Oh problems, I’ve never

         been resilient anyway. The ropes

eventually biodegrade around

         my wrists. Phosphor is a pretty

pretty word, even as it modifies

         runoff. When I tell academics

we’ve entered a threshold without

         bugs, they laugh and say I should

come to the South and say that. It’s like the

          senator who brought a snowball to Congress,

together we walk into private conveniences.

          What we do is to spend it. I am not empty

of metaphor; I am tired of multitudes.

           The indelible crush of leaves. Grass

upturned in battle for the ball. Gravel,

          gravel. Animals grow bigger at the end

of their epoch. The wind soothes only

           when we need confirmation. Close

your eyes to breeze. I am not the promise

           of forgetting. I merged regretfully

and I too missed the point. No tonnage

           no respirators. No Edenic twist.

Oh chronic, heavenless now. Look—

          a scorch mark in California lumber

resembles the tilted shape of Saturn, the

         pretty pretty rings of disaster, crashed

moon cores why I'm done with

         landscapes. Below this beauty,

nothing lives. Disaster, my hands shake with

         its white vantage. Oh problems,

my plastic movable cunt, disaster a word loved

        by what comes after, and we

without stars, our bodies alive, thickened—