Improving on a Standing Invitation

We’re happy that we’ve fixed things
So we don’t worry so much
Anymore about the door.

After a few centuries,
When it’s time, we seamlessly
Begin to biodegrade.

We’ve stopped describing the door
As a big hole to push through,
As a mouth that swallows you.

No one pushes anyone,
And everyone simply fades.
We’ve made the feeling pleasant,

The timing predictable,
And the beforehand longer.
The door hasn’t really changed—

It opens only one way,
As always—but we’ve given
It serious curb appeal,

And left it hanging ajar,
An open invitation
With a charming entryway.

Now that it’s more appealing
And predictable, not just
Inevitable, we’ll wait.

Efficient Country

Fun facts about death
In the USA—
More than half of all

Suicides are gun
Deaths, and more than half
Of all gun deaths are

Suicides. And both
Are only headed
Up! It’s efficient,

You’ll have to admit,
As a way to get
More death to commit.

Bent or Broken, Never Bouncing

Two kinds of falling you know

Well, the kind that’s surprising

For happening so quickly,

And the kind that’s surprising

For taking so long to fall—

You could as well itemize

The Hemingway bankruptcy

As a third type, but that type

Just links gradually, and

Then suddenly, in sequence,

So, the same two, distinct kinds.

You know them both, know them well.

The third kind, you’ve never known—

The unsurprising, graceful,

Painlessly completed fall,

The specialty of athletes,

Stage performers, and raptors,

Experts who know how to fall.

For all your experience

Falling, in falls that go on

Forever, or seem to, or

Now, done already, too late

To alter outcomes at all,

You’ve never learned how to fall.

Can’t Crave What You Can’t Sense

The housepet dozing
In a shaft of sun
Does nothing to make
Itself feel more real.
Imaginary

Interlocutors,
Imaginary
Friends or admirers,
The housepet has none,
Needs none. It feels sun.

Crud

It’s the essence
Of nothing much
And everything,
And people claim

To care about
Essential things,
But people hate
Crud. The mish-mush

Of fragments
From larger things,
The crumbled bits,
Broken crap, this

Is the true glue
And milled essence
Of the cosmos.
Night’s mostly dust.

John Henry Poet

Word-pounding line-driver,
Racing against machines
And to show the teachers

Still strolling around town
Or hailing student-drawn
Carriages for short lifts,

Dignified conveyance,
Rides rented from the rich,
It’s not just the future

That’s about quantities
First, there are quantities
In the present, always

There’s quantity over
Quality, not only
Among the desperate

And the capitalists,
But equally among
The quality-obsessed.

He sweats. He wants to rest.
The machines are ahead,
And the teachers don’t see

Him for what he’s doing
At all, not the least bit.
He’s dying. He can’t quit.