Rhizomatic Thinking

We're drinking coffee in January's

bed. It's raining. The harbour

hammers high at Lake Ontario.

What an inconvenience. The end 

times, I mean. Can I unwelcome

the undoing? There's burning beyond

the cusp of our cups. All of it,

actually, on fire. Last year I learned

to love a woman. It's softer.

What do you carry? I'm a tree.

The tree is me. Listen, I'm short

on soil, breathing breath, watered

water. I'm scarred down to the bark,

the branches, the mosses. What part

of your body would you most want

to save from extinction? Yes, you

have to choose. We've just stopped

seeing other people. Look at us

emboldened. I know I promised

to stop sweet talking dystopia. 

See the sun? Me neither. It's stuck

in the cedar, it swells my molars.

The seeds. I can show you a forest

sprouting in my back teeth. I can be

coniferous for you. Even here,

like this. The astronomers, do you

know them? They say the universe

expands too fast. I get it. I quicken

at the quickening. You pour Québec 

syrup in my coffee. Swoon. You

woo me. Soon we will coo calamity.

I'd rather my lips stick smooth. 

To be an alarmist and all, the source

of this system we're melting

makes moves to melt us back. Scatter

the matter of our minds. So I prophet

doom where I see it, even sweating

in your white sheets on this winter

solstice. A doom is a doom is a doom

is a doom. How can my spine be of use?

You say if everything is ending,

everything is also possible. Look,

I pressed a bouquet of cilantro

into these pages. The stems glow 

so green. What now? I want to wake

and world alive like this, like we're

at the Berkeley Street Theatre waiting

for the first blackout, the beat

before the play begins, where you brush

my hand and anything can happen.

I tell you, I say, if only I could think

of a deer, see antlers sprout across

the air. Do you remember? From

the trail. After midnight. you weren't

there. Yes, I should have been asleep.

Everywhere the night smelled

like dandelion fluff, like that pale dust

off Lake Ontario. It was an August 

or two ago now. Maybe even three.