Season

Orange zinnias. Lettuces bolted,
some salvageable. Babies
and teargas on Facebook.
Money’s an algorithm.

Someone’s got rhythm.
Did iambic pentameter
march along with British soldiers –
maybe. I take my

waking slow, click among links
in the morning in bed –
is it a cocoon, is it Procrustean –
O my modern self too long left
on the shelf with old books
and expired cans of peas.
Please please me oh yeah
the emperor sang to Virgil
who sang so vexedly back.
I have tears for things
and thongs.  I keep a catalogue
of wrongs.    Some days

I hop on my bike
and wow become a thing
centauring like a proverbial teen
on her pulsing horse
or a knight on his.
But now let me lie here beneath
everything I’ve failed to take in.
You’re a lot, Jesus.
Fogged in, fogged out
rained in, rained out
a ruinous weathered day
but others are coming with sun
and residual fun because damn

we’re alive! And so I go on
rewriting Gray’s Elegy
as Grey’s Anatomy –
that’s my pitch, yo –
I pitch it in the elevator before
we even get to the second floor
sell it before the door opens
onto the mute inglorious mullions
of the non-existent 13th Floor –
hey what’s a drone | what’s a worker
who’s a queen | who’s a soldier
whose the poet | whose the power

They are freezing to death
ignored for now by the vicious hirelings
who blunt their techniques
on Arab prisoners
their every translated plea a ruse
they perfected in the mountains
and caves. Don’t be fooled.
It’s rule or be ruled.
You stupid sentimentalists
with your retro-neo existential
palaver it means nothing
tu-whit tu-whoo I’m singing
can’t you hear me singing
through it can’t you
can’t you hear what’s here what’s
now a literal dark falls
or creeps      unspecified insects
creebling in the dust
strawberries entombed for the winter
if winter comes if winter
if not winter if not