100 word slam in Worcester tonight…

I’m not going, so I thought I’d post my effort.

The deal is that you get two rounds, and the two poems used can only use 100 words.  It’s ok to repeat words from poem to poem, but each occurrence of the word counts as a word (so you can’t use "fish" ten times and count it as one word.)

Have a good time, y’all.

Round 1:

"Antidisestab-
lishmentarianism."
Leaves me ninety-six.

Round 2:

This world, this blue
stony planet, carries us
without concern for us,
surging through dark matter
toward unknowable ends. Consider

that all the pain
and all the beauty
you have ever known
is hurling itself headlong
through directionless space, where

up and down negate
each other, where north
and south are meaningless.
How petty, how small
our inflated trivia becomes

once we realize this.
Love, hate, disgust, fascination
at the affairs of
humanity shrink to pinpoints
when we lie back

and think of how
this began: a moment
on fire.  Everything
in a pinpoint —
then…everything.