“I have 600 channels and none of them want to hurt me”
-Mindy Project

​

I’ve been thinking about the bigness too much,
so I make of the abandoned loveseat a fur-lined nest.
A chaser for the hard think of day. I turn on the tv:
*
                One channel only snow, quietly.
*
                One scrolls everything I said at the faculty social in cursive beneath a cozy fireplace.
*
I looked up how to ease anxiety
about climate change: start a garden,
purchase a rain barrel, install solar panels,
low-dose meds.
*
                On one, the Eagles sing, somebody’s gonna hurt someone before the night is through.
*
                One is cursive smoke letters from a fire whose black source can’t be determined.
*
I thought I had colon cancer today. It might be nothing, some pain. There’s always a war in the
dark, the churn of protest, the “plain old fact of death,” the debt, the storm, the alarm, the
weaponized righteousness. The world isn’t real. A natural disaster. They say even now to expect
more severe storms. They say insurance companies are disappearing. They say when cash was
unexpectedly scattered on a California highway, drivers beat each other to death over it.
*
                 One is all dialogue balloons filled with hearts.
*
                 On one rain hits the bedroom window like awkward claps at a funeral
*
On one a man contends the world could be saved by a series of canals, a monumental
labor of many hands--redistributing all goods. He’s never read Marx, but he’s young & he says
no one under 40 thinks the world isn’t totally fucked, anyway.
*
I stare at the hot black sky. I put away the forks attentively. The dog snores on the loveseat after
eating the leftover pork chop. Wittgenstein said spend more time in graveyards? I consider living
in an RV. They say in Iran it was 152 degrees today, the limit of human survivability.
*
                   On one a campfire, 40s music in the background.
*
                   One one Yeats writes a famous poem with two endings & in both of them we die.
*
                   On one a small old man whispers, “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
*
                   On one, a man says to a woman, “I feel it like fire.” He puts his face to her face so she
can feel his shaking.