Prayer for the Mutilated World
what will be left after the last fidget
spinner’s spun its last spin
after the billboards accrue their thick
layer of grit masking advertisements
for teeth paste & tanqueray gin
after the highways are overtaken
by invasive forests
after the ministers give up their gods
& the rabbis their congregations
for drink
after new men rise to lead us sheep
toward our shearing, to make bed
sheets from our hair
after the high towers have no airplanes
to warn away & instead blink purely
toward heaven like children
with one red eye
after phone lines do nothing
but cut the sky into sheet music
& our phones are just expensive
bricks of metal & glass
after our cloud of photographs collapses
& all memories retreat back
into their privatized skulls
after the water taps gasp out their final
blessing
what then?
when even the local militias run
out of ammunitions
when the blast radii have been
chalked & the missiles do all they were
built to
when us jews have given up our state
for that much older country of walking
& then that even older religion of dirt
when all have succumbed to illness
inside the church of our gutted pharmacies
when the seas eat their cities
when the ground splits like a dress
when the trash continent in the mid-atlantic
at last opens its mouth to spit
what will be left after we’ve left
i dare not consider it
instead dance with me a moment
late in this last extinction
that you are reading this
must be enough