Prospectus

Survival

The question isn't whether we will survive-
like rats, we are supremely adaptive-

but whether we should survive.
I think we shouldn't. What have we done

to deserve survival? Nothing. Despite all the music,
the poems, the drawings, the bronzes, the lovely

palaces and temples. We have done nothing
that reasonable gods would accept as justification.


The Trump Spokesman on PBS

I imagine your shaved, bald head
broken by bullets
in a shower of blood and brain matter
spread across the frame.

I want you dead. I want your body
defiled by hollow points
fired in rapid succession
in a blood bath of vengeance.

I am no better than you.
We want the same things-
defeat of our enemies
in graphic and permanent displays.


Come, Asteroid

Come, asteroid, smite us with
your mass, eliminate us all
with impact, asteroid winter, changes we
can only imagine. Let us die out
as the dinosaurs died out
65 million years ago. End us
as we deserve to be ended-
catastrophically, in a brief and final
little interval. We have earned such finality.
We have earned extinction.


What Remains

Red dust swirls up in a hot wind vortex
over the dry lake bed that stretches out of sight.

The river is gone. Vultures circle, riding thermals
for a better view of anything freshly dead or dying.

The rabbits are all gone away. The squirrels
have departed. Skeletons of trees line the dead shore.