23.
all modern apocalypses arrive in business-speak emails
24.
if you listen, god still speaks
through the transistor radio
25.
tornados are the new elephant
that doesn’t forget
26.
raising steam to exercise the machines
as an act of faith in the grand wheel
27.
old paint and tired knees
hold the world machine together
28.
I dream of trains and mountains and you
29.
my improvement on Descartes’ Mechanical Model: the universe is one giant Rube Goldberg Machine
when an HR rep riffs open mic style
about the emotional toll
of telling people they’re laid off
“…but it’s not about their job performance…”
just a bad turn of finances
not any one person’s decisions,no; like
that great hand o’ the market
and the reinvention of the wheel
the executives hope desperately
(foolishly) will save us
the world washes over me, often
waves of conversations
I must remind myself
there is purpose in holding on
cars and tugs and trains sweep by
dreams on their way to other imaginations
the river pushes past, all apparitions
following the currents south
to the delta at Cairo
where I am told
where I must remember
dreams went to die
and those who hung on
with them
