Every night before going to bed
I fill the arsenal pitchers
with clinical water
just in case.

I freeze every time in school
to hear that descending pitch,
returning to civil algorithms only when
the sound disintegrates
there's no chemical reaction
or duck and cover
when I'm sure it's just a plane.

Every time I'm a passenger
in minivans driving through
suburban commercial centers
I wonder what it'll look like
in ten year's time.
I ask where that other side of the road leads to
in case all systems are cleared
and Google Maps™ is unavailable
to help me out of the wasteland.

Every cesspool left by the rain
kept for the mosquitoes.
Every piece of moldy bread
put back in the refrigerator.
Every piece of paper, plastic
kept for the same reason.

(you never know when
American standards
will turn into sand that)
Every strong wind,
the first blast of New York
(will blow away forever
whose rapid decay
would make believers stop believing
humanists stop hoping
and humanity stop trying)

It's probably the result of reading
too many apocalyptic novels
that left me too tense to sleep,
to breathe in fear of
becoming visible prey again.

But the fatalism's still here.
The fear of when carnivorism
becomes the norm
and then cannibalism
and then what?

That fact that I can write this
on a warm spring day
and still call it poetry

means it's just paranoia.
But it still feels tangible.