parlez

i want to rent a flat in paris,
buy a carton of cigarettes
and chain smoke on the balcony
with a devastatingly sad book
that provokes a beautiful despair
i’ll grow to admire in myself
as a mound of ash grows
in the crystal ashtray beside me.

at night i’ll come inside,
wrap myself in a duvet in bed
with a woman who told me
she liked the sound of my voice
when i spoke to her at the café.

tell me i’m not alone, i’ll say to her
in a language she doesn’t understand,
bringing her closer to me.
she’ll smile in a sad way,
take my book from my chilly
hands, place my ashtray on the floor.
écoutez moi, she’ll whisper
into my ear.

and she’ll speak words in a language i dont understand,
lips caressing my ear, my jaw, my forehead
softly like a mother comforting a child
until we both fall asleep.

Full-Serve

I skinned my knees on the macadam,

Knelt, prone before the full-serve gas pump

And these people staring know nothing

About the religion they cling to faithlessly

Every waking hour. But still they stare

At me—am I crying again? Dear California,

I’m sorry for America’s sins, we can’t all kiss the ocean

And the rest of the world like you can.

Can shipping containers spill their contents somewhere else?

If we bind together all the plastic that comes from China

We might separate the east and west pacific

With a supercontinent where nothing grows.

I bought myself a bucket of minnows and fished

On the pier until the sun came up over the hills,

Gutted my catch next to my truck

And left the entrails in the parking lot.

winds of the sahara

there is a whisper on the winds of the sahara,
murmurs of what was once a thick forest
congregating around a lake ten times the size
of lake tanganyika before cities
built by forgotten people to please forgotten gods
rose through the trees so the priests could look
from temple terraces down on all the earth below.

why does earth pull everything back into itself?
even the skyscrapers of new york city
and the mosques of mosul can only resist
the earth’s gravity for so long.

as for me,
it’s easier to kneel than it is to stand.

a subway train rumbles beneath my feet
and i notice the sidewalk crack.
for a moment, i fear an earthquake.
i crane my neck to check that the empire state
building hasn’t budged.

babylon, when it could be conquered
by new empires no longer and it fell
for the last time, was only good for the bricks
we took from it to build baghdad with
and the sand we shipped to long beach
when a storm swept our manufactured coastline out to sea.

the temple of ishtar

a cargo ship carrying egyptian
papyrus docks in byblos
and a wind carries red sand
across the desert of mars.

a babylonian priest sacrifices
a female calf in the temple of ishtar,
the wright brothers run adjacent
to the ocean at kitty hawk.

i’m breathing, breathing deeply
on the summit of a mountain
in nepal. in india, brahmins are
performing tantric orgies in the firelight.
and i’m breathing, breathing slowly.

the first man to die on mars was cremated
and spread outside the artificial habitat
near the deuterium mines where water once flowed.
a priest on earth prayed for his soul on tv.

i achieve enlightenment after a thousand lifetimes,
joining the buddha in nirvana, i ask him, “what now?”
he shrugs and says, “go back.”

i join a team of anthropologists exploring the jungle
of a primitive continent long abandoned by civilization.
i study a tribe of people living in the corroded steel ruins
of an ancient city. the tribe tells me they are descended
from a race called the americans. they have no gods,
they worship only the most powerful among them.

a spark is falling on a scroll in the library of alexandria.
saharan sand is covering the sphinx up to its neck.
ocean levels rise until new york and dubai are underwater.
colonists on mars terraform the planet, building beaches and
resorts and now even the wealthy want to move there.

i’m reading a book that says human suffering
is a booming industry—adam smith’s invisible hand
is strangling us and we worship the hand
as if it belongs to god. i’m reading another book that says
the way to kill god is to stop worshipping him.

in ten thousand years, the sky opens and jesus
descends to earth, walks down the street of a city
built where jerusalem once was. the people
look at him, confused, and say, “who are you?”