Mistakes Escape Any Pattern

Moderate randomness, according
To complexity theorists, works

Best, producing creativity
In a stable system. That sounds right,

Even somewhat Aristotelian,
But how can anything moderate

Qualify as random? Surprising,
Maybe, moderately surprising,

But that’s not an inherent feature.
A moderately random system

Isn’t anything random, is it?
Creativity isn’t random

So much as accidental, a few
Mistakes escaping any pattern.

Trying to Sing It Right

The short phrase turns the head,
but you can’t be all hooks.
The startle’s in the flow.

The rock wrens adopting
The concrete porch use this.
Why does anyone sing?

What a cacophony
Evenings on Earth can be.
There’s something more to this,

More than sound, more than song,
More than competition.
There’s a recognition

That existence, that is
Being without living,
Demands an answer more

Than hunger, more than want
From being that’s living.
Sometimes you sing it right.

Flickering on a Map

Rohan Chhetri once claimed that, in New Delhi,

In winter, I wrote poems that went on for years

Into my sleep. Is it possible to be

Even more possessed, even more unbounded

Than that? How does one ever know when poems start,

The composition of them, that is, and when

They end? You might not produce any new lines

For over a decade, and then the thousands

That follow turn out to have roots and fungus

And sleepy, secretly swelling cicadas

Interwoven through that whole dreamless decade.

Are Enheduanna’s hymns halfway done yet?

Yet another new translation’s on the way.

They’re language after all, similarly braided,

With one end vanishing into wordlessness,

The other laddering up to, what? Heaven?

Your life is like a little room, inn for words,

Nice round skull, doors and windows, language rushing

In and out again, from the ends of the earth,

Some rare, mostly just common, local tourists.

A few you try to keep with you, hire them on,

While others you try to send back to the world,

Rearranged, on a mission for you. For you?

And just who you are without them—a bare room?

Empty bed? Windows peering out of quiet?

Poems don’t go on for years. They die in your arms

Or they go on for eras. The Logocene.

And you’ll never know. You are local. You’re pinned

To this intersection you think of as you

While they flicker over all the maps of sleep.

Woods Don’t Exist to Explain the Woods

Symbols connect to symbols
And, if they make maps, they may
Fit, here and there, to the world.

Numerical symbols do
This the best, their connections
Seeming to speak for the world,

The language of the cosmos,
But numbers aren’t saying that.
The numbers don’t claim themselves

To be a language. Language
Claims them. The numbers predict,
And make the most useful maps,

But they have blind alleyways
Where the connecting symbols
End at dumpsters and brick walls.

Symbols connect to symbols.
Stories, omens, equations,
And other symbolic quirks,

The creatures of their forests,
Can be followed down their trails.
You are the tracks of their trails.

But One Day Even the Emperor May Live and Let Live

Both aesthetically
And pragmatically,
It’s an odd hybrid
Of hyggish homely
And sternly sterile,

This window-facing,
Comfy recliner
With woolly blanket
In this stark white room
In which you’re infused

With the patented
Chemicals all hope
Will delay your death
From self-consumption
By fast-evolving

Renegades at large.
The hope’s as hybrid
As the room’s setting,
Hitching broad-spectrum,
Shotgun strategies

To an acribic
Ideal: catch them all;
Line them all against
The wall. Let no cell
Survive isn’t you.

Hindsight Alone Transforms the World

What person painting or composing
Would you most like to accompany?
Your pick of famed or anonymous,

Inscrutable, sacred creation
Or particular manifesto
Meant to change the world for the better.

You could go back as far as you’d like,
Set the dial to a particular cave
In Australia, France, or Borneo

Some tens of thousands of years ago,
Or zoom on some historic moment
You’ve often read and wondered about.

Don’t you think you’d be disappointed?
The moment of creation, the point
Of inflection is generally dull,

Quiet, someone brushing some pigment,
Tapping at a glowing disk, staring
Into an abyss while the wind blows.

The making of the astonishing
Looks no finer than scribbling hack work,
And if you asked questions, you’d wreck it.

No, there’s nothing better than to meet
The lines between before and after worlds
Unawares, unforewarned, long after.

If Broad Were the Road

You can wake up with less
Reason and resources to hope
Than you went to bed with and yet

Feel sunnily optimistic or at least
Pleased to be alive for another day,
Whereas you can wake up with more,

Slightly more but still more, reason
To hope than the day before, feeling
No joy in simple self-awareness.

What gives? It’s just the momentary
State of the body that matters most.
Wake up comfortable, without pain,

Feel contentment roll in. Wake up
Sick or worse, pincushioned by pains,
And the world seems unworthy.

If everyone, even just every human
Could simultaneously, physically
Feel well, life could happily go to hell.

Neither Is a Better Life

In the movie, writer’s block
Sits in front of her bookstore,
Confesses to not writing

And adds, probably she won’t
Ever write again. Think back
A dozen years, a dozen

More, then, before that—your life
With writer’s block, or at least
Complete writer’s apathy,

And now twelve years of nonstop
Writing daily. The mesas
Look like velvet in the sun.

Begging Air

Plenty to live for,
Not enough to live with—
Plentiful reasons,
Not enough resources.

The body wants an end to pain.
The medical collectors
Want each their own payment plan.
You want your daughter not to suffer.

She curls up next to you
As you nap on the daybed, or try to.
Her physical presence at your side
Comforts you and scares you.

What will happen to her, her life
With her pet cats, her bedroom
She spends hours decorating,
Her schooling, without you?

How long can her grandparents last?
How much can she expect
Of her even poorer, self-absorbed,
Desert-dwelling, rules-eschewing mother?

You think of all the life histories you know
Of variously well-known people
That included the grim early loss
Of a seemingly essential parent.

She might make it through. She could.
But you don’t want her to have to.
She’s plenty to live for. You beg the air
For the resources to live for her.

Worlds

The day is kind,
Sweet air, breezes,
At least up high.

Silver clouds, sun
On pines and oaks,
Blooms in the grass.

But that’s the world.
The body aches
Something awful,

Is sick, not kind,
And the birdsong
Is not enough.

A Characterization that Lies with You

It does if you do. You feel
As if you are selecting
What should be said on this page,

But already you’re lying.
If it says, it’s not a page
But a speaker of some sort,

Meaning either a body
That’s speaking what should be said
Or a machine replaying

A recording—or maybe
Making this all up from scratch.
And if this is on a page

It’s only speaking by means
Of someone reading aloud
Or a tech that lets pages

Speak in actual voices.
All characterization
Lies with whoever it is—

Writer, reader, or actor—
Who’s projecting character
As language. The characters

In any language,
From pronouns to tragedies
To autobiographies,

Are always fictions
That lie with you, letting you
Lie with the rest of the world.

Intent Questioning

When people intended to kill
As many bison as they could,
As many white-tail as they could,
As many turkeys as they could,
Those populations plummeted.

The bulk of their recovery
Has been due to the intention
To stop intentional slaughter.
It’s not always as obvious,
But it’s a general pattern—

Intention’s an accelerant.
Yet, unlike other catalysts,
It has no material form.
There’s no intention molecule.
It’s not even a behavior,

So much as an amplifier
Of a behavior in progress
Or about to get underway.
As a legal category
It’s synonymous with desire,

Almost, but it’s not just wanting.
Planning is evidence of it.
As is simple, bald assertion—
We intend to do this or that.
But there’s no certain proof of it.

The evidence of intention
Must always be circumstantial.
So where does it come from and why?
How does it work? How does it fail?
What is intention in the end?

Not All, Just Too Much

Dart like Bogan’s dragonfly
Into the shadow that consumes you.
You live with the shadow,

Even if later it’s said, will be said,
You died from it. For now
It’s your second home.

You dart back out. Ta-da.
It’s like the shadow birthed you.
You appear out of nowhere.

The availability
Of the shadow makes a new
Airborne lion of you.

You are enough to be
Surprising in the light,
Diaphanous, living dash.

What? Still here?! And then gone
Next moment, flirting with consumption.
Perhaps it’s all visual,

All reflection, that is,
A disturbance in the waves
Of more (light, predator, the life)

And minor (shadow, ambush, ghost),
A meditation. For you,
After all, sleep in the light as well,

And if you’re unaware, still,
Something of you remains in the air
Or will, always part of the shadow.

It’s never a complete loss, never
An absolute consumption.
It’s just too much, sometimes,

The loss of another example
Of an ancient, hungrily beautiful
Pattern in the shadow for good.

Revisiting the Gift

The mesa felt neglected
To the one neglecting it,

As if the gift of being there
In the rocks, trees, and grasses,

Had turned out to be an empty box.
That can’t be right. Then the one

Neglecting the glorious mesa
With desert views in all directions

Realized it had always been the body
That sang in response to the empty,

And now the body was the vacant box.
But wait. The gift may be returned.

You, the People

The poison and the grace
Are the people. They aren’t
A monolithic block,

Not in any country,
Not ever anywhere.
Populations evolve,

Swirling through their systems,
Swirling through each other,
Mating, killing, helping,

Becoming each other.
The people are not one.
In dense concentrations,

You will always find both
The kindest and cruelest
Behaviors a human

Can be capable of.
No country has a grip
On the finest or worst.

If vile cupidity,
Waves of torture, random
Violence can break out

Here, then also there, there,
Then also here. Greatness,
Honor, and bravery

Are possible in all
And in any cluster,
However organized.

The organization
Only makes some difference,
Constrains some tendencies,

Encourages others.
The terrible mistake
Is to think given traits

Inhere in a people
However they’re defined—
Nation, region, belief,

Ethnicity, descent—
The one poison, one grace
Pulse in all human groups.

Study the systems. Think
Hard on how to improve
Their guidance. The people

Will always contain souls
Vicious and tender. You
Are one of those souls. You.

To All That Has Happened

And to whatever won’t,
Since some things can’t,
Since some things have,

That have that can be
Never to have not happened.
The late sun on the outer wall,

The smokers traipsing out
From their controlled climates
To the subtler, uncontrolled

Atmosphere where they’re allowed
To light up—the golden stone,
The floating weed—whatever is

Has been and will always have been,
Some of which you know, most
Of which you can’t, your knowing

Part of what has happened, part
Permanently happened impermanence.
Someone offers someone a light.

Letter to an Unpoet

Thank you. Thank you,
Even if you
Don’t want to be

Here, reading this—
Were assigned, were
Compelled somehow

By gatekeepers
To browse these words.
Honestly, you

Probably don’t
Exist, but we
Who preach gladness

Not gratitude
For existence
Know gratitude

Matters among
Human souls most.
The rarest souls

Are those that give
Their attention
Just to attend.

If you don’t want
To discover
How to write, how

To find readers
Of your own—if
You’re just somehow

Here, giving us
Who say nothing
Much the kindness

Of attention,
Thank you. You are
The dream reader,

The ideal kind
Of reader—please
Stay as you are.

Span

You don’t know how much you’ve lived.
That’s why your life seems so short.
In fact, it’s vertiginous.

Once in a while, you feel it.
With practice, you’ll feel it more.
Maybe a given morning,

The combination of smells
And noises, the shape of light,
Reminds you of your childhood

Or any time of your life
You don’t think about that much.
Before you let it go, feel

How remote from you that world
Is now. Let it dizzy you
That you were also alive

Then, in that gone existence.
You could almost swoon, the gulf
Yawns so wide. Know what you’ve lived.

Try Barking at It

You can’t live without growing.
You can’t grow without strain.
Back up. Yes, even the clearly

Elderly, near to death, dying,
Are growing, even discounting
Their tumors and infections—

The surviving agèd cells
Are still plumply subdividing,
Growth and reproduction to the grave.

And that’s a strain. You could define
Life as well as whatever strains
As by any other bell jar of meanings.

Oh meaning. That’s something different.
It needs life and all the above to happen,
But while that’s all necessary, nothing

Is sufficient within it for meaning.
That’s the true mirror test, the one
Humans fail—what is this meaning?

A Paradox Found in Revolutions and Reforms as Well

The tide of medicine recedes,
And the body feels better.

How does that work? The sickness grew
In the absence of medicines.

The medicines went after it.
At what point did the medicines

Begin to lock in the sickness?
Never mind. For now, the sun shines.

Descendant Sonnet

There’s a stillness-adjacent
Calm like a quiet cave pool
Lapping at experience.

Is it truer than the rest
Of what it is to be life,
Living appetites and fears?

Divert these words into it
Wherever you can find it,
Then wait for them to emerge

In a spring in the mountains.
Have they altered? Are they rich
With minerals? Crystalline?

Can you trace an old message
In a lineage of calm?

Hyacinth

Every life here, every life
Has been invented to spring
Open like a cut blossom

Knifing the air with hunger,
Which is what everyone is
And will tell stories about

Mostly for the teller’s sake,
Like scents perfuming the air,
Like the memory of air.

Imagine having to live
As the memory of life.
Is there any other way?

Life’s Always Loved Its Smaller Doses

Give the body a little peace,
Never mind who earned it, and wait.

Grey morning over grim city,
Through a dusty window, so what—

It opens like a synchronized
Bouquet of silver-edged flowers.

Bring it in and give us a hug.
Let the body only be pleased,

Never mind who could deserve this,
Never mind the close horizon,

And pleasure lies in everything
And for pleasure, well, well-being.

Actually, You Are a Statistic, but You’ll Never Be the Pattern

The archaeology’s consistent—
Move people around a lot, concepts
Move around a lot, technologies

Move around a lot, and diseases
Start breaking out all over the place.
A stable, sedentary era

Might be nice for a good life, but
Innovation correlates with plagues.
As for your own life, never truer,

The more precise the statical
Prognostications become for you,
The more you realize you’ll never

Be a perfect match for your profile.
No two can be the same statistic.

There Yet

Sleep is horizontal.
It’s rarely really deep.

You tack and row, a craft
That stays in sight of shore.

Sometimes you lean over
And if the waves are small

You may see the ruins
Of an earlier shore,

But you never get there,
Not even in a storm.

Sleep capsizes in sight
Of land and the capsized

Can be seen at all hours,
Wading back in to shore.

Bed to Bed

Something to write
To soothe yourself

Between sleeps in the bed
You never really leave,

Unless you count the small
Shuffling ambits

Of physical therapy.
The planet’s like that,

However much prettier
And voluminous the bed.

No one’s done more than a small
Shuffle to the chair of the moon,

And yet Earth still feels adventurous,
So why not this one bed in it?

Words, No Images

Flowers and violence,
Just the phrases, no pictures,
A dream without pictures,

How can it be a dream?
Hallucination, then?
No images at all,

Just a male voice chanting
Variations, towers
Of flowers, violence.

You shake yourself awake.
You could do without towers
Of violence, even

If they’re just phrases here.
Bad trip? Bad medicine?
It’s been more than an hour.

Who dreams only in words,
Wakes coughing raggedly?
Pain killer. What a phrase.

Pain is unkillable.
Pain filter. More like it.
But a pain translator?

What drug could turn phrases
On a lathe, out of pain,
Into disembodied

Voices calmly chanting
Flowers and violence
But nothing to see here.

Guitars and Poems Between the Snores

Can you do your living dying?
That’s what counts. You’ll do your dying
One way or another. Can you

Do your living while you’re at it?
The old man gets out of rehab
To keep carving unique guitars,

And yes he’s dying doing so,
Maybe even speeding cancer,
But he’s living as he’s dying.

If you left him in the ward, bored,
He couldn’t do living for him.
He takes his catnaps. You take yours.

Then get to work at making things,
Maybe small things, busy living
Guitars and poems between your snores.

Irrevocable

First, the drug kneecaps the nerves.
The brain’s cross talk gets quiet.
The gut convulsions slow down.

The irritants of stillness,
Sore points in hips and shoulders
Leave the floor of consciousness.

Now you can rest, rest again.
All you want to do is rest,
Rest and never recover.

Go on from Here

Do the stars, churning
Steadily burn up
All their patience? What

Do you wait for if
You’ll burn a billion
Orbits of the rocks

That circle your burn?
Night’s a hospital
Of endless patients

Most incapable
Of changing how things
Will go on from here.