My Gastrointerologist is
Having an Art Exhibit This Weekend
and It’s Not Even the
End of the World
At the end of the world Indian
elephants
will spiral down whirlpools in
the Aegean sea.
The torn patches of pachydermal
skin will cover
the eyes of nude bathers in the
French
Riviera like eyelids, in the one
final gesture
of respect for the dead.
In Kansas killer dust
that has only seconds ago been
the diamonds
of engagement rings will fly on
the winds that witches
ride, through houses cutting
glass
& piercing the eardrums of
pedestrians
until they say “I
don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
In Ireland, farmers will go home
to count their chickens
before they hatch, saying
“I don’t know about you, but I
need a drink.” to the sky
that has been dark for a week.
In singles bars it’ll be
“Please God, just one good quick
fuck before I die.”
At the end of the world it will
be like the
Fourth of July with the light of
all the farts
ignited by celestial
lightningbolts,
flaming from the asses of the
millions of assholes
who are at once finally
reprimanded.
At the end of the world
I’ll go outside and
swim naked in the air that bastes
my body with ten thousand
tiny basting brushes, the
intertwining of legs in a grey morning,
the sterilizing power of fire,
with clouds formed into the curves
of a woman, the smell of embers
melted into the souls of new shoes,
Omega-3 oils that turn to the
ocean rainbow colors, fish blinking barnacles like third
eyes, the
light bulbs crunching understep.
At the end of the world we’ll know
that trees don’t grow on
money, that a woman’s heart
is hope in the tune of a war,
that if you drop a teaspoon of oil
into a lake it will reach the
farthest corners, even if it spreads itself
one atom thick.
At the end of the world there
will be one last,
last call for alcohol.
At the end of the world Mrs.
Dash,
that succulent blend of spices that failed in the early 90s,
will rain angry from the skies
like baking soda
to smother the kitchen fires of
our jealousies,
angry that her creators never
gave her a Mr. Dash
to warm her long winter nights at
the supermarket.
At the end of the world it will
be Us versus Heaven,
and we’ll gather together
the greatest
all-star team humanity has ever
seen, and for once our enemies
will be our teammates.
God will ask, always speaking
with too much reverb,
“Can someone please come up to the board
and we’ll say “What?!” and he’ll say
“You heard me. Derive.”
and the blackboard of the
Calculus Segment of the Great Judgment
will be the size of an IMAX
theater, and the chalk
the biggest phallus known to man
but we’ll do it, and
we’ll triple jump, shuttlepuck,
bake, checkmate and fake our way
to a victory
& then we’ll say
“cirrus. nimbus. cirrostratus.
stratus,
cirrus, cumulus. These are their names.”
& we will not be afraid of
who we are.
The angels will say “All
right then.
Fix this leaky pipe,”
& we’ll do it!
& Then, at the end of the end
of the world,
we’ll pat each other on the
back and say
“nice job,” and
“you weren't so bad
yourself.” and “Yes. Yes. We are
human.”
and God and his Angels will have
no further questions.
I woke up this morning
for want of an afternoon,
in the middle of a
shingle-peeling storm that had the
weather channel freaking out
& I said to myself,
“You know,
all the signs are here.
The dogs are barking in defense of
nothing,
on the street they’re ice
fishing from the holes in the middle
of acoustic guitars,
there are shaman mimes singing
the national anthem from the
bleak insides of
invisible boxes and hey—
it’s not even the end of
the world.
It’s not even
the end of the world.