THE WORLD AND US, PART II

The world came back from the dead to discover
that humans had taken over and ruined everything.
So the world smoked a lot of pot
and wrote limpid little poems about spring
that nobody in the world gave two shits about
but the world wrote them anyway because it made him happy,
and because he was so high all the time
that it always felt like spring,
even when the world had just been dumped on
by twelve inches of snow. The ice trucks came rattling
down the streets of the world, but the world
didn't know it. There it sat, with its Bermuda sandles on,
reclining in its giant beach chair, snow swirling about
its hoary head, and nobody even noticing its decadence.
The newsmen came on and spoke about apocalypse
but the world knew better. He had better know better:
after all, he had been to the abyss and back.
To take a simile from one of the world's best poems,
it had been like swallowing a strychine sandwich
that had been left on the counter for weeks
and then attempting to do jumpingjacks
into socks lined with brass tacks.
But that's the beauty of a simile,
it's always just like or as,
never is. The world didn't really eat that sandwich, fyi.
The poem was loosely based on a real-life incident
involving some rotten tuna salad
and a pair of ill-fitting shoes.