September 28, 2009

Today the world convinced me
that fall will fade to winter
once again, that we'll all close up
and harden with the frost,
all the shoulders in the North
tight in expectant acceptance,
bracing for the impact
that devastates us
in slow motion.

But the cold air on my face
only evokes the furnace inside,
and your body is breathing like spring.

Hot To Tell When The World's Ending

All of a sudden everyone on Earth
will forget how to bake cookies.
The Wal-Mart greeters will always be genuine,
that the chicken came first will be decided by committee,
and the new World Government will build golden idols
to Reason, for which Rousseau will write a posthumous letter
on liberty, pissing off Mill and Burke alike.
Sesame Street will be canceled,
the PTA disbanded,
and garlic will be wiped out worldwide by a rare mite
(riots, led by gourmands and Listerine stockholders alike, will ensue).
Will Shortz's bagel will slip from his grasp
as he stares in horror on a Sunday morning,
realizing that he's unintentionally crossed
falconer with gyre.
English will devolve into a series of guttural
literary references, script in txt msg shorthand,
French will devolve into English,
Spanish into a series of suggestive winks and nods.
Some asshole astronomer with no sense of boundaries
will name a new planet Krypton,
and Jim Lehrer will swear on air about how
"collateral damage" has come to suffice
for the cessation of souls.

maybe we gotta try

like summers'
sudden fade
to fall
you disappeared.

but i didn't treat you
as though you stood among those seldom september days
that crack the hardening sky
to touch the sun.

the handful of waning hours
that we hold to our chest
with bated breath
like a secret.