Pleistocene Swamp

Give me a spear and a primitive bow
drop me in a pleistocene swamp
and let me hunt the eryops and meloposauraus
I wish to eat a soft-shelled turtle
on a bed of prehistoric spinach.
Send me to the tar pits
when they were fresh and hot
I'll taunt the dying dire wolves
howling and flailing in their petrol graves.
Let me be drowned in a crackling storm of ash
streaming from a mountaintop, split and spewing death
I 'll be buried beside a giant palm, immortalized in stone
I can die 10 million years before you, happy
if I never see a car
an asphalt spread or
hear a horn or engine clack.

Written in the UM Museum of Natural History 9/29/09

A Leaf Alights Upon a Lawn

The drying distance laying long
a leaf alights upon a lawn
through streaming dying splints of sun
the long green ship's path slowly run
as through the light it twists and falls
as old-turned pages drift through halls
of dusty desperate quietude
the leaf-page cries from which it's hewed
the tree its slaughtered father-form
the mansion-forest from which it's torn
to grind and pulp its flesh has made
the page on which this poem is laid.

But what of the tree, and what of the light
that was sacrificed, this gift to our sight
torn down so I might jot this line
a piece of nature fain divine
but what's the value of a poem
compared to a forest in which to roam
that like a spring in a fresh greeny grove
a thousands muses to green poets flowed
and from each mind a thousand poems came
and each one's lines could put this to shame.

So better I write on the back of some scrap
than a new page of paper, a new tree to tap
and let it discarded or untended fall
dropped from my notes to the floor of a hall
let it slip under the great wooden door
that threshold that grew from a dark forest floor.
It sprouted from bodies of dead men and leaves
and grew up in splendor and newness and ease
and each day and second it welcomed the sun
and grew a new branch and new its bark sprung
and as a wood cutter's ax lay not so long
the tree's final leaf alights on the lawn.

Send it all away.

He's the King of Hipsters without trying
rolling filterless cigarettes in his teeth and lips
lighting them with his cold-burning apathy
buttoned down corduroy blazer-vest over scotch plaid
sleeves rolled up exposing varieties of ironies
scarred into his arms and elbows, the ink always fresh
a glass knob on a dressertop
and each scene girl clenches her fists in lust and envy
as his hair is always right and the eyes of parents everywhere
look on and disapprove and misconceive
as everyone else does
his style or flare or generation confusion some say
and the thickly black-rimmed glasses jeweled--
hung on his face like a broach on a queen or a witch
with a spell for uncaring cool
and telling others of his likes or disses
the freely given bikes and accessories
that ornament the front of his greenwich flat
in san fran with garrulous decorations
from the seventies and tie-die curtains like silk scarves
and rolled-up tight black denim around his thin calves
shows his disdain for commonality and norms
but the glitter on his cheeks and in his pupils fades
and in dying sunlight
as the last scene fades
the Last King of Nobody Cares
drops away with the sun of scene
and tomorrow maybe a more sparsely upholstered vanguard will triumph
and the new kind of it-ness
a new in-ness, holding the scalp taut by the hair
of the king wearing his crown of Irony after the blood dries
will reign; a ventureless wanderer, one who holds
his primacy in trendiness more seriously
and his apathy more dogmatically
swerving from lightpost to curb
his fixie with a flat, not caring
never caring, pabst his shirt says
but he doesn't care
and as he rolls his cigarette, slowly
the scene apparates around him
and the king again in his court is worshiped
and despised and demonized and rendered
inconsequential by his own steadily declining
interest in anything of interest until the blackest
nihilist heart within him bursts with flame and verbosity
screaming in a thousand tongues
"I care not, send it away, send it all away."