Clawing pine to splinters
as the air runs out.

The poem I will write
Will not rhyme
No matter how much you beg
And despite your wandering hand
And that low-cut dress
Which screams, “I like cheap rhyme.”

The poem I will write
Will not appease the scholars
Whose clip and judgment echo in the foyer
Of their own impending fame.

The poem I will write
Will set me free — set us all free:
The Last Poem,
Shining like the City on the Hill.

The Last Poem will be
An ignorant suicide
Note to no one
Scrawled onto scraps
The day of a death
I never saw coming.

Surely the god of
Your hunger’s appeased
That usurious debt
paid of Eden.

II
Cities bubble over, fat
Chokes the swamp
Your burnt offering
         Stinks of a crime

Oh? Tell that to the freezing child!
Oh, tell that to the thirsty wife.
You would starve us all
for some birds.

My friend
Some day we’ll all be freezing
And for want of birds and water
Will reach for our daggers

No one left to see it now
No one left to wonder
Why it gave up
The green

On a hot breeze blowing
Past the husks of silos
Where the brambles whistle
Over thistle and forlorn

Little leaf is sailing
Through the broken grin
Of cities sunk in shadow
Full of cars that don’t pollute

Almost stuck in the great
Brown-green river
Oozing through empty cables
Once a bridge a mile long

It is firmly caught
In a forest of fur
Pylons like the stuff
That used to grow on cheese

The leaf is absorbed by the fungus
Staring at the sky.
And where is the mind to eulogize
This stupid leaf, vestige
Of a world gone by?

The mind is somewhere
Cause Mind can never die
But it isn’t here
It isn’t in this place

Because it gave up the green
It gave up the green

When a mind leaves a body
It goes somewhere else
But an unworthy death
Leaves the mind
Twitching like a shrimp
In the endless void

Tick-tock, the algae’s started blooming,
Shave a minute off the sentence handed down.
Put a staple in the ear of your beloved;
You’ll recognize her when she comes around.

Tick-tock-tick, the windows all are closing.
A flash of birds, a distant cry of goats…
Something walks among us, arms spread open.
Its bony snout is nuzzling your throat.

      Waters recede
      The gasping fish
      The collapsing star

In countries which your children never heard of,
The outbreak starts. It shudders off its sleep.
Ten thousand years of gentle irritation:
It’s time now for the shearing of the sheep.

There was never a promise
– no rainbow from God –
that we would die in a warm feather bed.
All the businessmen melt,
and the generals huddle.
They’re at their best when the meat
begins to boil.

A woman at the spaceport
sniffs the air and gags.
West wind is coughing pine,
the ruptured muck of forests:
grub-flesh stink and blister-singe.

Ash swarms down like hornets.

Then the asphalt heaves,
and in the whipping trees
monkeys, pissing, howl!
at the ten machines. This is

not another Ice Age.
Plant your feet – you can feel it spinning
It is the violet doorway
the vortex through the Human.

Something wafts above the stinking hordes,
survives.

Fingers feel for our weakness
Always creeping back though smashed
And smashed with force
Without a center
Without remorse

The scramble to survive:
All life washing in a tide
Against the stanchions of America
Almost sinking this fragile boat
As history rages stronger

Now, at the sight of our bellies,
you show the wolf’s fang,
smiling concerned, almost,
stinking of saliva.

This is total war,
war on all fronts:
war that cannot win,
but only multiply.

Until all curves falter,
until the Asymptote,
when parameters break,
when sand covers the stain.

She is here, among us now
She will urge you forward
She is mouthing words of war
The beautiful undone

“CLEAR THIS CHANNEL!
This is Crisis Control
and we need an empty vessel.
We gotta let the message through.”

the wilderness can absorb
all that noise
deep in you
and when you return
at last!
an empty mirror meets your gaze
now the message flows
now the badgers stop and listen
to the empty field
where daisies waving in the wind
tune in white noise