peak oil means there is no such thing as a mission

I've gotten over some of my reluctance about poem introductions. We don't share a brain, just a language. So: this is a poem that is not about the universe. Sometimes different narrators jump in and out, like a conversation at a party or in a chatroom. My favorite words in this poem are the rhythm prepositions. The poem is bewildered and pretty. Like lynxes hung on Christmas trees.

Record Us Up Here on the Train

What do you say near railroads and ocean hotels
that doesn't sound like it needs raccoon makeup?

Let us gut the apple pastry shells and fill them
with teeth varnish and benzyl peroxide and four
shitty compensations for our loss of the waltz.

I have a list of those to whom we owe apologies:
anyone in photos missing feet, infants in drawers,
that LP on primetime TV with the shotgun,
all the gooey glitches of the way too sunk.
Lucky us tho! See: we get blowjobs from
gameshow relics and Audi owners and tuned eyebrows.
That class with the next-nicer spaghetti sauce.
Dude, this cereal! This suffering, this summer labor?
You don't know. It sort of feels okay-ish some.

That waitress who lifts barbells on her balcony
looks like a tabloid actress sometimes, then a girl
from your subscription to Sad Foreign Shrapnel.
That is, on certain nights she makes your chest white
and looks almost a whole life long. Almost full.

What do you say on railcars in cotton hoodies
that doesn't sound like the sitcom's drug episode?

I promise not to drink of corporate yerba matte soda,
which is $4.75 and tastes like green hair gel.
We shall sustain the raisin boxes and baby carrots.
Wait, do you need oil to make cardboard?
Google when the carrot season starts. A gourd?

Shit: anything now to remember a squaredance.
This emo-ass shuffle of wilt and dust soccer
will not look impressive on top of the boxcar
or get me from the cattle to the textiles,
from CRYOGENIC BODIES to DINOSAUR MODELS.
Hey, a boxcar full of new white horses.
It's something more to soldier for, I think.

You dangle over to photograph some graffiti.
I make seventeen billion jokes about midnight,
none of them an ark or an underwater kiss.