Around the time of the end of the world
( or feed me to the dust)
There’s only poets left
And even we scream
In the face of purple night,
“Feed me to the rat king;
See what he has to say,”
You know things are bad
And that we’re bad at them
Do you know what
I mean by that?
I mean, the world is no longer ours.
The rat king makes puddles
Of our uselessness
And lets the dust drink
As if our words were dull diamonds
In a patch of wild flowers.
Only in the soil
Would you recognize the scent
Of us still
There under all those leaves
Corey Howard is a poet, musician, and chef living in Brighton, Ma. He is the Senior Editor of the literary journal Hollow. His poems have been published in The Finger, Paradise in Limbo, Hollow, New Bourgeois, I Want You to See This Before I Leave Zine, and the South Jersey Review. He is 25 years old.
