untitled - by Dan Schreiber

i had to leave the bar way too early because everybody else was tired and i didn't drive seperately but i had put down a few and was going to be up for a while so i fired up the laptop and opened word. it made perfect sense when i wrote it.

humason smoked a pipe
so we doubted the existence of io’s sulfur volcanoes for decades
sulfur
sulfur on jupiter’s moons
they say if there is any life in the universe outside of earth the moons of the inner gas giants are probably where we’ll find it
cold
frozen water
storms a hundred miles wide that have lasted for centuries
life as we know it
one big asteroid
dirty snowball
gets just enough off course
and life as we know it is gone
even if it exists somewhere else
because we won’t be here to know it
so it can’t be life as we know it
which doesn’t make it any less life
just not known
and the fucking arizona monsoon
washes the trash off the streets
even if it’s not a true monsoon
the rain comes in
and the dirt stops blowing for a day
but the first drops are eerie
as they kick up dust
and life as we know it
stops
only dormant
not dead
to return again tomorrow
to kick up more dust
and replace the trash on the streets
and some days
just some days
it might be nice to watch the whole place burn
and the ashes washed by that monsoon
all the way to the river
and back to mexico
where nobody pretends they live here by choice
or that they’ve ever heard of humason
or io
or the arizona monsoon
but they know the smell of sulfur
and understand what a sulfur volcano would be like
because we gave them factories
gas giants
spewing god knows fucking what
into life as they know it
and their lungs burn
and their eyes sting
and their hearts ache
and their minds long for that time before anyone ever told them we existed
and brother we can’t spare a dime
because we spent it on a machine to make sure we know what the fucking volcanoes 
            on a rock on the other side of the solar system are doing
and if there’s life there
as we know it
and we can’t even figure out how to sustain
preserve
the life as we know it
that we know already
and may god have mercy on whatever life may exist elsewhere
and keep us far
far
far away from it

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