hb

The last morning x-ray

I’ll ever agree too.

Too many particles rising to the surface,

warmed like plastic in the sun,

plastic

in your skin,

the tale of the times,

​

did you know about the

generational decrease in sperm count?

it’s 50% now and I will not say

The Sale of the Century

for that would be in poor taste

and I’ve grown accustomed to this

taste in my mouth,

​

I no longer recognize fluoride

as ingredient,

it’s just water,

the taste of it,

and somewhere it’s a border,

not unlike the ones inside us,

enough voices saying

no more problems,

​

it’s a bad business plan,

and someone else asked about

a trip that hasn’t happened yet,

to Greece, to Turkey, to Crete—

the place where imaginary people

went to hide in those novels that

reminded me about books—

​

and I’ll plead not to be a tourist,

wear sweatpants,

worry about what I said last week

because I know about the tear gas,

the 3.6 million

while I bathed yesterday

and you planted a garden with last year’s soil,

 

the benefit of being settled.

I am not a remnant of a never-ending war

but the by-product of living among it

and never knowing the names,

only the diminishing

of light

in which we are not immune,

​

a displacement of matter,

a kind of closing of the gates.

Ironic limit on the form,

another recess in the mind,

and I can’t help but think of the

evolution of the word age,

cells losing their identity,

​

rebinding in the wrong places,

ceasing to function as designed,

discrepancy of body and mind,

how we’ve come to live long and

die younger each year,

though I’m reminded of

what a friend once said,

​

how it may not seem like it

but we’re getting better all the time,

how I don’t think

in the way he does,

but somewhere I’m nodding,

I’m sure that he’s right.