a vine
grows around
the dictator’s ankles.
the dictator falls to
kudzu, or ivy, or
wild grape.

a bicameral congress
is eaten
by ferrets.
both houses
fall.

do you see the president
behind the bees?

all the businesses are closed
for dolphin mating,
their slick sex
destroying the fixtures
and merchandise.

and over there’s a church
which has no walls
so how is a wildfire
trapping people inside?

every artist is struck dumb,
throats replaced with redwoods;
sculptors and painters and dancers fall
in agony, their hands and feet torn from
the bark sprouting and scaling.

I am coming home
naked, hooting, calling
non-verbally, hoping you
have survived the same way.
it seems
the only strategy
guaranteed to work.

Once, prompted by the fatal flaw
of believing I personally mattered
to the universe,
I indulged in a moment of
disaster planning.  “Save me,
save me!” I cried,
under the spell of the belief
that I mattered, that I matter beyond
what I had given and given up
to the Swarm — and then, swallowing hard,
I loosed my stinger and died,
a nameless worker bee
dying for the hive to survive,
because that was my job and my role
and what I was born to do.

I came back as a human,
a fat, sad, disheveled male
with a house full of boxes
of my writing and music.
Last story written, last 
song played.  No one
apparently listening anymore — 
I’m sitting at my desk crying.

How many lifetimes will it take
to learn such a simple lesson?