today i learned that the word forest and the word foreign are the same
they are both things that are outside and unknown or something like that
today i learned that there used to be forests you could walk in and be lost right away
the trees would close in around your path as you learned it the world would change
today every place is a city and what we call a forest is also a city
the desert is a city and the mountains and the sea
is a teeming humid city littered with beautfully localized drink containers
from city to city to city we ride in icy air and music
birds could never have made such music birds were what you call a cul de sac
a dead end street that you have to just turn around and walk back over
or else continue into weeds and broken pavement and the burning rubber air
in the miles of nothing between cities birds are derivative and stale
when the ancient city of troy was destroyed maybe some trojan poets wrote about it
or sang i guess in those days people didn't do much writing
but there were fewer and fewer of them and no one was running the grain mills
and those songs were depressing and what difference did it make
when the birds are all extinct someone will make a song of it
it won't be birdsong but who wanted that anyway
every poem will be a ghost of birds and everyone will be sick of hearing about it
and finally everyone will say fucking birds I'm glad we got rid of them
today I tried to write a poem about the forest but there was no forest
there were only some pictures I saw as a child
of thick-bodied children with serious faces in a stage set of the forest
the birds ate their road of crumbs and disappeared and they were lost