and if you don’t love them yet you will by the end of this. who’d
have thought, everyone both viewing and participating in the finale!

the real finale, one we can’t review. for once i’m sure the best
has come, no second guessing, no mystique in the transference

of state, no hidden away soul or sound or synapse,
the simultaneous icy tinnitus, delighting in mutilated shapes,

those synchronized chants, all of us at once saying what a show,
truly, what a show this has been, and the applause is deafening,

and the lights are so bright, and the sky is a pit, and i am a pit,
and what’s ahead is a pit, and we’re all there, gnawing

at the air with our perfect teeth, and we all go
out and we all go down, and for once,

at last, we’re all singing the most
common song

and

later,

a bulb

yawns

unobserved

MY OWN SMALL RUIN

i.
honestly, who knew that the rolling molten
pit of silvery nothing was something to fear?
fear of the insatiable curiosity, before that.

truth is god. the news lies but it is news. a trillion
more of these sinew-streaked liars
still to arrive, a billion years foreseen

but one hundred left if they’re lucky
to clamber over one another like foam-blown
sand grains as the sea levels rise. i’m left choking

on the bled conjecture of how they might repent—
at the unfeeling knell of storm and eye and storm
and eye, what will the bottle-necked beasts

do when they find they’ve done the hurdling,
now nose-to-nose with grey-faced armageddon?
did they do it to themselves?

ii.
what, then, do i do with the even smaller
marvels? impossible. phenomena like eyelashes
and the fleshy fold of a throat from a word

swallowed, and quiet breaths taken alone.
mere and gentle curiosities. wanting, being
wanted, fabulous distractions. when you were gone

at the edge of the world and too green to ask,
i imagined the gradient of dawn as seen by you,
the white slates of spacelight on the contour

of your cheek, if the fire you roused had my eyes,
if when you laid to commune with the earth
the ground was too swollen to be anything

but bloodsoft flesh. i worry i’ve wasted finite
neurons on the puzzle but there’s no minor
disquiet when the same attention

is paid to all cosmic debris:
every light going out,
my lips pinched between teeth

THIS TOO SHALL DEVASTATE

given the fact of our feet, smoothed like pond
stones by the erosion of checking you're there, how
can i relax? so many conditions satisfied to catalyze
this action alone. two of us breathers who want
to know the other’s opposite. you / i could be anywhere
but i am / you are here. think bigger. we could be anyone
but we’re us. bigger. we could be anything besides
bipeds, feet for the checking. bigger. anywhen,
then! how easily the universe could’ve denied me
my kicks but here’s this miraculous everyday,
truly large numbers crackling between the sheets
like eggshells—bring me back to now. i’m begging.
you’ll notice everything’s blooming, the short night,
the film of purple wine on yesterday’s mugs
and even, i think, you. easy, easy: realism bites
destiny. no allowance for fate in these unspoiled
cuts of time. rip the halos from the stats, little-bliss,
it’s just us down here. there is nothing romantic
about me reminding you of the big bang.
there is nothing romantic about me at all. you’re
asleep and none of this occurs to you. pry open
your stung-red eyes and call me what i am,
which is nothing, and at this moment, the only eon
you’ve ever known, and i’ll be brought back to now
no now no now where i’m humming
like a strum blade and soft as a petal and at least
until morning, the nearest miracle to your mouth.