EVERYWHERE THE WORLD IS GREEN AND DYING by Todd Robinson
Todd Robinson
Everywhere the World is Green and Dying
1
           And shelterbelts
       of feeling, barn swallows flashing
               over the river,
                 all fingers reaching,
                  evenings lush and agnostic
                    past our dreaming dogs.
2
                                      Silenced, so many.
                                       I forget the melody,
                                       but not the meaning.
       Praise withered taverns
       grandfather haunted,
       praise starless farm fields,
       years of miracles,
       green tea and green sympathy
       keeping you easy.
3
                                       Bouncing scintillant
                                  sun off the concrete launching
                                      pad of no one’s dream,
                                 who doesn’t clamber
                                 after beauty like Ginsberg
                                 kissed Walt Whitman’s ghost?
4
                                  On the sober house
                                 stoop you sway, dishonesty
                                 a moonlit relic.
                                                     A dirty decade?
                                                 The body’s machinery?
                                                 Better thank it than me.
5
                                                 I began again,
                                          another tin man with heart
                                                 pills in his pocket.
                                    Tinnitus on high,
                             contemplating suicide—
                                    no more magnolia.
6
                                                         Start soon? I really
                                                         hate to say it but I need
                                                         it in the worst way,
       tiny grace notes,
       clean scientific poison
       to keep her quiet.
7
       Faithful and faithless,
            waiting for the facetious
       moon to send you home,
       but prehistoric
       mud holds the shape of a hoof
       for two million years.
8
       Prescription Xanax?
       Yes. Zero chance of quitting
       that which makes sky bend.
9
       She’s wearing my socks.
                           This theft will repeat itself,
       in variations.
10
       This is your brother
       wondering how you’re doing.
       I love you. Goodbye.
11
       Blood-black coffee.
       Your face cannot unfrown itself.
       The kettle hisses.
12
                     Spiritless orphan
                            sliding nowhere with sore feet
                                   over cracked concrete.
              Tree’s bitter fruit, thank
                     forgetting that swallows each
                            vial, bulb, and feather.
13
       Serenity prayer:
       get grateful for yellow
       grass and cracked birdbath.
14
              This pre-elegy
                     another way of eating
              muscle to grow fear.
15
       Even sleeping, she
       snores toward the urn we journey
       ceaselessly to fill.
Todd Robinson has published two books of poetry, most recently Mass for Shut-Ins (Backwaters/University of Nebraska Press). His work has appeared in North American Review, The Pinch, A Dozen Nothing, and Notre Dame Review. He is an Assistant Professor in the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Nebraska-Omaha and caregiver to his partner, a disabled physician. Learn more at his website.
Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #44.