[America wants it soft]

This is my plangent note to the ambassadors of love.

(All dreaming is now retroactive.)

The radioactive someday is here.

Our kings are cranks, crooks, incongruous,

they are improper, ill equipped,

how is it we pushed the handle down and they popped out?

Toasted!

And now they sit at the head of our table,

can we be excused?

Scurrilous scumbags, X-rays of greed, they move themselves

up the flagpole, razing the trees.

To be female on coronation night was a difficulty.

Her skin under his thumb was a sickhouse was too much.

Our king no you aren't. Our king? Not at all.

Our king on paper our king in the spotlight

our king in the outflowing tide—

our king on my daughter?

His weight dropt in mid-night and stung her little bed.

A creep, a Porphyro, a flesh struggling to be man.

There was no excuse for the smug frog of him.

Comrades, commend yourselves

on a job very poorly done.

And now what will be? I'm alarmed.

Keep your passport handy, keep cash,

keep water and batteries, collect your meds

and loved ones, just in case,

and silence your phone.

Stay off the beach, the street, the planet—

There must be some mistake.

(And the doomsday clock flicks forward,

stares us down.)

Demanded their order in our courts

wore their crimes and misdemeanors

set their bears loose in our gardens

pled us guilty and said so

and said no and so again

desperate they were in general

ridiculous not sublime

this malignancy pumped up

ran deep and deeper into crime

no good our legs

no use religion or hope or signs,

this king was all he was cracked up to be

will boys be? Leave it all to he

Locked and loaded

fire and fury

the daft-master

bastard art of war

(otherwise known

as look I've got this

big bad prick

with which to blast

your astroturf)

I'll put one, two,

then three fingers

inside you, he said,

windows breaking

as the detonation

throbbed and shook

he stopped a moment

just planted on top

and melting there

that panicked thrumming

was the bomb

and such a dirty one

This viciousness, it makes me quiver.

Instead of a kiss, a ferocity—

do not look at the flash

take shelter lie flat and cover your head

A hostile city, hurting.

The stalks of flowers won't hold up

even if separated from your family

stay where you are

One person is mauled,

another eats a sandwich

 do not call the school

do not pick up your children

The killing was not well done,

it was in planetary contempt and mindless

radiation cannot be seen, smelled

get clean soon and gently wipe your ears

Birds cruelpecking crumbs left in a pocket

in the glaringafter—

America wants it soft—

doesn't want to see

smashed we are

in mad simultaneity:

cat purring on the window seat

as the storm surge takes the boat,

kids scavenging cactuses

in Madagascar,

kings inhaling sea-urchin custard

at Eleven Madison Park,

the botanical lily opening in its humid garden

while, facing his worst emergency in blackest night,

the prisoner finds himself obliged

to be iced in darkness.

And what now of dreaming?

We've failed the planet has published our failures.

Our crimes are perpetual methane and sweltering, arrogant and endless—

poor fucks we are, breathing mindlessly as the marsh grass floods,

and here comes the supermoon again, like it's so special.

Weak and disordered become the governments, disquiet rules us now.

Onward, I thought, and so we were obscured.

The end of America, no one knew how to manage it

but we tried the typical ways of numbing pain—

my daughter painted tiny flowers on her toenails,

I mixed honey and vodka, squeezing in a lime,

and we carried on with our breathing—

my father was still alive, my body kept aging,

the pills helped a little, not a lot.