from Planet, Earth, World
------
An apology first
I was only taught
how to hit moose
in driver’s ed
not how to care
for them I am not
caring enough
about the land I think
or how I arrived
at this very spot
to write this poem
at work in the bookstore
Can we agree now
that books are not
moral creatures
They do not live
but generate only brief
approximations of the land
they are printed on
the trees and oil
used for boxes and
bubble wrap The water
pulse in timber pulping
mills like Kesey
describes churning wood
for paper for this art
this soliloquy is self-indulgent
but so is all existence
I apologize again
for speaking too softly
reading too deeply
into the elegiac dust
of this late empire
Who does it sing
its last song for?
------
Is it being demented
with the mania of owning
things or writing
in my notebook
bringing the streets or sunset
back from their emptiness
of rhythm or meanings
in the confusing
loneliness of the afternoon
under some honeylocust
wide and flaying
ever outward and I
lost in its totality
Is this the Planet
the Earth or the World
I am resting and writhing
on my small existence
It will be microplastic
that kills us
and it is very important
for you to know
that right now
we did not choose
this tree or who planted it
We did not kill this world
but watched it be killed
by a planet of ownership
by those who did the choosing
first The mapping
and probing first
to take for taking’s sake
------
The lake isn’t a lyric
or a body It isn’t
my memory or a mirror
for the rotten
and clichéd moon
half slanted and slanderous
There is just too much
space in the fields
deer and wildflowers
have died all because of me
and my taking mouth
asking always just please
one more night of drinking
and cigarettes before Capital
collapses this poem
in on itself
Patience is a luxury
as I lay further into the sand
Northern New Hampshire
wealthy and wooded
once mostly farm fields
now new growth forest
and abandoned lumber mills
turned townhouses for
migrating bourgeois
I don’t want to go
to space Liz says
Neither do I
-----
There is no perfection
in the world outside
the red of a cardinal’s
wing or the way
my grandmother picked
roses anytime we visited
making sure the thorns
were broken
and discarded
I wish I cared
for the whole Earth
this way Thoughtful
and delicate cooing on
a riverbank like Liz
in bed in the spring
holding on
to the spinning
city clenching
itself into a vortex
or an endless gyration
of minerals and granite
the soft bedrock
of Manhattan mostly
bones and swamp
we almost forget
the amount of people
killed captured
and held here
Even the poppies
growing under the subway
tracks between the MTA
workers’s cars find
something worth living for
if only to produce
more living more
orange for a season
or an evening like
a full moon birthing
itself from nothingness
from space from the conditional
weight between the peace
of the wild and
the accumulation needed
to condition me to
use paper towels
and plastic sandwich baggies
Remember always
that wherever you stand
something has died there
Nicodemus Nicoludis
Nicodemus Nicoludis is a poet, adjunct professor at CUNY and the managing editor of Archway Editions. He is the author of the chapbook Natural History (rot house books, 2018) and his work appears in Potluck Mag, Maudlin House, Chronogram, Reality Hands, Burning House Press and elsewhere. He earned an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Queens, NY.