Trickster Mayhem

It’s not just Coyote. In some cultures,
It’s Raven, in others, Fox or Rabbit.
And if all four of those crossed your path
This morning? Well, this world’s always

Menacing, with or without omens,
And tricksters make mostly low-value
Warnings. Take them all lightly,
As lightly as you can, as you would

Talking heads on the digital news.
It doesn’t take a particular sign
To know it’s tricksters everywhere,
And if you’re not lunch you might be one.

Bat Rabbit Fox Rabbit

Basketry, as Elvis said,

Is just how rock & roll works.

You take the broken pieces

Of another thrill and make

A brand new toy. It’s a brand

New day in a brand-obsessed

Era. You take the broken pieces

Of a genome, pass them on,

Of a suite of memories,

Of a season, a heat wave,

Dry lightning on the mesa.

A bat by waning moonlight,

Similar to other bats,

Although you will never be

Able to say exactly

How, exactly, they’re the same,

Flies by on the hunt for moths.

A jackrabbit runs the road.

A fox pauses in the brush

And looks over its shoulder.

Another rabbit, the same,

More or less, as the other.

Brave Performances

An artist is nude and in peril

For the same reason artists paint nudes

To their and the nudes’ peril, the same

Reason you have dreams you’re in peril

Or nude or surrounded by people,

Most of whom are nude, to your peril.

Human bodies are vulnerable,

Ridiculously so, dependent

On other human bodies and more,

Far more than that, on the assistance

And tailored accoutrements of tongues

And other human technologies

To steer clear of pain, skins unbitten

By bigger creatures, smaller creatures,

Frostbite, or the backbiting of kin.

Performance is that perilous form

Of dreaming naked without being

Nude, without being vulnerable

In the exact manner emperors

And killers remain vulnerable,

The reminders of which reoccur

Every time a tyrant is murdered

In bath or in bed, the assassins

Flayed, stripped, paraded, drawn and quartered—

We dream we are drawn in close quarters,

Exposed to the artist, the artist

Exposed, all of us doomed to lost clothes.

Pleaching Each Trunk with Others

Grafting whippy stems of phrases
So that they look like unities
Made overtly complicated,

Nonsingular but connected,
A puzzle as to accident
As percentage of artistry

And the merits of artistry,
Given so many accidents.
A forest capable of dreams

Dreams of full inosculation,
Not of being whole but legions
Of unbroken interlinking,

All those roots and fungal species,
Sure, those too, always, but also,
Above ground, these word things, braiding.

Over the Cardboard Seas

Only we can forget

What we’ve learned since those days,

Then expect them to know

What we think we know now,

What they should have known then,

How all songs get written—

Only a canvas sky

Over a muslin tree.

Sometimes we do forget

What’s real, what’s fakery,

Since both, usually,

Get up to trickery,

But we never have lacked

For etymologies,

Even when we lacked them.

No creative force

Is more exuberant

In raw humanity

Than making up stories,

Even for divine names,

Nothing, perhaps, except

All the greed and babies.

One: to compose a trope.

Two: a liturgical

Embellishment. Three: turn.

Four: song. Five: to disturb.

Greek, Latin, Arabic,

All lost the roads that led

To the French troubadours.

Etyma. All the names

For moon that have stories

Of their own, all only

Their paper moons sailing.

Flattered, Nonetheless

If nothing else, poets
Are opportunistic
Noticers of ideas,

Faiths, and revolutions.
Only a few poets
Live among the chosen

Who influence those things,
Advancing an idea,
Reinvigorating

A faith, redirecting
Wayward revolution.
But poets stay eager

To get on board with new
Gods, movements, sciences.
Why is this? Yes, the words.

A devout, a zealous,
A popularizing
Poet won’t admit it

Often, but most often
It’s some potent language—
Not only deity,

Theorem, or just cause
As such—that will draw verse
As blue draws bowerbirds.

We could be wrong, but words
Know poets better than
Any poets know us.

Brains Keep Changing

Narrative is a mnemonic device
Co-evolved by genes and languages,
Useful for compacting abstracted
Information coded in sentences

So that it can be remembered
For multiple human generations
With minimal corrosion. Writing
Was not invented for narrative,

But as a supplemental function,
Keeping track of things important
To the cultures first using writing—
Seasons, eclipses, floods, transactions,

Ritual prognostications, exactly
The things narrative has a hard time
Handling—writing is neither for story
Nor needs any narrative in it,

But the coevolved brain lags mind,
Lags what it calls its civilizations,
And the human social organism
Is still most exquisitely tuned

To stories, not to record-keeping.
And why should it be otherwise?
Notches on bones and paintings
In caves have a time depth

Of a few tens of thousands
Of years at the outside, while
What’s accepted as writing
Is even shallower, five thousand,

Maybe. Storytelling and language—
We can’t even sound how deep
Those two go—down to the base
Of our species per se, at least.

It’s gonna take awhile before
You get humans who can live
Without hungering for tales
Instead of crunched explanations,

But the explanations already
Have begun a loosening—lyrical,
Mathematical, dull and dry, droll.
Don’t look now. Brains keep changing.

The Marginal Fear You Outcasts Most. The Secure Only Dread Feeling Marginal.

Imaginary numbers are a flock
Of pigeons on the outfield grass, alas.

Oh, marginality, alterity,
Oh, radical difference, how we miss you!

We invited you all to play great games,
Redrew our boundaries to let you in,

But now you’ve gone and fled past the bleachers,
Leaving us lost in long weeds and pigeons.

You know you were never truly outcast.
We counted on you to crowd our sidelines.

But as soon as we drew new lines past you,
You left us for something indefinite.

We want you to know we had names for you,
And roles we were eager for you to play.

We’re not like those who think they own the game,
Control the spotlight, the scoreboards, the gate.

We were never more than reserves ourselves,
But we believed in you. Why did you flee

Out beyond the boundaries of kindness,
Beyond any social contract at all?

We know you’re out there. We can feel your stares.
If you must go, please, go further, go far.