THE 100 BS BUG
				    
Some folks are burrowing   
into shaded hillsides way off   
past the rockiest rural roads,   
hiding in designer-greens, insulating themselves   
from the earth with jugs of water, wads of cash,   
ammunition, and cans, cans, cans because   
the year coming    
up has something to prove,   
its two zeros at the end   
staring like eyes, bulging   
out at us like a bare ass out a car window,   
like emptiness, an open spot   
in the tin brains of machines   
put in charge    
of our numbers, calculating effortlessly   
until a year equates beyond   
nine nine.   
  
Like that's scarey.   
We, unable to see time   
past a couple digits, we forget   
so much, commit ourselves to short-term   
plans inevitably steering for brick walls in the distance,   
our little minds stretched   
like the last swatch of wrapping paper that just about,   
almost covers the whole box.   
  
Remember the 100BS bug?     
Don't worry, it happened   
more than our statute of limitations ago;   
unless you wrote it down,   
why should you know?   
Unless a steel-on-flint spark flashes   
in those loose tunnels of grey matter as you're driving   
down a bright street or passing a highway exit,    
that yellow M   
drawing your attention past   
the noncompliant red rectangle.   
  
Sure, sure, if you could remember   
the first time you saw    
one that read Billions and   
Billions served, you would see yourself   
sitting in an older car, no air bags or CD player, certainly not an SUV,   
certainly knowing a stiffness just under your Adam's apple   
as you realize   
  
those mad fools never gave a thought beyond   
ninety-nine billion served, that awful day the signs should have   
clicked three figures   
but didn't,   
  
when we lost contact with Alaska and Argentina for eighteen horrifying   
hours as communications and governments fell apart; when rail travel   
across the United States stopped dead from Texas to Nebraska in the dust   
of herds with too many stray box cars to ever round up in a night, in a   
week; when the countries known as Zebu and Brangus disappeared off maps,   
off radar, just left snipped wires where borders had been, uprooted roads   
dense with jungle, not a note, not even a word carved on a tree somewhere,   
just gone; they found cows hidden in tenements for weeks, had to flush em   
out with FBI shooters; President Piedmont announcing States of Emergency   
like an auctioneer on and on; all the blood; all the inconveniences   
percolating grudges for months afterward.   
  
I can't blame you for forgetting it,   
we're not a species fashioned to   
remember, to consider   
anything but a thin slice of quarterly future,   
  
we have our drive-through windows of time we live inside,   
every car moving through, but still   
that van no different really   
from the convertible just past, nothing   
as noteworthy as   
the voice caught in our hair, saying,   
Hurry! saying,   
For God's sake, why would they need more than two napkins?