Centripetal Eddy You’ve Been

You’ll never fully access

The truth about what you feel,

And that goes for everyone,

Awareness riding along

Like tectonic plates atop

Forever restless magma.

You don’t have to try so hard.

Self-knowledge, self-awareness

Are not those keys to wisdom

And enlightenment you’d like

Them to be. They’re part of you,

The part that the world can’t keep,

But they’re neither delusions

Of an ego’s monkey mind

Nor know-thyself solutions.

They’re you as you ever is,

And, somehow, they’re alien,

Little vacuoles in flesh

That hiss and murmur, I am

This person here, and I am

Its unified history,

And I have nowhere to go

Once I’m not, so I rotate

Fast as I can as I can.

Dispossession

Nothing should be exotic.
An other is another
Domesticate in context

And in their own awareness.
Set nothing apart. Accept
Difference without amazement.

This is about ownership,
About stripping collectors,
Colonists, imperiums

Of their wonder cabinets
And their plunder museums.
Rightful ownership,

Ownership by primacy
Or creative origin
Is the moral argument.

Belongs to us. Give it back.
But you’re so weary, your eyes
Slide unconsciously to sleep,

And the dream is so vivid,
A country road, you standing
Beside a car you don’t own,

Gold sun through heavy green
With a honeysuckle scent,
And this is not your life. This

Is another world lived through
By a subjectivity
You haven’t, nor ever will

Encounter, inhabited
By an other entity,
Owned by nothing and no one.

Promising but not Promising Anything

Changes are fugitive, stasis

Nonexistent. Still, there’s sameness

From every moment to the next,

Though current evidence suggests

That this effect is transient

And does not improve survival.

You have the sensation you’re here,

And, however fast it’s shifting,

You’re mostly the same you you were,

Though current evidence suggests

That this effect is transient

And does not improve survival.

You can try to fix that sameness

In place by enumerating

Each element that hasn’t changed,

Though current evidence suggests

That this effect is transient

And does not improve survival.

Or you can pick an interval

And simply subtract the changes,

Labeling all the rest the same,

Though current evidence suggests

That this effect is transient

And does not improve survival.

Or you can ignore the puzzle,

Live as if you had captured change,

Understood sameness, and found peace,

Though current evidence suggests

That this effect is transient

And does not improve survival.

Reviewing the Troops

Battalions roll in battle formation,
Past the Dear Reader’s reviewing station,

Rhetoric rumbling, thunder on the air,
Solid prose blocks on parade through the square.

The arguments pass in orderly ranks,
Clanking in oiled rows of well-armored tanks.

Where are the rest of the forces? Parades
Seem like the optimal time to invade,

To catch the tyrannical Dear Reader
While absorbed in playing at cheerleader

For this metaphysical might marshaled
By deserting poetry’s battlefields.

The columns march on, packed words goose-stepping
And gone, the Dear Reader soon forgetting.

Home Safe

Guns make poor defensive weapons.
Bunkers lack exit strategies.

So there you are, billionaire boss,
Eccentric inventor, tyrant,

Supplied for the next hundred years,
Militia’s worth of armory,

Artificial full-spectrum lights,
More IP than a library,

And maybe a little needle
Of cancer commencing in you.

No Unique Conclusion

Cancer is almost the most
Ordinary death there is,
Proof bodies will eat themselves

If predators, parasites,
Violence, and accidents
Are kept from shredding them first.

The body will eat itself,
If broken cells turn selfish,
Multicellularity

And devotion to the whole
Community of the beast
Betrayed for a brief huzzah,

Runaway evolution
By natural selection
Favoring the buccaneers.

The failure of maintenance,
Of policing, of local
Submission to global rules

Produces, briefly, new life,
New worlds of cancer chaos,
And this is ordinary,

This is the state of nature
In the struggle of all cells.
Life hungry for life itself.

Meaningfully Uncommunicative

Accepting that language evolved
For communication, not thought,

One shouldn’t be surprised thought’s hard
To parse, abstraction’s awkward,

And philosophers are often
Horrible writers. But it may

Also be why poetry tends
To inscrutably meaningful,

As meaning is orthogonal
To messaging—information

Isn’t maxed by the same process
Maximizing meaning making.

Meaning doesn’t communicate
As the first order of business.

Final Sleep After Too Many

When the surgeons say
To have a nice nap,
They know well you’ll wake

Up miserable—
They’re teasing, really,
As you are, saying

Goodbye world, drifting
Off to sleep, knowing
You’ll be back in just

A few hours. That’s been
Both life’s long joke and
Life’s small punishment,

Wakey, wakey, rise
And shine, awareness
As obligation.

But now, you’re almost
Done with all of that.
Sleep that’s not joking

Is a last mercy,
You don’t have to give
A chance to come back.

On Barely Being

None of your strategies matter,
Close to your vanishing—it’s not

That they couldn’t possibly work.
Just that there’s no time to test them,

And what are they strategies for,
Really, anymore? Not long life.

This was always the thing about
Hospitals, jails, classrooms, childhood

In general—the more you were
Restricted, the freer you were

In some way difficult to say.
Not free from care and emotion

But from the trap of causation,
Perhaps. Those who can, feel they must.

Those who can’t may lecture the dust
On being less industrious.

Speravi

Things that you will never do
Stand equal to each other,
The grand goals and the humble.

You don’t ever have to choose
Between the things you can’t,
But you never really chose,

So why not keep pretending
You’re selecting, or at least
Dreaming, among your futures?

Your motto may no longer
Be supra spem spero, but
You had always liked to hope.

Pretend to pretend until
Unfulfilled future’s fulfilled.

Looks Like You Won’t Die Any Other Way

Alone in the shadowy room,
Hot sun on the desert outside,

You picked at an old piece of tape
On your arm and contemplated

Whether you were or weren’t learning
Something that amounted to fate.

Dying’s an old fashioned darkroom,
Like the one you used in high school,

Where you bathe the film of frames past,
And develop your negatives,

And scrutinize the contact sheets.
You’ve got nothing but what’s on them.

The end result’s not determined,
But the selection’s limited,

So limited it feels fated
How death is going to look for you.

You flicked the tape in the trash can,
Squinting out the window at the heat.

Fresh Note to Old Fred

This can be right—Poetry

Doesn’t matter in the least—

And this be wrong—Poetry

Is meaningless. It’s habit

To assume meaningfulness

And mattering are tightly

Linked, if not synonymous.

What’s meaningful matters, and

What matters is meaningful,

But that’s not always the case,

At least when mattering means,

As it seems to in your poem,

Something akin to import,

Impact, being the cause of

Real, material effects.

Poetry doesn’t stop war

(You name-checked the nightmare feast

Of Putin as example,

Which I first read as Pushkin),

Doesn’t prevent invention,

Doesn’t pass legislation,

Is at most inspiration

For such actions, even if

You believe in causation.

But meaningless? Anything

Can be gifted with meaning

In the orbit of humans,

And language is expected

To have meaning anyway,

And poetry is language

Distilled—straight up or cocktails—

So it’s especially prone

To collecting meaning clouds,

But even if weren’t so,

The potential would be there.

Look at what just happened here

To your poem, with this reader.

No, your poem doesn’t matter,

But it’s meaningful. Now what?

Bedside

A hospital can be a jovial place,
At least for a week or two.
The staff can be friendly and kind.
You can banter with the crew.

It’s only when you don’t get well,
Just get sicker, start to despair,
Linger, become less inclined to banter,
That it’s heart-sinking to be there.

Yes, it’s mostly self-pity. Yes,
It’s loneliness. You’re estranged
From family, from your own memories,
From any encouraging kinds of change.

You want to be back on the mesa.
You want to be back at the lake.
You want to be with your daughter,
Laughing at how she hacks into birthday cake.

A nurse comes in as you’re shuffling
Through old travel photos on your phone,
And she looks at the pictures, how pretty,
A mercy. To share memory. To not be alone.

Make Your Peace

Once the miracles have been accepted
As lies, once gods go to ground, it’s assumed
The power of faith to console survives.

Not always. Or not uniquely. Comfort
Can come from physics for some. For others,
Somehow, even evolution consoles.

Consolation, like meaning, doesn’t lie
Where people find it, but in the people
With the gift and the need for finding it.

Self-soothing, sometimes it’s called in infants,
And it’s unevenly distributed,
As ability, as product, as scent

Almost, but it’s your own, and neither faith
Nor facts are necessary to your peace.

The Lightest Weight

The butterfly lands,

Busy as a bee

With sprezzatura,

Wings might as well be

Equivalent capes

To a bullfighter,

Here I am and slow

And easily torn

But with work to do.

If you couldn’t see

Color, if you weren’t

Prone to assign moods

To coincidence—

The dolphin’s fixed smile,

The lemmings’ despair—

If you could prevent

Yourself from telling

Meaningful stories

About aesthetics,

Metamorphosis,

Paradox, chaos,

You’d have so little

Bandwidth left you’d see

Papillon as bug,

As insect, getting

Food to fuel laying

Eggs under the leaves,

But you can’t help it.

These brilliant cut-outs

Of shimmering scales

Mean for you Psyche,

Soul, delicacy,

What you mean to be.

Accessibility

You’re in a box, you often

Remind yourselves, although it

Took you long enough to learn

As much—a small, sensory

Deprivation box. Seeing

Out of the box proved the box,

Proved there were more things to see

Than human eyes could. At first

It seemed pure discovery.

Early lensmen were accused

Of lying about their moons,

Monster blobs in ditchwater—

Or, if not lying, blinding

Imagination’s angels.

Even now, disenchantment

Is the paradoxical

Catcall against those who seek,

Through prosthetic devices,

The vast worlds outside boxes,

Waves too deep for lives to count,

Waves so long they’re gravity.

No one doubts you’re boxed, though, now,

Awareness sensorily

Impaired, bound, restricted,

Dependent on assistive

Technologies to peek past

Old tales and angels. You’ll see.

The Magical Materialist Raises a Hand at the Back of the Class

Doubtful that Borges
Thought either that the world
Was changing its appearance
In ways his eyes
Faithfully registered,
Or that his metaphysics
Had disenchanted the world of its light.

But let anyone complain
That we are living in a world
Disenchanted of mystery,
Increasingly bereft of magic,
And they, blind to Borges
And other recent, fine enchanters,
Will surely blame the dimming world
Or materialist philosophies.

It will not occur to them
That, while not their fault,
Not their choice, just who they are,
The disability is theirs.

Stirring, Not Fishing, Not Even Catch and Release

People get proud and intense
About moment-savoring.

The only problem with that
Is that it fetishsizes

A stretch of continuous
And continuously changed

Experience as a bump,
Quantum in the field of waves—

By the way, is it not sweet
That in the opposition

Of points and waves
Both sides are made of the waves?

The moment is wave in wave.
You can let it slide. You can

Grasp that it’s not your moment,
Savor that you can’t grasp it.

Washed Up

The coracle’s a wreck
That somehow hasn’t sunk
Or flipped belly-up yet.

Acorn-cap of a boat,
Who thought of such a thing?
Don’t answer that. Let’s not

Let explanation set
Us adrift. The basket
In which awareness sits

Tilts in the grey wavelets
Close to the shore. Questions
Should invite Yes or No.

Can the boat be rescued?
Yes, although it depends
On for how long—Wait. Stop.

Only the question posed.
Is the coracle safe?
No. Is there a paddle?

Yes. A destination?
Once, maybe. What is it?
A wind is coming up.

Dewdrop Inn

They said, We own it.
So there, that’s settled,
And so were they, puns

And all. This would be
Their permanent stay,
Indefinite grant

To occupy part
Of the past as if
Only visiting.

Step out. Look around.
The narrow tarmac
Between the ghost woods,

Everyone murdered
To get here. No one
Left but the owners,

The hosts, the new hosts
On the old, drowned coast,
Their empty hotel

Next to the warning
Sign for tsunami
Evacuations.

Decades ago, when
Poems tried different things,
When both right and wrong

Those tricksters, would come
Down to the glassed-in
Hothouse swimming pool

Behind the inn, join
The deer in sneaking
In, eager, nervous,

Unaware how soon
They would fail to make
The key decision,

And begin to change.
They said, We own it,
But they kept going

And forgot to sign
The precise papers
That would have let them

Stay—Now they’re too old.
The inn is still there,
But they didn’t stay.

Encoded Content

Could be memory.
Could be digital
Or a printed book.

It feels misleading,
Too general somehow.
You stare at your hands

Of information,
Wriggle the digits
You learned to count on

Taught your child to count
With as well. Nerves, skin,
Capillaries, bone,

Encoded content?
If you mean it, if
You really mean it,

Understand it’s you
Who makes it mean so,
And you ought to know,

What you meant isn’t
Content encoded,
Isn’t encoded

At all—those were wings
That were capable
Of flight without fall.

Purity and Belligerence

The tent poles of commitment
Can be set to capacious
Enough for field commanders—

Even brooding emperors—
For a whole world-class circus
With vendors and audience—

Or to frightened narrowness,
So close as to be absurd,
Useless for holding things up,

Bound to twist, topple over,
Sad, incompetent madness
Collapsed in heaps of canvas,

But don’t laugh. Pillars of fire,
Pillars of cloud, of Moses,
Caesar, Aurelius, Khan,

Balance holding high the roof,
However temporary,
Of human authority,

Retaining capacity
To incubate tragedy
And hide it under trappings

Of gaudy extravagance.
By the one pole, purity,
Belligerence is anchored,

And, in turn, belligerence
Grants tension to purity.
Are you really one of us

Through and through, grounded, upright?
Will you lean into the wind
In defense of principle?

Mostly, it’s not dramatic
As all that, but there’s a tilt
Toward alignment, a tilt

Against whatever isn’t
In that alignment, and one
Never without the other.

You Lie, He Cried

Where does an opinion end
And a settled fact begin?

Right there, on the horizon.
All the human violence,

Mercy, keeps confined within
The landscape of opinion,

While calm contentment has been
Waiting past certainty’s thin

Division where the sky spins
To ink the infinite skin

Of what cannot be questioned—
Truth in its own environs

Past that line, in your vision,
Within sight, the horizon.

Assassin Sonnet

An exceptionally incompetent

Assassin seems to have been tracking you.

You got jaundice. You got cancer. You got

Sepsis. You were wreathed in a cloud of tubes.

You got a hernia that grew and grew.

You compressed and fractured a vertebra

Without hardly noticing it. You puked

Blood, you shit blood, you got holes in your gut.

You got yourself cauterized frequently.

And still, in all this, you’re missing something,

And you keep breathing. You swear you can hear

The desperate assassin whispering

Prayers at impossible distances, Lord,

Lead us the way we want to go, Amen.

Riddle

It’s interesting and contains
Occasional pleasures, that’s all.
It doesn’t win competitions.

It doesn’t measurably make
A net improvement to the world,
A net reduction in good things,

Partly as those can’t be measured
In any way everyone likes.
It self-soothes with reproduction

And cultural production.
It’s interesting and contains
Occasional pleasures, that’s all.

Temple Detail

It’s not all that important,
What your life is made of—it’s just
Astonishingly detailed,

Astonishment being one
Occasional chime among
Those details, like the herring-

Bone weave of the blanket mass-
Manufactured that happened
To end in the hospital

Bed struck by lamplight, being
Contemplated by the man
With the bald head and long beard

Who is both a dustbunny
And a thread passed through the weave
Of the mechanical room

Of blinking, beeping signals
And its own humble details,
The small rip in the cushion

Of the swivel chair a nurse
Snuck in, so that she wouldn’t
Have to stand at her station.

If you happened to look up
From the weave of the blanket
Cranked out along its template,

You’d glimpse night and a temple
Lit up all night long all nights.
More details in the temple.

Twelve Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy Two

The real gorgeosity
Of numerology is
It’s near-perfect uselessness.

Pick any spooky number
Recurs on a calendar—
Angel, devil, or divine—

And then track it through your days.
Do days that fit the number
End up sharing anything

Striking in common, opposed
To other days? Or even,
Select by one of the odd

But recurrent properties,
Such as numbers that are prime.
Count all the days of your life.

Now, going forward, note days
That are prime numbers you live,
Say, two-two-five-six-seven.

Are your prime days notably
Different from all the others?
Can you spot a prime coming

And mutter, oh that will be
A good (bad) day, a rupture
(Or halcyon) in the waves?

Whatever number or trait,
You’ll find those days, too, are mixed,
Drunkard’s walks meandering.

Do not despair. Do not yield
To wishful denial. Look,
You’ve experienced something—

Existence is panmictic,
And if you can’t predict it
With your appeals to meaning,

Meaning is orthogonal
To happening, meaning that
You’re free to mean as you please.

The Silhouette’s Head at an Angle

Sometimes, just knowing
The genre’s cheating.
If these lines arrived

With your foreknowledge
That this was a ghost
Story, and produced

A corpse of themselves,
Wavering shadows,
You’d be contented,

Expecting hauntings
Around the corner.
But what if you were

Told incorrectly
Or tricked with malice
Aforethought? The corpse

Is from a high-brow
Realist novel
And the shadows stand

As nuanced symbols
Of its character—
Or, this is science

Fiction that you thought
Was a ghost story,
And the corpse is soon

To experience
Life as a machine
Built by aliens

Who look to humans
Like shifting shadows.
How much of meaning,

How much of comfort
While reading dangles
By the neck of genre?

Particular Lightning

When you’re alert, you’re a poem
Of generalized desert
Light, plain cornucopia

Of abundance making small
Variety out of fierce
Dust and the empty basket.

When you’re asleep in situ,
Narcoleptic and dreaming,
You’re the forest of forecast,

In which the particular
Mocks the inevitable,
Darkness tossing the branches

Lightning may strike, since lightning
Must strike, but never that one.

The Gutted Allegory

A brown blood frog, dried
Where it smeared the floor,
A gob of dark oil

Paint on stone, triggered
The wish it were gone
Every time passed by.

Had it been outside,
It might have seemed part
Of natural rot

And texture, like leaves
In clumps after floods,
Roadkill’s last stages

As bones in a ditch,
Decay’s rich details—
But a smear of blood

Deep inside the house
Never loses that
Horror of trauma.

This Is Your Afternoon on Meds

At this point, your sleepiness
Is such that even sitting
Straight up in a straight-backed chair,

You lead a double, triple
Life—this quiet, sunny room,
Black cat at the windowsill,

The novel that you’re reading,
And matter-of-fact dreaming.
The cat sighs, already gone

Into its own dreaming nap.
The book crosses a graveyard.
You dream of the silver lake

Where you are telling a friend
About the cat and the book
And the drugs you have to take.

Your head jerks—you catch your hands
Literally gesturing
With non-existent objects,

Still at the shore of the lake.
The cat has recurled itself.
Wasn’t there a funeral?