Two Black Rubber Lines

Two black rubber lines wibbly wobblying beneath a window washer high up on the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering cat’s claws piercing my knee through my jeans begging for those glistening goopy little cubes of tuna she goes crazy over it amazes me they’re still finding fish one quarter of all marine life relies on coral and the coral is dying a warming planet means a warming ocean which triggers bleaching escalating carbon dioxide emissions being absorbed into the oceans is already threatening the entire food chain if I could go backward into the past the first thing I’d do is saddle a horse I’m happiest when I’m headed toward some place abundant calm and voluptuous and free of dystopic zombie apocalypse automatons shopping and messaging and streaming Justin Bieber and so my thoughts often turn nostalgically to the past France in the Belle Époque Erik Satie Henri Matisse a woman fresh from a bath holding a towel naked on a red carpet in Nice here at home marooned in the new century I still have Stein and Joyce and Tristan Tzara black wool hat on a white pitcher two more one green one brown in the bowl in which the pitcher resides it’s the kind of pitcher and bowl you might see in the hotel room of a gunslinger circa 1879 coldness of the floor in the laundry room through a pair of thick socks a colossal chunk of high rock cliff crashing down on leisure boats in the cove of a Brazilian lake killing ten tourists officials suggested the wall coming loose could have been related to the heavy rains that caused flooding in the state and forced almost 17,000 people out of their homes last two tablets of antacid come clattering out I notice a bit of powder at the bottom of the bottle ultra strength calcium carbonate 1000 mg chewable immediate relief of acid indigestion and heartburn assorted berry flavors between 2002 and 2020 Greenland shed an average of 279 billion metric tons of ice per year adding to global sea level rise and the disappearance of the Solomon Islands and Maldives and Micronesia and Fiji and Seychelles and Florida Keys the unvaccinated are the new untouchables they’re like poets funny the way those southern rock groups look like outlaws the indigo hills turning dim with hymns of wind I have sometimes felt evaporated and floated in reverie like an eel of tidings in a bowl of stars