I’m blasting the classical music station
on an old clock radio / & I am sure that this is how I am supposed to live. I want the smoky white / early morning sky to open up / & swallow me whole. I want the entire world / to know that I exist. So many empty streets. I don’t know what’s going to happen / when other people wake up / & I’m not alone anymore, but I’m not / looking forward to it. If there were a way to kill some small section / of the sky, I would. If there were a way to flip off the sun / as it rises, I would do that, too. The violins swell.
I never want to date the boy
with the penny board, or the girl / with the blue tattoos. If I were driving down the street / in a red convertible, & they ran in front of me, I don’t think / I would stop. There aren’t many people / I would stop for. I am speaking very generally. Those blue designs, crushed / into the street. The thought makes me want to cry. There are so many things I would cry about / if I could. I spent this entire week / being sad about the boy / with the penny board & the girl / with all the tattoos, & there are other things / I am sad about, & I’m worried that I’m going to spend the rest of my life / being sad about them.
If a jukebox is playing when the world ends
it’ll be another forty or fifty years before it turns off. I say this both as an estimate / & as a fact. I know a thing or two about music. I know something / about how to breathe deeply. Radiation / & sound waves. The entire legacy / of the human race. What’s left after all our libraries / burn. After every birthday cake in the world / melts. When you imagined the end / of humanity, I bet that’s something / you never saw coming. It will be somebody’s birthday / that day.
