Mark Levine

I don’t exactly think I will.
I don’t exactly wish I don’t.
The science is inexact, and don’t
Think it won’t splice you
As you swish by
On your two-stroke motor
Scooter with your bright visor
Held aloft for all to topple.
Your orbit is unseeming.
It takes you in, like a market
Spilling futures
On the livestock you are
On the soybeans you aspire to
And the husks and straws
Baking your energy
Into meticulous kitty litter crypto
Currency in the metabolic
Cycle you were born for:
Come and see yourself
By and by, baby-naked and
Time-begrimed
In your coin-op space scope.
Its azimuth is lacking
Its optics are exacting
And can smother
Grainy eggs of the tiniest
Horned reptile
Secreted in the stream bed
You once took to.
It might feel like something
To feel something capturing you
In milled mirroring lenses
As you are and would be
But that self-love is
Nostalgia.

Uncomprehending, overwhelming, combative
Regressive, regretful, insincere
Engulfed, disgraced, contrary, forgotten
Misbegotten, misshapen, miscellaneous mister.
Unscrupulous, overweening comrade-in-arms.
Regicidal regimental insectivore.
Englishman dispatched convivially forth,
Misty missiles misfiring mischievously.
Underwater ova combing
Regal regions inland.
Engines disbursing countrified fucks
Mislead meshugana Miss Mishkin.
Missing-the-mark, misery mistakes miso
For continental dish engendering
Insubordinate regurgitas—pregnancy—
Combustible overcoats—until
Dingdong: Helmeted wombats
Caress egrets, sinkholes.
Fried rice condoms go
Begging apes for cellophane terraria.
U owe community
Wreathes, rental-income, inch-long
Engravings your racist coot forges.
Miss us, miscreant? Miss missing?
Apprehensive, well-meaning, we’ve
Aggressively retched in sync,
Unfed, effaced, eerily gotten,
Gotten by happenstance, skeletally, Sir.