How Am I So Profoundly Trivial?

Ping

The last time I consulted a comet,

She pointed out, rather ominously,

That from her perspective, the Earth

Was responsible for everything on it

And everything pinging out away from it,

With no artistic distinctions to be made

For aesthetics, intentions, or species.

“It’s all one and the same production to me.”

I responded by suggesting that icy comets

Crashing into Earth made or at least

Contributed significantly to our peculiar seas,

But she only laughed at me. “Comets crash

Into all kinds of satellites, name as many kinds 

As you please. I don’t see any other planets

With oceans that foam with inventions like these.”

Like these what? I demanded, a little insulted. 

“Whatever! Cells, teeth, oxygen machines.

Carbon chains churning polycarbonate rings.”

She had me. But then, she wasn’t a real comet,

Was she? Only another ping from among Earth’s

Inventions—hungry water, words, omens, me.

Money Makes the Monkey Dance

Any system for moving resources 

Enumerably founds itself on the unstable 

Partnership between intrinsic asymmetry

And increasing fungibility. As far as I am

Concerned, money numbers do not matter,

And how I’ve used them doesn’t matter,

Only why I‘ve used them matters, as a matter

Of character. But to others, my character

Is literally immaterial, and what matters,

Understandably, is what I’ve done with numbers,

How I’ve moved resources toward or away

With them, enhancing or decreasing them.

What matters to me about money can never be

Equivalent to what matters to others, nor can 

What matters to them mean the same to me.

That’s the asymmetry. Money’s fungibility only

Ensures increasing fluidity and instability 

Infect that pure asymmetry, which kills me.

Pain in Another

We’re not so different

About what we want

From poetry, but

We differ in how

We want what we want—

We want to feel weird,

To sense mind-music,

Closer to insight

Than we’ve felt before,

A justified awe.

We want to feel known

By someone unknown

Or something unknown

That bears us goodwill,

Our doubts as our hope.

But the uncanny,

Musical wisdom

Of understanding 

And affirmation

In one person’s thoughts

Is the bland, toneless 

Triviality

Or the dark, clanging,

Echo of ancient

Pain in another.