rain on his roof, looks up,
all the world a shimmering,
molten metal.