You Can Go Back to Your Shows

While you’re busy with your changes,
Other things are changing.
Comparing changes is called time.

The changing is ineluctable.
The comparison is a strategy,
Maybe the best way to think of time.

Change accumulates and never
Undoes itself exactly, and the residue
Is sameness and information.

But now we’re lost. We know
What information is now, thanks
To Shannon and his many heirs

Both human and machine, but we don’t
Know what sameness is, nor what
Then constitutes the residue

Of change exactly. Excuse us
For being both banal and abstract.
It’s just that it seems like the other,

More important stuff for living,
Hunger and hunting and hurt,
Might have something to do with this.

Desire

The cat jumped for the toy
And for the toy again,
And for the toy again.

Yes, we know this isn’t
Important, but it could
Be made allegory,

How Robert Henrysoun
Turned every Aesop
Fable into Christian

Moralitas by means
Of allegorizing,
And very charming, too.

We won’t be so charming,
But, if this toy’s nothing,
Remember this cat’s you.

Your Scented World

Meaning is the cult,
The cult of meaning.
When the god’s statue,

The holy scripture,
The sacred icon,
The celebrity,

Gets venerated,
The body’s not there—
That is, not the point.

Shouting hosannas,
Hoping to be healed,
To touch the sacred

Whatever, it’s not
Whatever it’s thought
To be. It’s what you

Invested in it,
Precious ambergris
From the gland of mind,

The human perfume
Only you infuse.
You gave it meaning.

They Don’t Talk Right

There’s a trick the good ones do
Even without the help of actors—

Somehow how the hunks of phrases
Meant to have been conversations

Actually stand out in the mind
From the rest of the apparatus,

And the mind imagines voices.
They don’t have to be too real.

Too real is too boring.
They have to be vivid,

Not lifeless and awkward,
Fine, but what does that mean?

Your doctor’s journal.
There’s a wide track.

Let’s go into the forest tomorrow.
Something there isn’t quite right.

Words lie around like heaped-up brush.
Sudden voices slip through some of us.

X Management

Hello. What’s your exception,
Right now? Ok, recently.
What’s a recent exception
You made for yourself, being
A good person, all in all,

Not awful, not some monster,
More sinned against then sinning,
Or, you know, fifty-fifty.
Can you push yourself to think,
To remember the last time

You thought, well, this isn’t me,
But I deserve it this once,
I’m under a lot of stress—
Of course it’s wrong to do X,
But in these circumstances

I’m the exception now, right?
If you’re brave enough, you can.
We’re not here to preach at you,
To wag word fingers and say,
Don’t be such a hypocrite.

We’re just here to tell you this
Is who you are. This makes most
Of the mess. Build good systems,
Not good selves, to manage this,
And hope for better, at best.