All My Poems Are Coming True

The 21st century like a final curse
from a vengeful dying god,

this momentary flailing about
between two slabs of endless dark.

Toss aside the melancholy French novellas
and the pictures of people who have perished in the fires,

open the kitchen window and take in
whatever it is that’s left to us:

the lonely noises of the city,
the stink of wasted hours,
the muffled sighs of the lost.

The poets are spent,
grasping at tired words,
disintegrating into the ether.

The books and the poems
and the paintings all born
of plastic machines.

The empty cars drive themselves
through the dark.

People disappear,
they go clean,

become responsible
citizens and other ghosts,

dissolved into the fear
of what is coming,

leaving only bones and no one
to remember they ever had names.

William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in San Francisco. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, and a volume of fiction. His work has been published widely in literary journals, including Rattle, The New York Quarterly, and The Chiron Review. He was a recipient of the 2013 Kathy Acker Award, and edited Cocky Moon: Selected Poems of Jack Micheline (Zeitgeist Press, 2014). His latest poetry collection, A Room Above a Convenience Store, is available from Roadside Press.