Responsoria

1. I talk to people

In my head, the living ones,

The imaginary ones,

But, oddly, never the dead.

I say things such as,

“My dear, let’s stop pretending 

You know anything,

Have ever known anything,

Or will ever be able

To stop pretending.”

I can waste whole days on these

One-sided conversations

Of spiels and pithy sayings,

My substitute for praying.

2. In songs, song people respond

As if they really mean it,

Really feel what they’re singing,

But known people write those songs

And work on composing them

For far too damn long.

Song people and known people:

They don’t correspond.

Am I composing something 

In my head? Then good.

Am I composing 

A response? Then stop. Just stop.

Known people respond one way,

And it’s never with a song.

3. This vs. the list:

It’s always all about that.

I suspect that most people

Simply respond; they don’t think

Too much about the response,

Except on rare occasions.

Those of us who list

Can spend hours in reverie

Composing and rehearsing

Our possible responses,

Uncontrolled compositions

For situations

Real and imagined.

Thus, we lose this loss for that.

4. All inside conversations

Are human means of reaching

Out to what never reaches

Back, muttering to the world,

Crying out to gods,

Even if the imagined

Target of conversation

Is just another person.

Never been a voice divine

Ever arrived when bidden.

Each mind is a garden tomb

With fresh life turning in it.

The response rehearsed within,

Like silent gods, stays hidden.

5. Crucial parts to a response

Are revision and review.

Once you aren’t, you’ve never been.

That’s not quite sharp. Try again.

Imaginary comments

From familiar known persons

Are the harrowing demons

That possess mind descending.

Imaginary comments

From nonexistent persons

Serve as assistants.

Are you more than imagined

Comments ruminating, Zen

Monk sitting zazen?

6. Aspens quake dry ghosts of rain.

Why does wind seem to portend,

When it does nothing but spin 

And die and come back again?

The wind pretends to presence

Out of the silence

That lies in between the winds.

Silence is all it portends.

Still, when it rises,

We sense some storm coming in,

Something new after the end.

If only it would carry

Away with it the voices

That call for our responses.

7. It’s not this or that

Or when vs. then;

It’s when and then against hence.

Some questions can only be

Answered by determining 

The size of their world.

A cosmos, from end to end,

Or a consciousness

Beginning and beginning?

There’s a man with his head down

Who holds the sign that says, “SLOW,”

By the highway construction 

All day in sun and thunder.

My head holds no voice for him.

8. The purest response

Is the response of nothing.

Is the cat alive or dead?

Pesters one voice in my head.

Is your cat alive or dead?

It’s this sort of thing I mean,

The warnings and echoings

Of uncertainties as words

And numbers, original

Imaginary beings.

Oh, if only one could know

One had done the best right thing,

Cries another wrong, dumb thing.

How to respond as one thing?

9. What if the whole universe

Is oscillating?

Could there be information 

Transfer across the cosmos,

All of us, every last wave

Entangled in the lonely

Mind of the universal

God, being, intelligence,

Creator, thinker,

Information exchanger,

With no partner but itself

And our responses, also 

Itself, and no wonder, when

Nothing much talks to nothing?