It's not as if everything was floating    at the time
we weren't bewildered by anything at all      the
third dimension is a twin born of my eyes the
fourth dimension is merely an abortion

It's not as if we were splitting the atom          [ˈadəm]
the basic unit of a chemical element a.k.a. that which
cannot be divided by any part of the physical world

It's not as if I could shuffle my soul like a deck of cards
    here in the garden we bury the dirt underneath the flowers
and you could find the original earth if you listened hard enough
    here everything is millions of years new

But it's not as if we're all floating or if we were we wouldn't even be able to tell the difference because in our ignorance everything was as perfect we were

I give my lungs,
to a one-eyed machine,
at the intersection of law and order,
and dividing the atom,
on which it stands,
strong and masculine,
naked and invisible,
with enough gravity to make us all fall.

*Amen.

Hell no, last year

I wiped the petals off an artificial flower using the dust from the dust bowl, my grandfather starved to death trying to swallow his own neck, my neice has made an army of stones that she's gathered from the garden

Hell no, last year

I am up to my neck in things I don't have, not that it matters if we're all standing on chairs, I gathered up pieces of plastic this morning and ate them instead of recycling

Hell no, I stand in the middle of the highway and light a cigarette

I don't consider this dangerous

It all fell into     the water
they dropped off into the
hole in the earth      that's
no volcano, it's where the
moon came from     that's
the great ironing board
that they use to starch
God's shirts.

It all must be pressed shut      like the plastic lips of
the prophets who buy furniture,     like the image of
the captain riding a bicycle,      like the pain of a bee
sting underneath your eye, draw up a photograph
of the survivors,       this is what you lost and where
to find it,      this is the origin of time travel received
by the most primitive humans.  That's where you put
your hands when you want to take us home.

my father has been drowning goldfish in the lake: forces me to clean the windows, take the trash down to a ridge over the wasteland, draw a graph of the supply-and-demand of our business, then refill the fish tank

my mother has been having flashbacks to her wedding: tells me not to play in the street, reduces me to rubble during a bombing, has me write a paper outlining the culture across the sea, then tells me never to get married