Causal Opacity

“I can change what’s happening in your body just by speaking a few words.”

“But whatever I have done today has done without me.”

Working within the stereoscopic

Logic of paradox like corrective

Lenses for all-too-human perspectives,

You can kind of feel the true, tripartite

Topography of blood, mind, and world drop

Away in shifting steps, abyssal depths.

You are not yourself. Mind is not your own.

You don’t know how anything you know works

And speak as part of a world without speech.

What’s an artificial shadow that shows

The actual contours, the canyon floors?

Each word evolves in continual need

To be understood. Paradoxical

Phrases are words tilted against that need,

Ajar, askew, pitched against each other,

Because contradiction, like the strange prayer

Often attributed to St Francis,

Seeks to understand, not be understood.