Well, I never got around to submitting this one anywhere, and I probably won't be around in 2038, so here goes. Enjoy. 

 

The International Year of Same Old, Same Old

Welcome back from 2004, you seventeen-year cicada /

the turkeys and raccoons have missed their tasty breakfasts so much /

what kind of life is yours, anyway, as fodder / though I suppose

we were all food back in The International Year of Rice /

 

two hundred thousand people sucked into the sea /

other starved bodies / khaki bodies / pestilent bodies /

more bleeding out on city sidewalks / more slaughtered for gods /

who wouldn't want to sleep for the next seventeen years /

 

though perhaps cicadas are optimists / expecting every time

to emerge to a satiated world / well, dream on /

here everyone still hungers / better you should just keep

singing like a didgeridoo, hurry to breed some children before

 

you become lunch / we too have little to look forward to in 2021 /

The International Year of Same Old, Same Old /

big fish still eat little fish / that's why some of us long to

burrow down like you and suck on a tree root for seventeen years /

 

enjoying our preposterous dreams / so I say goodbye to my

voracious world / maybe you'll see me again in 2038 /

fix this shit while I'm gone.