Inferents

We’re all words without referents
Once we start referring to selves
As our selves, as in, us, ourselves.

Texts may be self-referential,
But you understand they have none.
We are refusing to have none.

In these lines, words are galaxies
Revolving all our little lights
Around some weighty absences,

The massive vortices that need,
That have no choice, except to eat,
To swallow, all the light. We like

To think that the seed at the heart
Of each vast agglomeration
Is not mass but nothing, the null

That starts up gravity and time,
The tiny hole in everything
Through which everything pours away.

That’s how the light goes out. That’s not
Us, of course. Our weak mimicry
In lacking selves as referents

When words start talking as ourselves
Isn’t nothing. It’s a little
Something though, nothing much. You see?