The Supreme Courtship

Every day you see news, more
Minor future history,

You think, and someday someone’s
Gonna write an angry poem

About this thing happening,
And someday most of this news

Will be for historians,
And someday angry poets

And deep archival addicts
Will be themselves forgotten,

And aren’t you wise, and isn’t
Your perspective wonderful?

And then you return for more
News of the moment, being

Neither wise nor wonderful,
More of a rubbernecker

At all awful scenes of crimes,
While for yourself you’re hopeful.

Microclimate

Warm nearing winter,

A white ball over the wall,

And childish shouts, Don’t

Kick it so hard! It’ll land

Over in that other yard!

Kusa no shimo

Remarkably like the act
Of thinking itself, being
Aware of going away,

Catching the scent in the air
You yearn to identify
Before it forever fades,

Before you forever fade,
Body aware of being
A body being aware,

That’s how we would imagine
The act of falling asleep,
But we know we’re never there.

Food for Powder

Second billing under Sherlock,
Something like a free-rider gene
In the darkness of DNA

Among husks of torn viruses,
Stories and narrative fragments
Caught up in the machinery

Milling generations ago,
What were you all about? Tut, tut.
What did you do for your author

Who finished you, saw you in print,
And maybe hoped for what? Readers?
Fame? Enough money for dinner?

Surely not this reproduction
By such an unthinkable means
And still only second billing

On a cover with an image
Of the primary narrative
Nothing at all to do with it.

Wink

Ah you, awareness great
As the phosphorescence
Formed from a firefly’s butt,

You both want to believe
Behavior matters, so
You can feel in control

Of yourself, if nothing
Else, but wish you hadn’t
Wanted, since choice leaves you

With no choice but remorse
Or defying remorse,
Which hardly seems worth it.

If you fail, it’s your fault,
If your choices mattered,
And yet all matter fails.

Still you don’t want to make
Any more wrong choices,
Really don’t want to fail,

Ah you, awareness great
As the phosphorescence
Formed from a firefly’s tail.

To Gather Paradise

One of those nights when you’re glad
To be alone in your humble
Bed to lie still and to hope.

Life in probability,
Fairest house of all, also
Most numerous of exits,

Also difficult and small,
But crammed as a cricket’s brain
With tightly coiled sentences

Directing host to water
So they can unwind their own
Tinier, hungrier kind.

No, that’s not fair. There’s no kind
Of life any hungrier
Than any other, and none

Never needs to pause, to rest.
Life pulses. The probable
Regulates the rest. So rest.

The Surviving Monk’s Embarrassing Death Poem

To shout out enlightenment
One last time when dying won’t

Mean a thing. Even dying
Might not manage the first time.

Enlightenment’s one of those
Things you’ve got to leave behind,

And dying’s not a station
You arrive at to step off.