Far too often I forget your near future
and take the smoke on the horizon
as harmless cotton-candy clouds
that smell almost like the fun at Rockton’s Country Fair.

But now it looks like their deep pockets
won’t save the koalas from the fires downunder
where hell pushes through the skin of Earth
grown as thin as the worn seat of old pants.

Or is it inarticulate adolescent rage rising up
at the sight of the bone-white bleached
Great Barrier Grief
that once was a living smile
in kaleidoscopic color?

Far too often I was dealt to play
but preferred to hold
hoping the game would go away
if I feigned death long enough.
Inaction is attractive
and my leather couch,
strengthened by stupid astrology,
has a tighter grip of gravity
than most black holes I know.

The same boat we’re all in keeps capsizing
to the point where those first to reboard
start taking it as sport and writing rulebooks
that codify who does the rocking
where and when.

Forgive me my forgotten prayers.
Forgive me more for the ones remembered,
which I love to say in the sacred, comfy depths
of my cathedral leather couch.