The crushing consideration
That maybe I wasn’t meant
To survive this storm

Or the scarier thought
That maybe the storm won’t come at all
And this will all have been for nothing

Half a world of maps unfurl
Across the empty table of my misery.
Who allowed these seas to part us?
Who enabled this continental crawl?
How can the expanse of my suffering
Be so casually drawn on a thrice-folded page?

Let me collapse the space between us
Like the crinkle of a map:
Ohio, Louisiana, and Nebraska now one;
New York City meets Seattle;
Las Vegas crossed with Columbus
All gloriously fused together and merged.

Space and time and geopolitics
Aborted for their troubles.
We have no need for boundaries
(We have enough of those between us).
Release me from this isolation!
God of winds: ******* forward in all directions

Just let us not be parted One More Night.

Love is like an echo
It rings many times
And all the same
With little changes
To let you know
Time moves on

I have loved many times
The same person
In different forms

One more false idol to tear down
One more myth to discard
One more Godhead to guillotine
One more song to ******

One more fiction to problematize
One more demon to behead
One more creature to stigmatize
One more ruling class dead

A den of crows sings a song so sweet
A tune that makes the carcass weep

The lion roars a mighty note
As if a love poem to a goat

The fire's burn and smoke's caress
Fills the wood with tenderness

Young Nero plays a mournful tune
As his kingdom falls to ruin

And billionaires do all the same
While Congress dares not speak their names

These corporate creatures should be hanged
For the role they play in climate change

We are told to "make lemonade"
As we inhale the bitterness
Of wages and rent and hunger,
Student debt and job insecurity.

We are told to squeeze ourselves
Tighter and tighter
Until we are made of bones
That crack like whips to the time-stamp tune.

Flesh, they say, is the enemy.
It is weakness and untamable.
It does not fit neatly, and so must be destroyed.
It belongs in our beds, not the workplace.

They give us lemons so **** they burn,
And tell us that we're lucky to receive them.
They say it is the natural order of man and machine.
But the fruit of our labor is a lie!

Today I learned that lemons are not fruit.
They are not found in nature;
They have not fallen from heaven for us.
They are engineered by a snake in the garden.

Lemons are like wages and rent and hunger.
They are like markets and stocks and *******:
A human invention we are told is better for us
Than the Apple we once killed ourselves for.

Today I realized lemonade is the enemy!
It's not the cost of bread or the breaking of backs;
It is the dismal comforts we construct
To tell ourselves that we are free.

A judge too beautiful to conjure has stolen what was once in my head:

The careful oddities of an amalgamation that apparently included you

And me and my childhood nanny (who was transformed into a dancing Jane Fonda).

Like a raging sign of my heart’s discontent; a honeymoon I refuse to entertain;

The sleep-sewn cloth of a dying emperor’s last adornment.

Where are you outside my pillow? Why have you come into my dreams?

Explanation be ******: get out! It was you who scorned me on your birthday,

And now I must kindly, failingly ask for your removal from my rotation of isolation.

Even if the times we shared were golden and last night was a dream!