it then sails over that hill like hot oil down your leg but you need to get dressed for the evening execution though since all the cat food is gone perhaps first a stroll to the river past the perimeter guards and through the rubble hole in the southwest corner and hopefully no one else has found this place with its improbable stashes of obscene poetry journals good to eat for 1,000

 

beers we drank in rooms so completely similar to this dusty light we may have been poor but by God we can still be now where was I going with this nearly full shopping cart the sky is getting dark the bushes full of feet

 

rabbits in the parking lot obscured by the halo of the horned moon

so let the long way round wrap its feelers around your best escape plan though they never seem to notice the little ways you applaud their best blunders & it’s over before you know it while several species of spider set up medical offices for the oncoming collapse but wait you say when you realize that the manifesto you’d been working on has slowly transformed into a cookbook

riding the hills of Hellas I think of
. The landscape rich with bright
rock parting soil old pines older
mountains. That alphabet’s sounds
and symbols that with a little practice

our tour guide’s tense wanders—
Persephone is going to be taken
the world has been punished
Xerxes again is moving on Athens
Odysseus will have a clever idea

loud and sure sun on white stone
the temple of Zeus here
and in ruins

This bullet is for you he said and poured another drink. Of course when the robots take over no one will notice. Har har gulp. But should I really tell you about the feeling that came over me one day vast as the sky while I watched insects swarm a red mass of hair and bone by the side of the road. If only. The day was hot and he had just been forcibly removed from office so we thought we’d throw a little party. Little did we know that her speech would sour the whole thing and make each of us long for the home we would never see again tucked into the side of a mountain where dogwood blooms and that little pond with so many frogs in spring. But that’s the way it goes. When they bring it out you try to eat with a smile.

such energy though these eyes still blurry

but the day begins early & takes the blame

for every flattened patch of fur on the highway

for the last two weeks and what do I know I

wasn’t there but you feel the flies surround

you & maybe we got off on the wrong

foot and maybe that’s all there is now

in the still heart of the great machine a

few sparks with dances to come and yes we

can agree that I use the word too often

but it’s still the right one for the job and

out in the forest it sniffs a mushroom

and moves on since the field guide’s at home and

doesn’t want to take any chances