I blame the stupidly smiling face of that mouse

The fake matterhorn and movie-set mainstreet

Pay your ticket, you get the fantasy

That the world is what you want it to be

Or at least what Uncle Walt wants you to want it to be

And you cede even your idea of what you want

To those that aped the magician, packaging and peddling 

Our own ignorance, assumptions and proud mediocrity

To us and we paid for it and sat back

To have our heads patted as it was morning again

In America and whose fault is it if you

Slipped out of sight because you could not pay

The ticket into Disneyland?

I drop down an embankment and then 

It’s a flat run with a tailwind downriver when

An indigo streamer waves at me from a snag

But not exactly indigo, call it mauve

A color not found in nature, 

In the storm-wind, it’s a plastic bag

Of all things, or what’s left of it,

Such an eccentric color can only mean

Fashion, from one of those golden doors on the Kö

Perhaps, flown ten miles on the wind to its post here

And myself flown five thousand miles and more from home

To this land like my own, if at a tilt and more guttural

A stranger but now I feel almost acclimated, 

Something instantly recognizable in this bag, 

So familiar in its mindless greeting

A lingua franca of groceries toted

Of mattress wrappers, sandwich bags and boxes coated-

It’s crossed and nailed there on that small and dying tree

As are millions more of its kind right now, 

Even as I see it’s shaking itself to ribbons

Testing Xeno’s proposition as it divides in wind and friction 

And divides again, giving itself up to the air

It’s ever-diminishing particles on a flight to nowhere, 

And everywhere, moving on the wind, into the fish in this river, 

Into the birds passing through, that dog pulling at tufts of grass

Over there, expanding outward for a thousand years 

Through you and through me, in this world of disunity 

Perhaps it’s the one thing that binds all of us

And every creature into a polymer destiny

We are all becoming plastic now, united through trillions of bags

Swimming in rivers, floating in ponds and seas

Undulating from fences and posts as well 

On every continent at last, the plastic bag

Is our one, true international flag

the dude is a singularity 

slungshot by dark forces 

through the galaxy

swallowing everything in his path

spewing radioactive malice as he does

so inward sucking, intergalactic yahoo

horizoned by darkness 

and a halo of ruin

knowing only

what he contacts to feed 

his nullity, 

the power of emptiness

the rage of gravity

and will end 

self-consumed not 

even a remnant of what 

was devoured, not a hair,

as all black holes do

eventually

Sky the color of mercury above

Mist the color of lead ahead

Election day yesterday

Done but for the last tally

Distantly a sound 

They’re digging somewhere out there

Been at it for days,

For decades

Some great pit waiting to be filled

While I wait to go out

With hopes the clouds will lift

Though I know the sun will set unseen 

Behind that shroud