The title of today’s poem is Hydrogen. I’d originally tentatively called this poem Helium, I think out of a false equivalence between helium and laughing gas (the latter is in fact nitrous oxide). I wanted it to convey the giddiness of lifting off the ground, of being lighter than air. Hydrogen struck me as a better name when I was revisiting this as the gas is notoriously flammable (hence 1937’s infamous Hindenberg disaster). I’m not entirely happy with the title, but I do enjoy its simplicity. It will do for now.
This poem was also originally longer than the finished version. I’ll include the original, slightly different, ending at the end of this post, for interested readers.
As usual, this post contains a recording of the author reading the poem. Please let me know what you think in the comments below!
HYDROGEN what we are doing might be against gravity, against god. legs floating in the air you and I resemble the roses which also do not know how to stop: sepals opening outwards and petals like blood bleeding out into a day, our bodies filling with sap which way do we go? I fought you, and you fought me back playing at it, showing me how well you’d been taught and I’d fuck with it, I thought listen — even if it ends up being worthless whatever they tell you human flight is not a lie
From the line which contains simply “listen —” the original ending was roughly the below. Cutting it out in a single gesture was very freeing and endowed the poem with an immediacy I knew somewhere it had been lacking.
[...] Listen — even if it’s all for naught. Whenever they tell you that human flight is a lie, don’t run and hide. My boy show them what’s left of you inside. Point to your wings. See, these are real feathers? Tell them the story again — you know the one. About the little boy who grew up to be lighter than air.