The blue whales have stopped singing

because the krill are vanishing

because the oceans are warming

because we are ruled by long-toothed liars

whose insides are full of dead leaves.

The great whales have gone silent

and my bird has gone blind

and there are chatbots in the basement

and corpses in the corn.

Under the overpass it is dry and still.

You would never know that everything is dying.

You should come and visit me.

Meet me over there under the sepia streetlights

with the strangleporn perverts and fentanyl fallen,

all the stillborn scar tissue extractions

from the wreckage of a banished womb,

the NAFTA-noosed factory towns full of deserted buildings

and the window-snarling meth towns full of deserted people,

where the cries of orphaned Palestinians mingle

with the cries of the last baby orangutan

ever born in the wild.

Meet me under the flickering lights.

Bring me some smokes and a sad luck story

and let's stay up late by the freeway

watching the traffic get sparse.

Show me the spots on your skin

where life has kicked you

and I will kiss them

and give you a flower.

The leviathans have gone quiet

and the turbines are getting loud,

and everything has become so strange.

So sit with me on this curb

under my burlap wing

and let's laugh

and heal

and mark beauty

until sunrise.

Reading by Tim Foley.