We were, once, a verb:
throats raw with the possible,
placards wet with promise,
walking into a decade not yet written,
growing a luscious tree from a young sapling.

Now the canopy is full.
Look at it.
Appearance.
Green, sufficient,
photographed,
complete—a neat civic postcard of ourselves,
while under the bark the slow bureaucracies of rot
go about their quiet work unnoticed,
cell by cell,
each of us tunnelling a small private space,
fragmented,
inside the common trunk.
A dying heart.
Malaise on one branch,
its mirror snarling with division on the other,
and nobody plants.
Where are the green shoots?

Sing it again,
The Times They Are A-Changin’,
sing it before
the strong wind arrives to prune,
and the whole damn good-looking thing comes down,
entropy,
in a sound the sleeping street might mistake
for feign applause.

 

11/8/2026