Held Golden in the End-Stage of Your Days

That’s when it blanketed you

In your sunny room, reading

Fern Hill, of all things—Fern Hill

Among the stone skeletons

Of red-rock Utah desert—

That, as surely as this room

Glowed in the lowering light,

Tens of thousands of people

Who’d come to tour these canyons

Would here, soon—here or somewhere,

But not before long—suffer

Grisly, unexpected deaths.

Minor Leaning Major

Grey and hard to say what
In this scene is going well
Today. Maybe you can

Explain it by the end
When the evening descends.
You’re waiting on someone,

Someone else waits on you,
And another on them,
But it’s not just sequence,

It’s the series of tangents
That would follow on them.
Try a phone call again.

Night Purpled in the Ashen Air

Blue figure ground
Around blue at noon
The day’s slabbed wash

Of color in
Ragged patches
In formation

The bronze broken
More down in beige
Than ruddy brown—

It will never
Be over but
It will be one

More exhaustion
In the gutter
Of the green world.

Bound in Hiding

The book was the book
You’d dreamed of so long—
In your hands, lyrics,

But, in rewriting,
A novel of woods,
Impenetrable

To axe, chains, and fires—
Woods such as humans
Are becoming, dark

As woods used to be,
All the characters,
Trunks and branches

Who deep in the bones
Of their roots and dreams
Have reacquired speech.

You opened a page,
Deciphered a line,
And there was a text

With a narrative
Twist, remote aspen
Clone having betrayed

A cottonwood seed.
Ponderosas, wind,
The night coming in,

Songbirds weren’t
Communicating
So much as the tips

Of the roots of trees,
Intertwined, named, with
Personalities.

That’s your story, then.
The lyrics stay in
The ur-text you see.

And you can keep both—
Prose tales from lyric
Anthropology.

Enjoy Dragging It Out

And then you got what you wanted,
Permission to take your sweet time
Gazing at ever-the-ready

Death, death at hand and on demand,
Each of you there for each other,
Neither one needing to be rushed.

While, as for life, falling behind,
Please take any you wish to eat,
Any you wanted for yourself—

You don’t have to make it dinner
Or especially like dinner.
In the moment you encounter

These words you’re embracing this life,
And for now, there’s nothing better.

Replanting

The moss was rich, green, soft,
Compactable in hand,
Scooped from the woods between

The sentimental lawns
Of florilegia,
Just the thing for a path

Kind enough to bare feet,
But you didn’t collect
It for reasons like that—

You imagined bare hands
Shaping moss in the rain,
A sort of a poppit

With a sort of a face,
With nothing holding it
Together or in place.

How Was Math Today?

In a middle-school classroom
In the southwest USA,
Uproarious laughter may

Greet an atrocious pun that
Gets laughs from its racism.
Later, one student punches

Another square in the face,
Drawing blood and suspension
While the teachers do nothing.

Who wants to risk messing with
Tall teenagers in the land
Of the concealed-carry Glock?

If you’re reading in a world
Without such fun, imagine.

How Will This Go?

When was the last
Time you planted
Some living thing?
How recently?

How long ago?
Is it alive
Now, still alive,
Far as you know?

Presumably,
It was something
Small at the time,
But do you know?

How much would you
Guess it has grown?
There was a tree
Over a roof

You noticed just
A day or two
Ago—you used
To live there. You

Planted a seed
In the backyard
Five years ago.
Could that be it,

Now looming large
Over a moonlit
Roof that looks wrapped
In swaddling snow?

It is going
To take over
All the known world,
And you’re so pleased,

You can’t prevent
Your wide, thrilled smile.
What you planted,
Seed then seedling,

Comes for the world.
You can’t even
Read for thinking
How this might go.

So Go For It, Just Go

There is no shortage of people ready
To pack up and run, ahead of the storm.

There is a shortage of places to run,
No place far enough ahead of the storm.

Those with the most resources dig bunkers
And vaguely dream of surfacing on Mars,

The way as a child, you vaguely dreamed
Of digging through your backyard to China.

There is no open meadow, no wild land.
Do not think people did not know it was

Time to go. And people wanted to go.
Plenty of people were trying to go.

Going prevented no one from dying.
It may have caused more people to be born,

If the people going lived a little
Longer, drew their lives out longer—but then

Maybe trying to go made for fewer people
Who had children, on the whole. From the side

Of the gone, we will never know. How could
We ever know? We knew we could not go,

And we wanted to go, but of the gone
Who went the nowhere way anyone could go,

Way that got you nowhere, nothing to show,
Of them we never knew. How could we know?

Cheerio

Doesn’t matter how
You huddle or sleep,
The natural world,
Gathering the natural
World without rain,
No knives, no moss,
And when it’s done,
Or often well before
It is, you are embraced.

And Less Than No Why

Little, physical changes, small
Events that start, stop, or alter
Life in large ways, decades after—

The way you opened a door once
On a bland, sunny morning, light
Workload, no peculiar stresses,

Could have set off a chain of thoughts
That coursed around your other thoughts,
Maybe turned up in your writing,

And so on, on, and on it goes,
Small gestures swirling in ether
That add, subtract, or vaporize,

While some motions, large and small,
Leave no alterations at all—
Those waves summed together, canceled

Each other out—and you can’t know
Which will be which, and maybe not,
Even retrospectively—seas

Are like that, and you are at sea.
Surrender causation’s fictions.
Your world goes. Ain’t no how it goes.

Request a Tour

There’s a charm to daydreaming

Of a clear and welcoming

Future that extends in curves,

When you’ve already been told,

In solemn tones, you have none,

Or not much of one. The charm

Lies in gilding the lily,

Although you may not notice

This—you were always dreaming

About a nonexistence,

A future never really

Existing, no more than God,

An idea to consider,

Not a part of simple things

Like tables, old calendars,

Things that now exist as past,

Matter of fact as a dog.

The doubled absurdity

Is the particular charm.

You think of future decades

Living this or that a-way,

When you’re working with mere months,

So your oncologists say.

You browse for houses.

Peculiar Poem

The vivid and the peculiar
Vie to take up space in the paint,
Like colors daubed on a palette,

Like two huge basketball centers
Jockeying to get the ball first.
Which of them wins this possession?

Let the vivid be dread, and let
The peculiar be indifference.
Let the vivid look like dark mold

With fuzzy, spore-dust-heavy threads
Reaching out to latch on your eyes,
To spawn within your moist vision

Of this world as a mass-produced
Jungle of colorful terrors,
A bit too much glow in their dark,

Conversely, the peculiar doubts
There’s ever a reason to dread.
For the peculiar, the sunlight,

White, is as vivid as it gets.
How ever could the peculiar
Win the battle for the bright paint,

Disinterested in the outcome
Of the context, in any case?
Ah, but you see how it gathers,

All that peculiar indifference?
Fill the canvas with that, with not
Exactly the original—

The bleached, mass-produced shade of pale—
But something subtler, something dread
Can never, ever dread itself,

A meaningless shift in context,
A just slightly whiter canvas.
Dread will sally forth, confident

It’s got an angle on the paint,
But the background, the existence
Of the art itself, the contest

Is now wholly peculiar—
Peculiar is the indifferent
Ground against which the vivid splays

Some splashy story of nothing
Much at all, a few dashing lines
On the untroubled Face of God.

Who Blocked the Royal Sight Lines?

The language of mystery
And the unknown, the language
That isn’t really language,

So much as meaning’s wishing
Well. So surrender wishing.
Maybe you made up the tale.

Maybe you would like credit—
Winter, shadow, mystery--
For language you inherit.

Sometimes it still startles you,
The beauty of this planet,
But it’s not since you’re quitting.

It seems perfectly able
Of being this wonderful,
With light radiating cliffs,

With quiet and these small sounds
It doesn’t need hungry ghosts
To manufacture. So what

Brings you here? The mystery
Of language and the unknown.
Language lacking any kind

Of capacity to frame
The unknown as if it were
What brought us here today.

The Unknown World

It’s all you ever wanted
To visit, the unknown world.
All you needed to explore.

Does anyone really doubt
It’s vaster than the known world,
Probably by multiples?

Unknown’s not unknowable,
But that world’s definition,
Plus your awareness you know

Much less than you don’t know
Should convince you the unknown
Is as good as a cosmos

Of its own—you have so much
You might come to know no one’s
Ever known any before—

Just days in the unknown world
Would make you an explorer
Of the first water. There’s more,

Likely infinitely more,
Unknown from edges to core.
Oh to ever so slightly

Reduce the staggering, vast
Expanse of the recently,
Wonderfully unknown world.

You Only Get One Exit

If you were born into a peaceful,
Largely egalitarian society
With universal suffrage
And excellent health care for all,

A stability that lasted throughout
All the decades of your life,
So that neither murder, war, nor torture
Invaded your personal narrative,

You would die. You as one person, one
Single instantiation of human, would die.
And if none of the nicer stuff were true
For you, you would, as one instantiation

Of a human, still die. In the latter case,
You would probably die younger, maybe
Much, much younger, and you would
Witnesss much more suffering and death,

You might know the horrors of surviving
A scene grotesque on all sides with death,
But you would still, as a single instantiation,
Die once, one way, not many more at once.

The tedious singularity of your death
Might be put aside to consider ways
Of mitigating the suffering of living,
But no such intervention will actually

Save a life or reduce your personal
Count of the body bags you stuff. Spare us
Pain. Spare us the witnessing of brutal
Behavior between us. Don’t try to save us.

Until Then

Something’s gone off again.
Past the glass, the day’s bright.
You contemplate the line.

You could break it, make it
Clearly text scraps—forget
That you started to read—

What was it you started?
Something’s out of control.
You know how you know this?

Mild anhedonia, mild
But broadly expanding,
And really more like lack

Of feeling anything
Than like having a lack
Of interest in pleasure.

You’re not so anxious, now,
To let go the main chance.
You’re briefly less-concerned

With the end of supplies,
With being left alone,
With not being able

To complete any one
Of your tasks for today,
Of things you thought you chose.

And is this not a good,
Considered full circle?
The mythic future’s lost

A great deal of its grip on you.
So here you sit, feeling
There’s a gap in this text,

The lack of caring what
You might be compelled
To do next, until then.

One Break, One Rip, One Tear in the Rules

Natural is anything
You don’t need to believe in
For it to work—natural

Works as it works, while it works.
Nothing in your attitude
Is necessary, nothing

In your statement of belief
Has to be worded just so,
Nothing cares how well you did

The steps of the ritual.
It’s all only natural,
Feral, even, bits of it,

The undomesticated.
Does that make it good? Oh hell,
No. Natural is not good,

Except occasionally,
Nor evil, except the same.
And why so much carryon

About what is natural,
As if natural weren’t all
There’s now or ever been?

If you’ve got something to say
Something that’s demonstrable
Re the supernatural,

Please come back to the table.
We’re all ears. We want to know
How the unbelievable

Can work, so that we’ve got some
Chance to make its acquaintance,
That hole in the world that is.

Some days a body may sit
In perfect quietude, hours
And hours, hoping the world falls.

Some nights a body may dream
Of a brilliant afternoon
With the smallest puncture wound

In the true nature of things.
Let it loose. Pay attention,
But let it loose. Worlds will change.

Allergic Reaction

You don’t know it yet, but you

Live in a cosmos of lace

Where the gaps exceed the threads,

Where acknowledging as much

Would put you within danger

Of tumbling through a portal,

Now that you know there’s nothing

Much but portals in your world.

You’re the Great Central Station

Of a universe of gaps,

With no sure way of guessing

Which loop in the lace leads on

To world-building adventures

Of the quiet kind, which leads

To fantasies and sf,

Which leads to some rare, real hell

Or another, and which is

The portal to being free.

What should you do to be free?

Clutch the world delicately.

Inhale deeply. Ready? Sneeze!

Doubleday

Two days are always
Becoming themselves,
Accumulating

Fresh daytime stories
On separate tracks
That run parallel—

There’s the world at large,
Events of the day,
What you may call news,

And there’s your own world,
Events in your day,
That also arise.

All this is one day,
Or one date, at least,
Raising the question

About which events
Will matter the most
In the longest view,

As well as whether
Anything belongs
To a single tale

Uniting them all.
The days grow. They bloom
The way flowers do,

Petals off a stem,
Each day’s paired blossoms,
Toxic or helpful.

Time just keeps adding.
You exist as part
Of a universe

Bigger by the day,
Those miraculous,
In their way, twinned days.

She’s up in the Grotto Again

Muse of exile,

Mother of the road

What if it had been you and not

Your son driven out, made outcast,

You wandering off, all three boys

Left to shift for themselves back home?

Mythology would have given

Them some kind of magical wife

Or wives, some twist ex machina

To keep their creation going,

But what would there have been for you?

I like the idea of your tale better,

Eve, free at last, meandering,

Really pulling it off and not

Just burdened with too much knowledge.

Eve, the proper taxonomist,

Capable of understanding

The Darwinian behaviors

Of a planet abundantly

Prone to good and evil.

Let us know when you discover

How to live outside these old myths.

Miles from Any End to Them

In either twilight,
Those milestones are ghosts
Of rectangular

Slabs of while granite,
The headless torsos
Leaning in long grass,

Glowing in the shades,
Each abandoned door
Without any home.

You like seeing one,
The way it throws hints
Of stones as lost souls

To commemorate
Measurements’ sorrows.

Completer

The news, if not the world,
Keeps finding ways to grow
Ever darker. Does it?

Or is it just what’s next
Never looks promising,
Being inherently

False and full of horrors
Brains cull from memories?
And all the little things

You add up through the hours
Of ordinary days
Lean toward disaster,

If you incline that way,
As most of you do, and
Most of the headlines do.

Sometimes you imagine
A glorious, gentle,
And calm realm at the core—

Not like a star blazing,
Not relentless shining,
But simply, all is well.

What is coming isn’t.
The great scarves of stars
Are their own universe,

Far more than they’re your own,
And you have been growing
Ever gentler with knowing

That the next wave leaves you,
Well and good, ghost in sand,
Or takes you, better, true.

Trick Answer

How you enter and exit
The work, and then what changes
In between. There’s no entrance,

And knowing that’s the first trick.
That’s a proper labyrinth—
Nowhere to get started.

You walk up, thinking about
How you’ll handle twists in there,
How you’ll avoid getting trapped,

Until it finally dawns
On you that you’re still outside
Locked gates, and a storm’s coming,

Spider on the horizon,
Eight-legged black sun. You’re done.

In the Woods You’ve Shielded All These Years

It’s your subject that we’re missing,
Or something the heft and outline
Of a proper subject. You paint

Your dreams. You compose melodies
That started as random snippets
Of notes. An enormous novel

Lurks under your chafing breastplate.
You’re a marsupial hiding
A baby dragon in your pouch.

The dragon is dark. It wanders
Away from the pouch in the night.
It is neither water nor fire,

Nor even a dragon’s story.
It’s a story in your dragon
That you shield and worry about.

The story takes place in a frame
That is really impossible,
In a window sunk in the waves.

You can sit however you like,
With regard to that wave window,
Looking through it from either side.

You will notice, the way one spots
A faint celestial event
Like a far comet or eclipse

That won’t cover much, how iffy
Your perception of rare things is.
That’s your subject. It’s in the woods

The dark dragon swallowed, behind
Your glittering breastplate armor,
The story you won’t live to tell.

The Sun’s Joy

The long-armed sun goes loping
Like a teenaged boy who may

Feel free as the hours he makes,
As the grass he helps create,

As only the sun can be
In the middle of the day.

Cubic

Now you know what’s riding in the ice—
It’s the tipping point itself, writhing
Around in the tunnels, like mole rats

Inside the tubes you’ve drilled to study
Their cores. But you see, it’s not the cores,
Not anything in the cores—it’s what

Starts to move once the cores are removed,
And all that hard-won real-estate, chunked
From impossible rivers of ice,

Gets threatened by the next wave of greed.
You sense it clearly, haptically,
Tactilely, right at the moment you start

To ease the core out of the hole, blank
Sensation giving way to a worm
Or worm-like turning, felt in your bones,

In your arms, in your chest, as you grasp
The column of what is, after all,
Only ice. A kind of poltergeist

That needs emptiness for survival,
May need real nothing for survival,
It wriggles around your skeleton

Like when an orthopedic surgeon
Removed wrist pins while you were awake—
It was the new emptiness that squirmed,

And it signaled that something of you
Was about to leave as something else
And the old world was not coming back.

Into Strange Thousands

How weird to start with a brick,
To intend to make a brick,
Work as a brick-layer, when

The work feels more like cement,
And not at all like a brick.
Every time you start a line,

You’re pouring the admixture
Meant to go between the bricks
To hold the bricks together—

But where did the bricks come from?
Who piled the loose collection
Of items, quanta—not waves—

With which you’ve conjured a home,
A palace, a great big heap
Of many-roomed residence,

An edifice of maybe
Something that could be called
Home, if you knew why cement

Could be hallucinated,
In its process of making,
Into strange thousands of poems?

Maybe Not Before Leaving a Poem

Better a text littered in death,
Spiced by a salty happiness
Than a lot of suffering, cut
With shouts out to a lightweight joy.

The overall shudder transcends
The irresolvable puzzle
Of how this species can be both
In love with the worst violence—

The hunger to obliterate
Other sorts of people, but not
Before forcing them to suffer—
And capable of love itself

Of tenderness, forgiveness,
Staggering generosity.
Why pull so hard, opposing ways,
When a little neutrality,

Held to consistently, would do?
What are these bodies built to want
Beyond meals, mating, and long hours
Of sweet, uninterrupted sleep?

Someone will pray, halfheartedly
At least, for at least a short while,
For you, after you’re known as gone.
Then they’ll forget. And then they’ll go.

Body by a Comet Going Gone

But it will be for something
And you’ll never know what else
It could have been for, better

(You might have seen the comet
In the dark sky back at home)
Or worse (innumerable,

The ways it could have been worse).
For right now, in any case,
Here you are, waiting for now,

Will you remember your choice,
Be content or never care?
How long can this choice matter

To be considered at all
By a body going gone?