DECONLFICT

Let’s begin gradually, as when night falls
In the woods. Listen, for four years
The city had no windows, and now there is
Little more satisfying than deleting bookmarks
On our screens the color of orange sherbet.

Some of us need more non-human thinking,
Cue: Delhi, Saigon, synergy, the machismo
Of software, house hunters international,
Self-helpy titles, foodie self-identification,
The meh of a jargon unlocked of geography
And released into a blank west of the west,
Into silence so accurate it does not matter
Who or what has been lost.

Because when you have a respectable face
And you have read closely The Book of Moss,
A love of bloodsports will never be an issue
As it is for those who believe green is
The color of death and being foreign
Is a luxury, like a comforting text from the
Future: “No new friends, no old worries.”

The serious responsibilities of leg decoration
And peat and blood may locate us beneath
A vast rock face without foothold, some kind
Of triumphalist Matterhorn capitalism
In which any attempt to deconflict the ugly
Must not interfere with our national desire
To pay to dive into Pluto’s red water ice.

So what can we buy today, feel embarrassed about?
You see only that which has already been seen
And anticipate the sixth great extinction only
After being told there have been five before.