Two new poems

mikeswanberg

The order

I find a little comfort in the fact
That today more species will be lost
Than named

That there are still regions of the small world
That go unexplored but not untouched
And that the scientists know this
but our particular hungers make them look the other way

Because where I am going there are no poets
And the small insects that dart around my mouth
And stick in the sweat on my brow have no want
Or need for permanence

the beetle of unending deforestation
doesn’t want his picture taken,
and the mosquito of simple pleasure and white wine
doesn’t belong to a phylum but somehow he knows

That we are all in this together
Every last insignificant one of us

Christopher Columbus revisits a failed relationship
Spain 1491

What a sad son of a bitch I must have looked
The first time I came home after that girl
Broke up with me and everybody knew
That I just didn’t know what I was doing anymore

How lost I must have seemed even to my friends
Although they treated me the same and wanted
Nothing more than to drink in my hotel room
And laugh about it

Because we were young and that meant
that we thought it was a time of laughing
as much as we thought it was a time of loss

and I know now that everyone was right about me
because I didn’t have the any clue what I was doing
I couldn’t see that I was laying heavy tracks
and practicing goodbyes

so now when I look back im glad
my friends couldn’t see the look on my face
when I finally said farewell and meant it
to the whole sinking friendship

goodbye you sea of self doubt
goodbye you beams and planks
goodbye long nights without affection

I just heard the world is round, and I am off
To prove them wrong