Discarded, Somewhere Else

We know you want to be the human
Equivalent to another bunch
Of shambled buildings on the roadside.

You crave the side of an empty road.
That’s where you feel growing old,
Where you feel you could grow your oldest,

Like some creased Galapagos tortoise
With a scuffed house on wheels for a shell,
But much as you love the ways the world

Falls, you know people keep building things
To eat up other things, to eat up
Other people—how this road got here,

And how you got here, and how you’ll fall,
Likely far from this side of the road.