Moving into the Past

When they moved into the new place,
They looked inside all the cupboards
To figure out where to put stuff.

In the first cupboard, a spider,
The second, the corpse of a mouse.
This was not going well at all.

They braced themselves at the third door
But still shrieked when a wren flew out—
Hours to get it out of the house.

Did they dare open any more?
Could they still get out of their lease?
It was dirt cheap, but they were poor,

Why they’d taken it, sight unseen.
They gingerly tested the fourth,
Convinced it might harbor a bat.

Nothing. Nothing at first. Darkness,
But it looked clean, a bit hazy.
When they crawled in, it felt cozy.

Qohelet Amulet

There was, in that desert,
A little tourist town
With few people in it
Who weren’t tourists passing,

And the developers,
And the corporations,
And hedge fund investors,
Surrounded that small town

And went round it and built
Necklaces of hotel
Chains strangling the locals’
Ability to stay.

And there was found in town
A poor hermit who hid
His sayings in the walls,
The sayings that could save

The town if they had strength,
But sayings have no strength
Of their own, and no one
Remembers the hermit.

The Feel of the Ball As It Rolls

Consciousness in insects strikes a nerve—
Well, more than one, but not that many.

It seems it doesn’t take many nerves,
Not trillions, for sure, to be conscious.

Awareness—birds do it, bees do it,
Cephalopods in the seas do it.

What’s special about bat qualia?
Wouldn’t you rather become aware

You were a bee playing among bees
Pushing and rolling the tiny toys

Someone in the lab donated you?
The absorption of play is often,

For humans, the best release from games
People play. What’s the release for bees?

The Long Game

Will there ever be a longer
Game than language? Will there ever

Be a game without a language?
How you answer depends on math,

Which is or is not a language
In your thoughts, your definitions

(Is or is not language, that is,
In your language). If math’s language,

Then no, probably not, never
Any game longer than language.

If math isn’t really language,
Then maybe there are longer games.

The Day Dan Dennett Died

You were back from the oncologist,
And the pharmacy, and groceries,
Nowhere town, doing this, doing that,

And you flipped open your crumbed laptop
To inform everyone of your news,
You might live! And it said he was dead.

He must have argued with everyone
At some point or another, even
Nobodies like you, even the ones

Who thought to outflank him on the more
Material side, hinting he was
Really idealist, to his face.

Oh, no he was not, he let you know.
Does it matter now? Of course it does.
Ideas are nothing if not matter,

But it doesn’t matter now to him,
One human animal with a brain
Certain it was cranes, all the way down.

It’s too bad you’re no Frank O’Hara,
Too bad Dennett was no holiday,
But he did look you straight in the eye

And listened like fury when you spoke,
Before he shook that domed, beard-maned skull
To correct you, who’s still uncorrected.

What Sounds Like a Difficult Life

Information against sensation—
The data suggest you’re doing well.
Your guts feel shoved through a splintered wall.

Your spine hides mice with tiny pincers.
Your knees sag and loosely hyper-flex
Like an untended marionette’s.

Your nerves are networking with scissors—
Sensation versus information.
The data suggest you’re doing well.