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i’ll have the news on to catch the top stories
but after a few minutes it’s purposeless –
they’re all the same bullet points from yesterday
through a perspection of passing time:

some people died
and one famous about to;
displaced persons from a camp removal;
one’s a terrorist about to be tried;
another one biding to be penalized;
global warming at an all-time high;
random attacks on the rise;
car pile-up on the ninety-nine…

by then all i feel is empty inside:
it sounds like a Saturday night of gaming
than a generation’s place in humankind.
i put a CD i’ve heard a thousand times in the drive
that doesn’t come standard with new models of that type,
because i’d rather hear Morrissey whine
than to face my own materiality of being alive.

when my world ends,
i don’t want it to be from a shot to the head
or an environment that kills me in earnestness
or even just peacefully laying in bed:

i want the ground to split open,
and huge gods of Peruvian origin
to awaken and throw giant boulders at me
while i still have my sight to see
and legs to run so it can step on me
and twenty others with beans of stone
because knowing there will be other casualties
won’t further inflate my ego.

i want the sploosh of the backsplash of these avatars’ resurrection
to throw searing lava in every direction!
the last great spectacle of mortal civilization,
where the cops can’t get rid of the encampment up the block,
all it would take is a big hot glob.

i want the Four Horsemen to be a reality
and see them ride in to town like Persons With No Name,
and start materializing ankh staffs and throwing them at gangs,
making them shish-kebabed PSAs,
and these bearers will point to me from my patio and proclaim
that i deserve the loudest death they can immolate.

like the last leaf of Autumn left on the tree,
a great death is something we can all hope for
when everything seems at its least.

//wd 2.11.2024

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