The Future (audio only)
Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem.
The pine branches reach—the rain! the sun! the edge of the
moving air! three goats!
Girls on razor scooters turn the corner and scoot
Autonomy actually shows, it shines amidst the stars of decision
I sacrifice hearing to writing, I return to the back of the train
Surrounded by nothing but tattered island nasturtia, the
shoveler is prepared to exclaim, “Grief exterior, grief
prison”
Beastly pine cones are falling from the sky
Birds hatch, eggs are laid, nests are built, trees branch, seeds
sprout: it’s always time. Time to recognize the sipping
self as girded shelf supporting stuff conducive to supporting self
recognizing time making its attempt to install
itself with all its belongings. They include forebodings
and long descriptions of the rifle butts that press
against the past shouldered by the men of firing squads
and the verminous skin of dogs with mange even at a very young
We live in toppled times under a feat of tyranny; let’s not
fake getting lost, let’s do it, let’s not do it intermittently, let’s be
lost, disoriented and never to be bound so all can hear
the hiss of the adverbs we shoot into tyrants’ eyes, quivering
shafts slippery from limbs and aimed by eyes under feathered
lids. Our features are like stale bread, my headache bad