Crab Nebula

On the solid wood counter sits a jar
bursting with a bouquet of black drink stirrers
like a bundle of hollow black bird bones, slightly shiny
as if carved of obsidian, or anthracite,
rather than just mass-produced in cheap plastic. 
Suddenly I'm tired of trying to salvage 
the worthless crap of this world. Why
should it fall to me? Easier to turn my back to it,
or just pretend I don't see it, just like everyone else does.

No. Once you've focused your attention on the banal,
you can't look away. You can try to forget it exists
but it'll still be embedded there, buried beneath the skin.
A tiny grain, a poppy seed so dense that it will suck
everything else in the world through it. The universe compressed
and reflected in the stalked eye of a baby crustacean,
a creature small enough to perch on the tip of your pinky

with claws too soft and tiny to pierce your skin
as it scuttles sideways across the bumpy terrain of its world,
your palm, both of you, all of us, spinning slowly along
the edge of that whirlpool, the current carrying us toward
that crushing black center. I yawn, too exhausted to do anything more
than float along with it. Maybe I will be squeezed through
to exit somewhere else, landing much diminished
in a world where nothing is banal, everything is extraordinary,
the sky constantly filled with exploding stars.