Kids these days
are refusing to answer the phone and
thus they are dragging
the rest of us with them into
an effortless, non-verbal future
through signs and signals,
through texts and flash mobs,
through dilution and over-brief
sloganeering.

They aren’t taking “no” for an answer
when I suggest some of us
prefer to speak, use breath,
bathe each other in unique voice —
they say we’re just old dogs
and maybe they are right
but discussion is futile
so we’ll never know for sure;

they aren’t taking “no” for an answer
to any question whatsoever,
so for this and other reasons
linked to how we’re all
not getting along

I decide that it has to be,
at last,
time for
the end of the world.

I remove all doubt
about where I stand on the moment
by hurling myself to the ground
and tearing into it
to make a cave
or bunker there, a home
in the land,
not on it,
telling myself: 

if you refuse to lose
you become the “no”
they refuse to hear,
so I refuse to let go
of any chance to touch people
directly,

or at least I won’t go
without a fight.

Yes, this is what I say to myself
as I declare it’s time
for the end of times,

although to the Others
it must look for all the world
as though what I am digging
in an act of silly resignation
is my own grave,

so they kick the dirt over me
and move on.