gutenburg discontinuity

the sky smokes a cigarette, exhales

an enormous ring into our museum.

the terror we had harnessed in welding

our glass case bloomed

again, a new blood flower, as flames

surrounded us. somewhere,

families and neighbors fold

into a flow of pilgrims just as tributaries

have no end but the river. somewhere our countless

siblings flee a lakebed or a nation

on fire. go says the beat

of chaos underfoot,

the organizing pulse of the universe stilled,

sometimes, but never silenced. which

will be the final expulsion? this being,

this chain of bodies that breathes and eats

and loves and longs and grows

a volition of its own — the glorious

snake of us — belly slivers its way out

of the hell red that glows

at the center of certain continents and spills

wider as I hold down the forward button

on the simulation. the red

will not stop growing, like the sun

that blossoms inside my eyelids

as I press the heel of my palm

against them. first the welcome warm glow

of a lantern, my small sun eats light

and brightens, expands into the blinding white

ring of an eclipse — the black dead thing

at the center coal-burnt and still,

though haloed by beams of lightening

shooting out as they escape

into the void. but not you,

you who have already known

the grief of beaming towards the future:

you lie in a lawn chair in our greenless

backyard, staring straight

at the screen in front of you

while the sky sinking overhead

descends upon you as ash.