Blanking

"There was no snow in Eden as I remember it" - Jen Hadfield

The roofs of cars
were whales humped
in the snow. Rarely higher
than minus 18;
gas pipes fractured, spouted
methane to the atmosphere.

                                                                      Melville was the first to go,
                                                                     Spine cracked back
                                                                     dealing pages like playing cards.
                                                                     The words burned on brain tissue
                                                                     long after I called Ishmael
                                                                     to keep us warm tonight.

It was Pompeii, but colder
we dug wounds to doorways
that scabbed in minutes,
scar free by morning.

                                                                     Only Bradbury gave me guilt.
                                                                     The flat red fireman, surrounded
                                                                     by flat red flames, devoured
                                                                     by the bob and weave
                                                                     of a living death.

The reticulated veins of power lines
contracted and snapped,
whipped fireworks
through the frozen air.

                                                                     The first failures,
                                                                     half devoured hunks of books,
                                                                     taught me how to part pages
                                                                     scrunching them into balls of fuel.

The carefully cultivated
layers of mankind peeled back
to this; roof, food, fire.

                                                                     We discovered the genius of Shakespeare
                                                                     could keep us warm for a week or more.
                                                                     The chapbook fellows only flared up
                                                                     full of heat, but no longevity.

What madness snaps the rigid bars
we crossed into adulthood?
Sent us capering in firelight
charcoaling moments of life
on the living room walls.

                                                                     Of the modern poets I finally developed a liking
                                                                     for the authors
                                                                     who devote a whole page to a haiku.

Men, unlike spiders, are unwilling
to curl up or curse God and die.

                                                                     The Bible shrank in my sacrilegious hands
                                                                     pared of obscure prophets and
                                                                     unrevealing revelations.
                                                                     Distilled down to the purity of ice:

"So do not worry about tomorrow;
for tomorrow will care for itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own."