Adam Jon

When I die I’ll still be reading this poem to you
in this very moment, like an orange
sliced and sectioned, sweet and unmistakable,
even while I’m at an unmarked train crossing
thirty-two years in the future.
I’ll be in a bad state that night, but remember how alive I am now
in this moment that changed:
the vain pulsing in my chest,
the useless anxiety of my breath,
the tremble in my fingers on this page and the steering wheel.
How similar it all is,
as if I know what proceeds.
And, in one thousand years the world shatters anyway
by no implication of human or tree or train.
Started by a cosmic hang-up, stars forgetting how to live,
God dropping the China.
No blood on our hands.
No stone on our backs.
The opening and ending flash right now with pyrotechnic
black hole and planetary shards
splaying about through the future
(which is actually the present, don’t forget).
So, consider me outside of your macroscopic eyes
freckled shy as I am at thirteen,
freighted and eyes set now, and
how dead I am in thirty-two years
with a fiery train growing out of my chest.