Monday, September 16, 2024
Contrarian Reception
Sunday, September 15, 2024
Kindness Is a Kind of Metabolism
How we live within our times,
Largely forgiving of those
Who are close to us, largely
Unforgiving of others
Who are mostly imagined,
Given they’re farther away—
Little clouds of thoughts inside
Small orbits of behavior—
Few of us more than manage
More or less acceptable
Lives within our small contexts.
Lots of people have observed
How life is like a bubble,
Just a bubble, a bubble
Of awareness—it’s also
A sphere of ethical sense,
An enclosed parameter,
Sometimes many such bubbles,
Articulating outsides
Relative to our insides,
Like living cells, like our cells.
Saturday, September 14, 2024
Afternoon Alucinari
You were surprised
No one was there.
You closed your eyes,
And they were back,
The child talking
With the adult
In soft voices
On those chairs,
Those empty chairs,
Which remained there.
Your eyes opened.
Again just chairs.
You tried to hear
What the child said
To the adult
Or the adult
Said to the child—
You could clearly
Understand them
With your eyes shut.
You could see them.
But, eyes opened,
Again just chairs,
And no words left.
You’d never had
This dream before,
This lazy dream
That didn’t change
Backdrops between
The scenes. The same
Setting, the same
Chairs, and you there,
But the talking
Pair blinking in
And out of air.
You closed your eyes,
The room remained
The same as when
You were awake,
Just the adult
And child returned.
Allegory,
You decided,
It had to be
Allegory—
Mysterious
Child stands for what?
And the adult?
You dozed back off.
They were talking
Again. This time
You realized
Neither noticed
You watching them,
Trying to hear.
They must have been
Spirits or gods
You decided,
And always there—
The chairs weren’t dreamed.
Nothing was dreamed.
You were never
Really dreaming,
Even when you
Had your eyes closed.
More like dying,
You heard them talk
And saw them there.
Further from death,
You lost the strength
To conjure them
Conversing there.
Closer, further,
Further, closer,
Time to wander,
Whatever’s there.
Friday, September 13, 2024
Announcer
Thursday, September 12, 2024
Turn In
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
Life Behaves
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Waking inside a World at War
Dreams couldn’t care less
About the company
Of other dreams they keep.
Even the overall
Emotional tenor
Can swing from dream to dream.
In an hour before dawn
A little restlessness
Can yield romance, terror,
General frustration,
The ghosts of your parents,
A world implausibly
At peace in all corners,
Not even a quarrel,
Inside a world at war.
Monday, September 9, 2024
Some Nights, Death Plays with Its Food
Even dying, the chores of the living
Keep trying to reoccupy your mind
So insistently you start to believe
Your diagnosis was always a lie.
You’re not dying at all. You’re just a wreck—
Unhealthy, sure, and dependent on meds,
But with all the old chores, old work, old dreck
Of deadlines and bills, general busyness.
Here you thought dying meant better living,
Life without effort, not striving to live,
But instead you’ve just extended living
With all its nuisances, into a phase
Of lingering unhealthiness, sped up
Version of the ordinary aging
Everyone not dying has to work with—
Faster than average disintegration,
But nothing like detachment from the world
Of brute maintenance, nothing like the glide
Straight into the wide-open mouth of death,
More like finding yourself speared by the end
Of death’s many-tined eating utensil—
Gobbet vaguely waved around in the air
As death gestures with you to make a point.
How long until you can get swallowed whole?
Sunday, September 8, 2024
Phrases and Fragments of Unusual Language
Too reductive? You fold up
The plaid blanket you had wrapped
Around your waist, rummaging
Memory as you do so.
The best stories had three things—
Characters you found yourself
Deeply emotionally
Invested in, never mind
That they were only phrases
And rehearsed performances—
Plots whose basic outlines served
To provide a scaffolding
For comprehending
This or that schema of life—
And unusual language
At points in the narrative,
Memorable turns of phrase
In the mouths of characters
Or in the surrounding words
Describing scenes and events.
Focusing on the latter
Alone, apart from the plot
Or character, yes, that is
Reductive. You put away
The blanket in the cupboard.
Locally, another day
Had begun, dominated,
Like all the rest, by events
And various characters.
But here, in the quiet room
Where you watch the sun alone,
You find your mind hunting down
The footpaths of memory,
Hungry for just the right phrase,
The remarkable fragment
Of unusual language.
Saturday, September 7, 2024
Never-Ending Genesis
The subject of the art is not
Out there waiting for you, is not
Necessarily in your mind,
Although you will have to dragnet
Your memory to dredge it up,
Or something close enough to it
So that you can begin your sketch
Or elaborate your first scene.
The subject of the art may turn
Out to be so derivative
That no one finds any value
In it past perhaps craftsmanship,
But even then—even stolen,
Lifted from memory, largely
Or entirely imitative,
The exact subject for your art
Doesn’t yet exist. You stare out
Across the lawn of the summer
Park lodge to where several easels
Have been set up facing the cliffs,
As plein-air enthusiasts paint
Just what they see in front of them.
Surely the subjects of their art
Exist, the cliffs, as they’re given?
No, in your skull you disagree,
And draft your disagreement here:
They may paint pre-existing cliffs.
They may rely on memory
Of past plein-air paintings, of craft
They were taught in this or that class,
But the subject each will capture
Will be the subject each has made.
You feel you must insist on this
As the most wonderful aspect
Apparent in this universe.
Things can come into existence,
And with each flick of a paintbrush
A subject of art has been made—
The whole history of the world
Has been increased by that subject,
That painter on the brilliant lawn
Of a public park in the shade.
Friday, September 6, 2024
Departure for an Exciting Trip, Pulled Off Without a Hitch
What did you want today to be like
When you were thinking ahead to now?
You weren’t really thinking about now.
You had no experience of now.
You were thinking about today’s date
As upcoming on the calendar,
And then casting your memory back
Over such pasts as you have retained
And trying to make a shadow box
Of this blank spot on the calendar,
A specimen of assemblage art.
So, asking the question differently,
What memories did you put forward
That you would have liked to discover
Waiting for you today? Glowing health?
A love poem of delight in the world?
Or were your desires for now less bold?
Maybe bills paid, adequate supplies,
And something hopeful about the world
That you could pass on to the next date.
There is this—for all the murdering,
Mere quarreling, and exploitation
Members of your species do know how
To do a couple of things quite well—
Have a raucous good time together;
Coordinate on something complex.
Did you wish for one or both of those
When you were thinking ahead to now?
Thursday, September 5, 2024
How to Tell History from Fiction
Even empires come out of retirement—
Neo-This and Second-That flourish
For a little while in imitation
Of their namesakes. Aftershocks. All they are.
As far back as ancient Sumeria,
Ancient Sumeria made a come-back.
But no one builds epics quite like athletes
Reluctant to let go of glory years.
No one builds sequels like hegemonies,
The first iteration more extensive
Than each shrinking descendant. Yes, the first
Season is generally the finest,
But they don’t return geometrically
Reduced like radioactive half lives.
That’s how it goes with the civilized world—
If a human or something human works
Really well, someone else will run it back
Or try to, New Kingdom, Third Dynasty,
Last campaign to win the presidency.
If trilogies were written in that way,
They’d have a better claim to mimesis.
The closest approximation comes when
Some creator sets off on a prequel
Or a tangential world-building project.
But even a story about failure succeeds
Best as a tale in which story succeeds,
One narrative arch, not hoodoos that shrink.
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
Oneiricism
Frequently, while you’re reading,
Your dreaming mind continues
In the manner of the text
You’ve started dozing over,
So that, for a little while,
You are the author’s other
Self, transplanted to your skull.
If you’ve been reading fiction,
The characters keep talking.
If you’ve been reading science,
Thoughts keep hypothesizing—
No! Says a voice in the back,
Grad student in the shadows—
You keep experimenting!
Whatever. The text goes on
Until you’re fully awake
Or have run out of supplies
To go on in that genre.
For now, you’re still half-asleep.
An early original
Copy of the text folded
In your lap as your eyes drift
And you ask all the words left
To finish this mess at last.
Tuesday, September 3, 2024
You Are if You Care if You Are
People as monsters
(Only in the minds
Of people)—people
As people (only
In the peoples’ minds)—
And people as words
(By people, about
People, for people)—
Can you spot the trend?
What people are is
Something that doesn’t
Ever deeply change,
Something that flickers
When tilted in light,
Something that erodes
To something ghastly,
Or so it can seem
To squinting people,
To something lusty,
Hungry, creaturely,
Or to something said.
There are physical
Phenomena named
People—arguments,
Also about which
Phenomena count
As really people,
But the catch is that
Only people care
Who people are, what
People are, and which
People can decide.
It’s as if, say, God
Was the only one
Arguing about
Who or what is God,
Or if only ghosts
Considered haunting
Taxonomically,
No input outside
Of ectoplasm.
Well, maybe that’s just
People for you, hey?
Whatever they are
That other things aren’t.
Monday, September 2, 2024
Desert Thunderstorm Right Before Bed
No, God is not dead,
A website argues,
Serenely certain
Everyone agrees
What the word God means.
How about, no God
Is dead, all versions
Live? Suspicious stares
Swivel at that claim.
How about, no God
As mostly defined
By your faith leaders
Is dead? No Christian
God is dead, or no
Baptist God is dead,
Or—pick your people,
Your congregation.
Does everyone in
Your congregation
Have the same notion
As to what God means?
That God is not dead.
Other Gods may be.
Little gods should be.
Hard to find a faith
That lets all Gods live,
That lets all Gods be.
Your God is not dead
Since you believe, and
What’s God without faith
In any case? God
Who lives should live when
Nobody believes.
Sunday, September 1, 2024
The Day Is Uncertain
Sleep’s been lurking in the corners
Of your scattered aches all morning,
So that you drift between alert
And dozing some more in your chair.
The nests of texts you wallow in—
News, letters, fiction, and your own
Poems—all feel grubby as unwashed sheets,
Tiresome as being invalid.
Too much cancer, too little sleep
(Real sleep), too many painkillers,
Too many trivial setbacks—
All too much like the show you watched,
Or tried to watch, with your daughter
The other night, when the service
Started glitching just as you were
Both getting into the story,
The scenery, the charming lead.
For a while, you kept watching,
Hoping the stream would sort itself
And quit abruptly seizing up
Mid-word, mid-eyeblink. Finally,
It got too frustrating, and you
Decided to turn off the show.
There’ll be none of that in real life.
If you keep blinking out mid-thought,
If the thought your dreams invaded
Was how mediocre your thoughts
Tend to be, well too bad. You are
Still in the middle of the stream,
And you can either cultivate
Patience with your frequent glitches
Or keep glitching impatiently.
The soft hum of a distant plane
Somewhere over the canyon’s walls
Laps like lake waves against the shore
Of your eroded awareness,
And maybe you’re okay with this.
You can see leaves tossed in the breeze
Outside the windows on your dreams.
You can dislike these lines later.