(And the doomsday clock flicks forward,

stares us down.)

~

Demanded their order in our courts

wore their crimes and misdemeanors

set their bears loose in our gardens

pled us guilty and said so

and said no and so again

desperate they were in general

ridiculous not sublime

this malignancy pumped up

ran deep and deeper into crime

no good our legs

no use religion or hope or signs,

this king was all he was cracked up to be

will boys be? Leave it all to he

~

Locked and loaded
fire and fury
the daft-master

bastard art of war
(otherwise known
as look I’ve got this

big bad prick
with which to blast
your astroturf)

I’ll put one, two,
then three fingers
inside you, he said,

windows breaking
as the detonation
throbbed and shook

he stopped a moment
just planted on top
and melting there

that panicked thrumming

was the bomb

and such a dirty one

~

This viciousness, it makes me quiver.
Instead of a kiss, a ferocity—

do not look at the flash

take shelter lie flat and cover your head

A hostile city, hurting.

The stalks of flowers won’t hold up

even if separated from your family
stay where you are

One person is mauled,
another eats a sandwich

do not call the school
do not pick up your children

The killing was not well done,

it was in planetary contempt and mindless

radiation cannot be seen, smelled
get clean soon and gently wipe your ears

Birds cruelpecking crumbs left in a pocket
in the glaringafter—

~

America wants it soft—
doesn’t want to see

smashed we are
in mad simultaneity:

cat purring on the window seat
as the storm surge takes the boat,

kids scavenging cactuses
in Madagascar,

kings inhaling sea-urchin custard
at Eleven Madison Park,

the botanical lily opening in its humid garden
while, facing his worst emergency in blackest night,

the prisoner finds himself obliged
to be iced in darkness.

~

And what now of dreaming?

We’ve failed the planet has published our failures.

Our crimes are perpetual methane and sweltering, arrogant and endless—

poor fucks we are, breathing mindlessly as the marsh grass floods,

and here comes the supermoon again, like it’s so special.

Weak and disordered become the governments, disquiet rules us now.

Onward, I thought, and so we were obscured.

The end of America, no one knew how to manage it

but we tried the typical ways of numbing pain—

my daughter painted tiny flowers on her toenails,

I mixed honey and vodka, squeezing in a lime,

and we carried on with our breathing—

my father was still alive, my body kept aging,

the pills helped a little, not a lot.

into the sheets we slipped, a crisis

into the sheets we slipped, a crisis

~

Into the sheets we slipped, a crisis

affixing us to each other again and again.

Womb was I, turned out.

The babies were a transcript of our making,

a panorama of life on its back.

Thrice I plunked out the humans,

until we’d had enough of such extravagant weather