My Heroes Now Are Robots

Not the kind that look like us,
except with shiny faces
like the girl's in Lang's Metropolis,
but like the ones that go for us
to places that would kill.

Voyager, for example,
with its odd, etched, intergalactic
love note, falling now
through interstellar dark
looking, looking,
until its power dies
in 2025 or so.
Or Curiosity, its crazy
synchronized gymnastic
landing nailed on Mars,
ready soon to assay the soil
for time that time forgot.
I now aspire to be
a happy, valiant robot,
a far-flung drone alone.

I understand why Warhol said
“I want to be a machine.”
Forget this sorry clay.
I want metallic sheen,
something to repel
the lethal cosmic ray.
So give me skin of tough titanium
and a gut of pure plutonium
and send me on my way.