Driving up the Dark Hill of the Mind

The only thing in nature
That is growing and goes on,
You suspect it belongs here—

Self-grafting, thing of its own,
It should have sculpted itself
As a source of reliance—

Mind — the invisible guest
Of every conversation,
The process floating mid-air

Maybe, but to be recorded
Whether the fact inheres there
The first line of protection,

What allows a child to feel
Safe within the broken wheel.

The End of the Weird

There’s no way you can create, in words,
Without it costing you, your good
Idea that you care more about more

Than either the life that you loved
Or the life that loved you, mostly
You’re business of less than whole life,

That part of your solid past that
Should shift benefits
Beyond wandering to this place

That’s eating you and that the time
Rules that have got you trapped in here
Awaiting the end of the weird.

You’re waiting the end of the weird,
The Apocalypse of the Weird.

Trio

Your daughter wants to know if
If this disc is you, or if
This disc is cancer, or if

This disc is meds to mix
With happy meds for cancer,

Of all three combined somehow
Since I’ve clearly seen it done.
And it seems happy enough.

Apart Before Dawn

The pinpoint landing
Of a bare needle
In the party dark—

It’s only unfair
If it’s your needle
That’s piercing your skin

In your party dark—
Otherwise, it could
Be the tracks of birds

In the snow tracks have
Not had enough chance
To fully absorb.

Let them survive, Good
Heavens, let them live.
The wind blows across

The fair and unfair,
Kind and unpleasant
Mysteries apart.

Shell Galaxies in Pisces

Peculiar, small variancees

In burning, vast carapaces,

From where you are, you can hear their

Dreams sloshing about quietly

Within the roaring combustion

Of endless nuclear furnaces—.

One writes endless since these places,

These furnaces that will exhaust

Their consumptive fires finally,

Nevertheless show no reverse—

The more advanced the telescope,

Then the older galaxies found,

No signs of stopping—endlessly—

And since the dreams within burning

Have no boundaries to their thoughts,

Suggesting it’s likely the same,

Quiet breathing for all their dreams

Which, unlike yours, do not distort

Or enlarge waking emotions,

Do not, ever, in fact, awake—

What discussions are there, out there—

What if there’s language but no life?

No worst-best gift to be given,

No worst-best horror to be wrenched

Away? Evenings, years ago, when

You could still pretty well walk, you

Went out ahead of a sunset,

Noting how lights could be confused

In your head—planet, star, so forth—

But more how all the emptiness

Hid massive galaxies from you,

The way a cup of spring water

Nursed mobs of infusoria

In its apparent clarity . . .

What if there’s language but no life?

Needs and Marvels

There are marvels in this world
That hunger, legitimate
Hunger, can lightly obscure—

Which could be what ascetics
Were on about, after all—
To reach a point where hunger

Has to contend with marvels
In the simplest performance—
You’re not being sensible.

You should not be doing this,
Writing and watching the cliffs.
You should be feeding yourself,

Planning the next happening,
Sating, not ignoring need.

Fortunate

It doesn’t matter what life
You led, what life it was led
You to feel happy for it—

If you feel happy for it,
If you manage to feel joy
If you are lucky enough

To feel that joy in your life,
You are lucky—not in life,
Not in the worth of life led

As in the capacity
To feel steady joy in it,
Whatever kind of life you led,

Easy or hard, difficult
Or filled with accomplishment—
And it’s never too early

To celebrate your good luck,
And almost never too late.
It’s not the life, it’s the luck

That you can ever feel it—
Let the gods around you fall.
Find someone to discuss it

While you can, someone who can
Still feel it, too. Let God die,
So long as you can still feel

The luck of still feeling it
As lucky, someone who feels
The luck of all of it, too.