Fourteen Leftovers from October

Wreck on Tour

It can be valuable,

To play the fool, to tell

The anecdotes you love

To tell, because you love

To tell them, even if 

You rarely tell them well.

Well-told, they’re of value

To listeners; to fools

They’re of value told true.

Give up the Ghost

How could we ever know we’ve died?

For certain, we see others die.

The rule should generally apply.

But a profound solipsism 

Would require we stay agnostic 

About our own mortality.

What’s life, when we’ve never lost it?

We’ve Been Artificial for Some Time Now

The ancient Chinese hermit in the hills,

Perusing his small collection of scrolls,

Preserving shi in his calligraphy,

Planting root vegetables, brewing his tea,

Was as far removed from a forager

As from the wayside ghost in this car seat.

It’s Earlier Than You Think

Given you’re human, you care

About synchronicity,

And you tend to get anxious

Whenever you wait too long.

I’ve come to reassure you,

You’re not too late, just early.

Something will come along soon.

Might as well savor the wait.

Passed As We Imagined Them

I imagine none of us

Imagines what happens next

Will mimic exactly what

One imagines may happen.

Yet we continue to play

Dupes to our imaginings,

Dreaming and dreading the days

We rarely recall having . . .

Tempus

Time is our fugitive, hounded by hope.

The Rose in the Steel Dust

Most people are not magnets.

Most people are just metal

Attracted to the magnets

But unable to attract

Those magnets (or each other).

Dread Lavender Enlightenment 

You can’t be what you aren’t,

And so you ask yourself,

Over and over, is what you are

Enough? For what?

An Unclaimed Ticket

A lottery is a state 

Of being, perhaps 

The only state being is.

What Happens Next

I don’t need to know.

I’m sure I’ll find out.

Democriverse 

Piled-up bric-á-brac,

Poetry’s just this and that,

Quanta and the void.

Grave Facts

All beings who claim to be

Alive remain fictional.

I am by myself forgot,

Or will be, once I forget

To remind myself to forget.

We are all best-adapted

To the pasts that selected

Our ancestors from their packs.

Shifting winds extinguish that.

Poems to Be Taught in the Dark

Whatever in water strove

To speak, whatever in fire,

Whatever the stars desired,

Something inherent

Was coincident 

With the condition

That wet salt could enunciate

One day as these lines

Of conversational clay.

The Long Autumn

This autumn has been 

Replicating the autumn,

The long autumn of this life.

The weather slowly changes,

And the winter must arrive,

But every storm threat dissolves

In these bright, becalmed blue skies,

And the golden days 

Stretch out like drowsy felines

Lounging in late-angled light.