Given the recent discovery
that the universe is no more
than a vast alley lit
by the occasional trash fire,
I’m scared. I’d rather
be murdered by someone
I know, one of the regulars,
from a similar carbon-based
mailing list, with the same
opposable angst,  hypothalamus
and a grudge, than die
in this cold between stars.

​

What chance of that now,
with the holy reservoir
of the Big Bang and all
its loud brood of galaxies
burning no brighter
than cardboard, no hotter
than the snow on a TV set,
and one’s chance of receiving
attention, no better  than that
of having one’s nose wiped
at the world’s biggest daycare?

​

 

 

What chance love or fairness
or getting one’s hands and feet
warm at the same time?
No help from the hurtling
comparisons—dimes in Duluth,
peas in Waco. If your life
were small as a katydid’s
heart thump, the nearest other
interested creature would be
a proto-virus . . . where? You
can’t humanize without humans.

​

Given the recent discoveries,
you’d think everyone on Earth
would be huddling closer,
but we’re not. In fact
the fighting has gotten worse,
everyone shoving for the same
blanket, distance multiplying
by zip codes, until everyone
is a post office all by himself
before the shooting starts,
the morning fog like a barracks
and the evening like a lonely jail—
all escaped. Not to mention
death, like a bad haircut,
that lasts forever.