Let me spend one of my remaining breaths to say goodbye

to daily papers that filled my life with laughter

even amidst their catacombs that catalogued the oft-depressing dead.

They brought delight detailing movies or bands I’ll never hear.

So, goodbye photographs of circus clowns, &

satellite rendering of a smiley face on Mars.

The news is bad, but bad news, too, must end:

no more police blotter & obituary pages,

no guns, drugs & prostitution stings,

no updates on al-Qaeda like a hateful shopping list.

Even the crossword puzzles & sudokus

will be silenced by the deaths of religions,

sciences, the death of language.

That means goodbye Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

where I mined box scores from the Steelers games,

Herald-Dispatch where I worked as a cub reporter

covering landfill fires & purple ooze in the Ohio River.

Oh, those pages cool & smooth,

yet withered like an old man’s skin.

Oh, bold headlines & agate type,

em spaces, en spaces, kerning.

I will miss all that & I will miss you

if there’s time for missing anything.

It’s not just your body chained to a stick in the flames,

but the be-all/end-all, the vast conglomeration

that soon will cease to be. So, goodbye.

May your ultimate edition not have time to yellow

in silent light from our exploding sun.