Fields Filled with Rust

Fields filled with rust, turning from the shine of the sea to

The hopelessness of fallow dirt. I cannot drink this water.

Inciting the rebellion was the only way to ever change

The face of man, with his warship nose and bombs, teeth.

Farm houses form the skeleton ribs of a great whale,

Blackened, twisted, torched with prescription drugs

Turned to accelerant flame, but where are the people,

Where are my people? The lamb was lost because no one

Peeled his picture from the page, parasite children putting

Stickers on their faces, the dumb, damned absurd.

Rotting best times or worse, our cows our leaking poison

The stickers are still stuck on stone. Stalls no longer fill with

Sustenance. , no one to feed no one to care, bleak

Clean channels run on the faces of men smeared with dirt

They never felt this way before. Sometime the lost finally lost

Their way, falling, facing the red and white pinwheel tent roof,

No net. Simon Peter, Andrew where did father die?

Drowning in a net at the bottom of the sea.

What if I was there that day? Would I be –

Disappointment is a drug, the cities twitch in the light of the fires

There haven’t been people here for a long time.

When was the last time gasoline filled these tanks?

After years of wishing, someone found the courage

To put the books in the waste bin, without the thought

To look past the covers.

In the street, history was the first to be forgotten, then humanity

Went to the bars. Drinking up the vanishing gasoline.

Hauntingly, no bodies will ever be found because

People have forgotten where to look, or how to imagine.

No one is left to dig everything out, seventy-five stories of dirt

Seventy-five stories of stories that last their five minutes

And disappear.

Pompeii lost its way in the shadow of a mountain, cleansed of superstitions

Black bleak and also gray

The streets are the color of ash, so far from the mount.

With what’s left the dark ages are here again. Minds barren of dreams,

Dreams barren of tomorrows, today is forever the last day.

Molotovs floating like some brilliant chandelier for an instant,

Posing for the camera, emaciated little angers, hovering. Cherubs

With flames and wrath, who thought they would be God’s final judgment?

The churches are no more, what’s left only reminds people

Of the one letter they forgot. Books written with only it might come again,

One for every cross to bear, not so many anymore.

Valleys and canyons erode, how could man make much better? Even

The stone comes apart in paste. Phantoms float at night, they leave

A shore to float like paper boats filled with the last glow of summer.

It’s winter now, snow or ash, it’s all the same. There’s no more world beyond my sight. We got what we asked for. Isolation and solitude, should’ve been more specific.

The old dog used to limp across the yard, wondering if the next sleepy-eyed collapse

Would be the last.

“Sorry Max, it’s done.” Why did we choose this fate? Why not die in a sunnier place?

Maybe an island, or a ski slope. I forgot I’d forgotten what any of that looks like. Is it beautiful? I hope.

Maybe we will have a place to sleep tonight and wake up to the same day.

This is not the end

This is not a cry for help

This is not a rationalization

It’s an apology for being less

Than we could have been.