Meal Time

 
Meal Time 
Each morning, I boil the ocean to make my tea. I season my eggs with just sea and I eat it with a side of oak tree. Usually, for lunch, I fight a panda for bamboo (there is not much left) and I cook it with a Californian forest fire. Delicious. Another meal I have for lunch some days, I go out to a lake, throw in a grenade, and when the dead fish surface I can go in and look for algae without worry of something brushing my feet. Dinner? I go all out sometimes, remember the Dodos? That was all just me. Remember the wolly mammoths? Yeah, me. Last night for dinner I accelerated the extinction of the bees for some honey to add to my cheese. That was just the appetizer, I drank lake Erie and ate a sizable chunk from the Amazon and reignited Mount Fuji to make some beef and broccoli. 



Moloch 
After Yeats 
Blowing all night is a violent blizzard. 
There is no light through the snow,
no sound … nothing but white.
Things tumble over, telephone poles topple,
cars on the side of the street—crashed or stopped,
people stumble about, confused;
tree trunks: uprooted, fallen over the road. 
My instruments: no reading, my gps gives no signal; 
there is nothing to lead me in any direction. 
My footprints in the building snow: erased,
gone seconds after they appear—
I fear there is no way to retrace my steps. 

If only a sign, a signal or light to guide me next…

A light! As the words leave my lips, a figure appears
in the distance, a lion’s head—no, a bull’s head,
it constantly shifts in form… yet its eyes show as a 
dull blur in the blizzard, it's gaze: the indifferent icy wind, 
fire burning in its abdomen. The trees, the cars, the telephone 
poles blow toward it, my gps begins to beep. 
The arrow points at the creature, I see people, assured,
limp into the fire. Hands raised, smiling, it's torso a furnace— 
they follow the heat only to roast in its stomach.  



Purgatory?
when I felt the car impact 
		then black 
I did not expect to wake up. 

I did not expect to see a person,
man? woman? 
Dressed in a grey suit—no, it's blue
no not blue but not grey but 
shifting or no colour or—nevermind…
they have a cold gaze, their eyes pierce me.
Strange.
Sitting behind a desk they tell me to sit.
I do.
They begin to discuss 
the options for post-life plans:

the first includes seeing my parents
(when they die)
once a week for twenty minutes; 

the next one (slightly more expensive)
I get to actually talk to them 
but only for ten minutes once a week;

the next one (according to their records 
this is the most expensive one I can afford,
it buys me about two eternities of 
service before I get cut off)
I get to spend my post-life with
one person I care about 
either girlfriend mother father sister anybody
but only one.

I look at them: their gaze is as cold as before. 




After Langston Hughes 
What happens to a dream deferred? 
Does it sit there like the forgotten tree stump cut a century ago
Or dry and crust up like the brown scab of an old wound? 
Does it turn to ashes, burning for warmth in the winter wind? 
What happens to a dream deferred? 
Does it fall away like sand through the cracks of the hand
Or roam the empty, ghost town streets of the city come ten? 
Does it jump off the bridge at midnight, unseen in the end? 
What happens to a dream deferred? 
It thrashes and pushes against chains 
It explodes into a furious violent rage
It breaks the bars of the cage
It claws and tears at the face 
It takes the heart 
It rips it apart 
What happens to a dream deferred?