As It Was Written

Earth, earth, riding your merry-go-round toward extinction, right to the roots, thickening the oceans like gravy, festering in your caves, you are becoming a latrine. Your trees are twisted chairs. Your flowers moan at their mirrors, and cry for a sun that doesn't wear a mask. Your clouds wear white, trying to become nuns and say novenas to the sky. The sky is yellow with its jaundice, and its veins spill into the rivers where the fish kneel down to swallow hair and goat's eyes. All in all, I'd say, the world is strangling. And I, in my bed each night, listen to my twenty shoes converse about it. And the moon, under its dark hood, falls out of the sky each night, with its hungry red mouth to suck at my scars.