The Skywayman finishes with a night stunt,
a flaming tailspin, but Fox
demands a mock-up. Safer, they say.
Safety second is my motto.
What are they paying me for? I invented
the wing walk, I switch from plane
to plane
with a thousand feet of wind
singing between my body and the ground.
Pa called me his danger-loving boy.
Here I fly for the cameras:
red filters turn day to night,
New York and Chicago are stages,
buildings fold
when stagehands pull a few ropes,
shut the hinges, false front
after false front. If we’re not shooting,
I loop, spin, wing walk over LA.
Dry grass, empty lots, unpaved streets
in dead subdivisions
stretch not far from the homes of the stars.
In Texas I nailed houses,
watched speculators go under,
ghost towns. Pilots inventory high disasters:
nosedives, tailspins, graveyard spirals,
doomsday spirals, crack-ups.
If prosperity turns out to be an illusion,
Wall Street will need new lingo
for an international bust-up.
Call it a bubble, a stumble, a dive?
Call it a Great Crash.