John Tangney

I had a thought this afternoon while reading Aristotle,
about ethics, but it didn't last that long and soon
the doorbell rang. It was a girl I know
from Kentucky, who wanted to take off my clothes.

We went through the motions of making coffee
but never got to drink it, and afterwards I teased her for a bit.
She left angry, but still in love with someone I'm not,
and I straightened up the apartment where I live,
a human animal with traits I'm not conscious of.

I turned the AC off because I'm an environmentalist
of sorts, compared to her at least, and sat in the kitchen
in a nest of books and papers and tea,
with a view into the branches of tall woods
where birds sing and squirrels live, and I felt okay
about myself, though the world as I knew it
hasn't long to go, icecaps are melting, and that kind of stuff.

A strange golden light hovered over the mosquito screen,
some trick of opulent summer. Mexican painters were talking
outside by their SUV, while Al Gore preached cycling
to save ourselves. I was heartsick, it comes back to me,
being one too many by myself, and one too few as well.
I watched Pocahontas on my computer screen, some actress,
imagining how she would've been, but I didn't believe it.
I reckon she smelled of grease and shit to a modern sense,
and so did John Smith, and they weren't beautiful to us,
only to themselves, and only for a while. They died of something,
I don't know what, and left their names for me to play with.
A small patch of that forest lies outside my window.