utopia with a capital "u"

and i'm counting the ways i can say goodbye:
with a word with a smile with a
song with a nod with a -- 
chalky hands shake behind closed curtains and
ashy sunlight pulls open blinds with prying hands and
the radio chops itself into pieces.
with the look in your eyes with the
smile ghosting your lips with the
blood on your heart and hands with --
it's a utopia on some days, the way the
trees steal back the cities and the thunderclouds
crash and shake the world. i found a cougar
sleeping while i raided a house, and birds nesting on 
windowsills, and i'm
starting to think this isn't ours anymore.
with melancholy with joy with
rage with triumph with
hopelessness --
some days i miss the television;
the whizzing colors and zany sounds and
the places we went where crude figures were all our cares.
i can't remember pop music, but at night i hear
drums and blurred voices singing.
the people on the roads say this is it now, back to
wood huts and breedless dogs guarding fires, back
to cave painting and rediscovering the shapes in the stars.
with hope with hopelessness with hope
with hopelessness with
hope(less) hope(ful) with what we've got left --
i think that the world is smaller now, flat and sharing a sky.
i think that progress is a phantom and we'll tread these
tracks forever: for ever: for as long as we let ourselves,
and coyotes trot down the streets at night, and flowers bloom
in what was once a kitchen, and time lost itself somewhere. but
the words that i once knew don't need to be known and
the world that once defined itself to ruin doesn't need
to be defined and i think this is alright. UTOPIA.

and to the shapes in the stars, nothing has changed.