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

Source: Poetry (September 2018)