Good News

I heard about your nudity. Congrats! It's a fitting
denouement to our crumbling infrastructure,

petty as a picture. Tossing it aside, I'm all dreamed up
with no lawn to mow. I bought a vacuum

but soon abhorred it. Please to reserve me
a relevant doughnut; it's time

for a new beginning, the last ever.
What an expected surprise! And sorrow!

I'm wearing important underwear now
whose grace knows no natural predator.

§   §   §

A Short Goodbye

We took a lot of pride in our druthers. The fat sky
cradled us demotically; in short order
the forest was adjourned. Who lurks there now?
It gets hard to see as night falls

out of favor with the dead. Teased into being,
it begins to warm to your subjectivity
even as mine cools off. Stripped
to its merest identity, a song one once despised
is what one imagines anew
in lieu of an evening's elastic embrace.

That done, one is free to
usurp a throne or two, to open
one's heart for a closer view. Faceless
yet unafraid, I stood hip-deep in your thoughts,
whose train had up and left. Well then, I said,
have a nice life, and a good weekend.

--- Matt Walker