In the Key of Elsewhere
Your portfolio? A coral reef in reverse:
each dividend a polyp’s skeleton, each hedge
a sea anemone’s retracted vow. We parse the wind
for ticker-tape confessions, but the wind speaks
in mycorrhizal verbs — splice, symbiosis —
its grammar, a lung borrowed from ferns.
—
The last billionaire kneels in a wheat field,
plucking his teeth to plant monoculture regrets.
His Rolex sprouts chickweed. His tie inflates
into a dirigible of creditor moths.
Collateral is what we name the dew now,
each drop a liquid covenant with rot.
—
We’ve rewired the sirens. They ululate
in dog-whistle octaves only rust understands.
Our debts? Recycled as nesting material —
starlings line their nests with shredded bonds,
hatchlings pecking at the watermark’s aftertaste.
The grid’s a carcass we’re gutting for ribs
to build a bridge to nowhere useful.
—
Its pylons hum with the work songs of extinct
electricians, their blueprints eaten by silverfish
who shit out constellations.
Profit is a dead tongue. We speak in
spore, in hypha, in rhizome. Our central bank
is a rogue beehive auditing the sun.
—
Inflation? A dandelion head’s calculus,
each seed a parachute with no landing party.
The apocalypse came. We mistook it
for a town hall meeting. Agenda:
How to unstitch the sky from its NASDAQ dye,
how to teach fire to digest derivatives.
—
Minutes are kept in the rings of irradiated oaks.
And you, capitalist catechism, your liturgy
of more — we’ve buried you in a midden
of obsolete pronouns. Your resurrection?
A mold bloom on the tombstone’s barcode,
a wet click in the throat of the fox
gnawing the last HDMI cable to spark.
—
We are the aftermath’s grammar, the wound
that scabs over with blackberries.
Not survivors — symbionts. Our anthem:
the static between radio stations,
the glottal stop of a power grid’s final breath.
Nothing collapses. Everything translocates.
Ask the nematodes. Ask the rust.