Miracle Hunger

People die for miracles,
Die questing for miracles,
Somewhere in the human world

Every hour of every day.
The simplest explanation
Seems to be relentless hope

That solutions can be found
When the one hoping believes
That solutions can’t be found—

So, sometimes, when one is found,
An actual solution
After all, people insist

That it was a miracle.
Continuing to find none,
However, doesn’t stop hope,

And hope is exploitable,
And people exploit people.
People die for miracles

From people who exploit them.
Still, that’s somehow not enough.
Solutions may not be sought,

And still the hunger remains
To witness a miracle.
And who knows why it remains,

Why supernatural tales
Are loved by level-headed
People—why Taoists accept

Emptiness in the Way, yet
Constantly play at magic.
What is it the hunger’s for?

Say gravity could switch off
Locally, killing no one—
That would be a miracle.

Would people be happy then,
Live contented, so much fun?
This hunger is for something

That could make life miserable.
Think of just how terrible
Life might be with miracles.

One Person Playing a Silent Scene

That’s a handsome bit of melancholy,
He said, Although it does risk self-pity.

He waited to see what she’d say to that,
In the peculiar suspense invented

By phone-texted conversation. Dot-dot.
While he waited, he wondered what he’d meant

When he had incorporated handsome.
Handsome how? Fine? Elegant? Masculine?

How could a melancholy emotion
Suggest any of those connotations?

He knew he had a tendency to link
Oddball adjective-noun combinations.

She didn’t answer him, but he began
To understand he’d meant he’d imagined

Some handsome and melancholy person
Expressing that opinion she’d sent him

And then had unconsciously elided
The person from the imaginary

Situation in which the person said
Such a handsome, melancholy thing,

Leaving behind a floating emotion
That seemed to risk being self-pitying.

That, too, was his thing—removing persons
From spoken settings, leaving only terms.

He thought of Stevens—Life is an affair
Of people, not things, but for me it’s been

The reverse, and that has been the problem.
He gave his phone a last glance at the screen.

Over the Blue Aegean

You’ve been so many places
You can’t say you’ve ever been.
You tremble over the blue

Aegean near the ghost town
Created by cruelty,
And you lust for its beauty,

Its overgrown masonry,
To spill from inside your mind
Out over surrounding life.

After the revolutions,
Genocidal replacements,
And grief, it comes down to this—

Once all locked rooms are roofless,
Ghost thoughts can enter what’s left.

Why Haven’t Cave Cats Evolved?

If you’re in the right frame
Of mind for world-building,
Then adding blind cave cats

To your cavern planet
Might be a good idea.
One good idea, at least.

You’d have to have a lot
Of species that made sense
In those ecosystems

You imagined for them,
Deep in conversation
With stalactite tunnels,

Hunting the blind cave mice.
And then—since you’re human,
Narrating for humans—

You’d need mysterious,
Troglophilic persons
Haunting the caves themselves,

Beautiful, slender-limbed,
And elvish, near-sighted,
Nearly ageless as olms,

Maybe hunting with help
From those predatory,
Magical, blind cave cats.

Can you sense the darkness,
The intimate absence
Of illumination

Lacking changing weather,
Yet? Now a visitor
Sets in motion the chain

Of events that upend
This quiet, settled world,
Propelling your hero

Onto the harsh surface,
Into the terrible light,
Where aliens from Earth—

No—portal travelers
From your world and your time,
Have arrived, having found

A link between the worlds,
One tunnel in a maze
Of networked threads binding

All the worlds together.
The cavern world’s woven
With diamonds and metals,

Which humans find, meaning
Your hero’s sweet people
Are doomed without the help

Of that first visitor,
And the fact that what ties
All the worlds together

Is one vast tapestry
Of squeezes, belly crawls,
Windows, speleogens,

And boneyards that only
Blind cave cats can traverse.
Hero and visitor,

Turned lovers, assemble
A blind cave cat army. . . .
Now you have a story.

Homo ligare

Cuneiform tablets confirm,
Prayers left at temples confirm,
It’s been true for a long time—
Debt is scarier than death.
There is no bottom to it,
No end to ostracism.
Death is often punishment

For debts, which proves their ranking.
Pay back your debts, you can live.
Die, and debtors will still come
To visit your family—
And not only for money.
Debt is the depth of being
Human, is obligation.

Dreams Are Feints and Misdirections

For yourself, iIt dawns on you,
You suffer far more conflict
In dreams than in waking life,

Far more. But are dreams the source
Or the storage? Once again,
The question no one’s answered

To others’ satisfaction
Is, What exactly’s the point
Of all this activity

In the resting body’s brain?
The intensity of dreams,
Even more than their nonsense,

Doesn’t fit explanations
Of health or prophecy well,
Although such explanations

Are plentiful, each of them
With its ardent champions.
You sleep. You survive more dreams,

None of which are true killers.
You wake, rattled, to a day
That will be, for most of you,

Much calmer than your dreaming,
And yet it’s one day, dull day,
That’s going to have to kill you.

Porcelain Dishes

What foolish things might you do
If you could keep on doing
Dumb things indefinitely?

Clattering porcelain dishes
Annoy you making breakfast.
What if you replaced them all

With wooden bowls, something dumb
Like that? What if you spent years,
Or aimed to, replacing all

Non-native plants in the yard?
That would be dumb. Warm winds blow
Through the window screen, and you,

You think of free afternoons
Stretching to infinity
In which to think of dumb things

To take forever to do.
Then it hits you—only one
Such afternoon, like this one,

Can bloom an infinity
Of nothing much, mostly dumb.
Watch how this dust spins in sun.