Cry for Blockbuster

Creatine capsules and vitamin D supplements —
I pay for Forever with a contactless tap.
I’ve been told my hair will fall out in auburn tufts.
(The quiet rebellion of underclass eye contact.)

When I lumber outside the sidewalks are quiet, foggy gray clouds,
If someone is talking I didn’t hear it;
And there’s this memory, the childlike reprise of strangers and people talking.
I’ve been listening to the same songs, on repeat, on headphones that bend my frames.
I look up and see what’s left of the stars, and the flames smolder out behind the nicotine.

Things have been ever since 10 years ago.
This is my promised future, the future of 2017,
I’ve heard that the old world is dead, and if it is I wouldn’t know.
And it’s sold to me on glimmers and other bad dreams.
I can scroll through Reels and watch people die;
The movie’s over and the music swells up in the credits.
It seems like everyone’s vying for the plank in my eye.
No one’s to blame for looking for the exit.

Now there’s a shaman on every corner
Eyeless smiles like sharks in the sea
The only pressed Polos in a sixty mile perimeter
With perfect sanguined teeth.
Remembering 2008 — cornerless rounded edges,
Sing-song chirping on the physical playground
(the future, prosperous widgets)
The last invention before we all forgot how.
Fearing nothing, not even death,
We’ll all live forever here, nostalgic for bloodshed and
Blockbuster, prescient putrefaction smelling of.
Nostalgia for what?
Blood cries to blood, rot in the Blockbuster carpet —
Genetic memories for the smell of a Blockbuster.
An axe in the head for the glory of Blockbuster.

I miss people, but
Looking through a mirror at the world to come,
We smile on our lonesome.
The future is greater than what came before
And the old things must be no more.
Behold, I am making all things new;
Then and then only, face to face,
Mouth to mouth, shapeless,
All together now, devoid of rot.
A heavenly thought.