Sonnet #267

We could take it all, someday, you understand
It is possible that man and woman mine it all
And nothing's left in the ground, and drills fall
silent and all the rock down to the lava lands
have nothing left to take -- We live in a finite world
It only feels infinite because we are far more finite
We couldn't possibly make our way among the firmament
We will birth, love, death in only corners, gather pearls
Where we may, and never know the cost of what we take
There is a limit to the soil, a limit to the oil, a limit
One day, we'll scrape it up, and that's all we'll take
Because there'll be nothing left but climate
Burning off what's left of us, the oceans boil to lakes
of fire, and the fever breaks; this place is finite.

Sonnet #266

I take great pride in little things, like this:

Any time of day, any time of year, I go

into my little southern garden I know

that there will be butterflies, their whisper kiss

alighting on the flowers, there, planted

to call them down from the clouds --

the bees are always there -- I'm proud

to say they bustle in the vines and shrubs

while I refrain from laying poisons down;

The work, when I am getting to it, shove

a few words down, a few more, grown

from meat in great discomfort, grubs

gnawing and i yank and pull and throw

I know someday they'll be beautiful ones

 

Sonnet #265

the stories we tell to our children

are the stories we tell to the future

the stories we tell to each other

are the stories we tell to the days olden

It sounds like perhaps I have this reversed

But, listen, when we speak of the past

to the children, we're telling the stories that last

about ourselves, about life's trajected, projected

And we mean them to carry down the line

When I tell stories to my peers, I say

I tell you what, man, I say do you find

that we are alike? Do you remember the way

the same way I remember the way, I'm tryin'

to be sure to take the shape of myself, have my say

Sonnet #264

Even as I know the dreams we're sold are broken,
I dream the dreams I'm taught. The big house, the big,
big kitchen, with the big island and the big, big, big
yard far avenues beyond the reach of subway tokens

My dreams of what it means to be a man break
The world that will be here when I am dead
Our children will stand in ruined suburbs, having spread
our ashes in the fall; whisper curses to our love, how we take

More than we give to the ground, how we
Break more than we heal, how they must
come after us and mine the tombs of cities, how we
hoarded all our failed ease in buried heaps, how they must
look into the sky we burnt for our dreams, how we
Make money and call it love, how they must

Sonnet #263

These men who think they rule the world unto dust,
Do they truly believe their children's children
And their children's children's children will bend
Enough guards to their service, hold against rust
In compounds and bunkers and underwater kingdoms
While all the rest of us are burning and drowning
And all the moneys of the world will have meaning
When there are no countries left to honor income?

The wild places of the world will avenge upon
The ones who believe so much in science and technology
That they don't believe they have to stop open
-ing the tombs of time and burning all the geologies
The men who think they rule the world yawn
Where teeth rise in the shadows of hollow apologies.