We always thought
That the post-war generation
Might actually
See the end of war
But here we are
Riding the waves
Of two world wars
And I sit
On a front porch swing
Watching kids
Ride by on bikes
And thinking that their smiles
Might be as ephemeral
As the war
That will end the world

And after my country strikes,
A move it has to make
In this apocalyptic
Game of chess,
I'll just pray
To gods I don't believe in
That whoever is drafted
In my place
(Maybe one of these boys
On their bikes)
Runs and joins me
In Canada
Rather than fight
The Russians for Israel in Syria
In corporate America's
Name

That night
In the middle of the road
You held my hand
And pulled me close

Talking conspiracy theories
And laying
Side by side
Everything was almost
But just not quite

Part of me wishes
We'd never moved off
To one side
Or the other

I would have loved
To stay there
And hold your hand
In the middle of the road
Forever

Suits walk
Over human skins
Indifferent to
The shifting winds

The basil plant
In the window
Was dead
When we arrived
And I'm not sure
At what point
It was replaced
But over a glass of wine
I realized
That it was again
Leafy
And full

I pulled open
The balcony door
To find that a spider
Had built its web
In the frame

I knew
That if I didn't
Destroy the web
Someone else would
And very soon

But I left it alone
And I turned around
And walked back
To my bed-
Far too ashamed
Of my species
To do anything
But sleep

(Though I was
Far too many cups
Of coffee
Into the morning
To even close my eyes)

The last time
I drove up here
With these people
You were with me too

You said you liked
The farmland- it appealed
To your sense
Of order

I tried to explain to you
How disorderly
It really was-
Because it's really
The natural world,
Uninfluenced by man,
That's orderly

Because us humans,
With our self-destructive
Monocultures which exist
To support our self-destructive
Industries,
Produce 98% of our corn
For just about anything
But human consumption...

But you didn't understand that
Of course,
So we sat in silence
For a few minutes
As I failed
To understand you too

And I should have known then,
As you failed to see the world
As an oncoming apocalypse
Revealed through  shades of corn
And I failed
To see the world
As anything but,
That though everything was fine
On so many levels
Beneath the surface,
At some fundamental level
We, like the corn industry,
Were unsustainable

A pulsing electricity
Fuels your computer
Which takes you to websites
You'd rather not visit
But that you visit
Anyway

It's that same electricity
That fuels the cameras
Which we covered with boxes,
A last ditch attempt
To reconcile ideals
With the world
We really live in

And when you think about
What fuels our hearts
And concequently our minds
You  might
Come the conclusion
That we
Are not products
Of the modern world-
The modern world
Is a product
Of us