The grass has been yellow all year
the hills blotched like bad skin
and Noam Chomsky sounds off on the radio
disrupting our orbit of invincibility
our fandango of fate

As the human asteroid plunges into
another decade of the Anthropocene
the Baltimore oriole is forsaking Maryland
permafrost has become an oxymoron
and oil keeps the wheels of civilization
spinning out of control
in a marketing ploy to invest in
the default of a planet

An old man told me that being blind
is like closing your eyes in a dark room
and trying to look out the back of your head
If we could see behind us
we might notice what a mess we’re making
the gap between the pitiless and the penniless
Creation going up in flames

—First published in Bluestem online (March 2017), which also includes an audio clip of Cooper reading the poem; appears here in KF-7 by author’s permission

Bio: Jack Cooper