An Empirical Analysis of This Planet

Eyes open wide, equatorial

plate streaked black like the milky way

burnt across the whites of the eyes.

Blue lips and fingers are

involuntarily polka dotted red. I know

because neither chicken pox parties nor pulses

have quite come back in fashion.

The Earth is 75 percent water.

The problem with dust bunnies is not

not knowing but its frequent association

with the broom, which, personally, I think

makes the whole situation seem a little like a tomb.

Keep your grubby little hands

away from that blue marble.

You might swallow it, and

then where would we be?

Rip down the middle if they freeze

that melted down recycling bin as Museum Exhibit №3.

The old man trims his white beard with scissors

the wrong way ’til the bodies

of unread and unsent emails wash up

on the banks of the Amazon, providing

same day shipping for just

some kerosene and a match.

But this cart is too full to let zoo animals go cliff diving like that,

so they’ll stop forest fires by having a movie night and

watching a glass of water for eight hours.

Meanwhile, skulking around the backs of minds, the elephant

in the room will set up the cardboard cutout of himself

as he burns the fort and goes to fight a man about a mule.

Scissors turn unexpectedly hot in the single hand

eight billion people suddenly realize they are fused to.

A good whine should be properly aged but some

don’t realize that it’s also been deprived of oxygen.

So the bubbles atop of the fermentation vats pop with “help-help-help”

even though no one watches Sunday morning cartoons anymore.

Now, Katrina at the library help desk can’t, well,

help you, but anyways, Katrina, got any recommendations?

Well, Katrina, it seems that people nowadays think

that the way-in-the-back-books are anthropological artifacts

because they never take any words they read with them,

and the books near the front are mostly

cardboard covered in book jackets someone’s mom

cut out to make art from the thick/black/horizontal lines.

Sure, Katrina, but you didn’t answer the question. Well, Katrina,

that’s too bad, isn’t it. Thanks anyway. Please leave;

before I hunker down for the apocalypse we’re all going to

try to take a photo of the stars. One last time.