Where It Bleeds into Poetry

Last is a label
Like any other.
It creates a space

Like that label, space,
Creates a space, just
Not quite the same space.

It creates a space
The size of itself,
Since size labels space.

So now there’s a last
Where, without labels,
There wasn’t a space.

It’s so elegant.
Label this evening,
The last while it lasts.

Limelight and Water

Attention capable
Not only of noting
Attention from others

But attention itself
As a phenomenon
Worthy of attention

Takes a blowpipe that burns
A blend of oxygen
And hydrogen, applies

The flame to quicklime blocks
Of calcium oxide
And burns an intense light

To focus on a stage.
Now you have attention
Worth calling awareness.

Although it’s peculiar—
There’s nothing much on stage,
Just the floor reflecting

Like water in limelight,
An immobile hurry
To return to somewhere.

Some illustrations add
Children in the limelight
(Vide Ashbery) but

Homunculi remain
Unnecessary props.
Once the circuit closes,

The wavering inside
Is a thing of its own,
A ghost light to itself.

Removability Characteristic

Kinder to your own,
Fiercer to others,
Oxytocin glues
Together the walls
Of humanity—

And it’s not even
Unique to humans,
Only uniquely
Deployed as part
Of what makes humans

Such weird outliers
Among mammalian
Social species—apes
That, with the extra
Tissue of syntax,

Can elaborate
Coordination
And competition
As populations
Into the millions.

What’s not well-explained
Is how easily
These adhesives can
Be peeled, reapplied,
Their bonds optional.

Most Lives Split the Difference

There’s a kind of conversation game
In which you get asked to choose between
Two perfectly horrible choices—

Would you rather be eaten alive
By fire ants or carnivorous crabs?
Fun’s in the absurd grotesquerie

Of such unlikely scenarios—
Would you rather lick a sewage pipe
Or the hairs off a tarantula?

Adolescents, unsurprisingly,
Excel at and revel in such games.
Having sometimes been drawn into one,

You’re familiar with the formula,
Enough it runs on autopilot
In your ruminative elder’s head,

Tending however to be transformed
Into unfunny, realistic
Scenarios you’ve seen in lived lives—

Would you rather have had an awful
Parent with whom you half-reconciled
Only at the close of their old age

Or a kind parent who adored you
And who you adored, your mentor and friend,
Dead before you got out of your teens?

You’d hope your own child chose the second,
You think, maybe? You’re fantasizing
Too much there about your parenting.

Small Delights

You lift the lid to look
Into the magic box.
These are the things going

On, right now, today, or
Just recently at least,
Recently brought to our

Collective attention.
Deaths that are notable
Since the dead were famous

Or highly accomplished,
Deaths that are notable
For being numerous,

So many at once, or
Deaths that are notable
For being violent,

Hideous. Also life,
Not as predictable,
Kittens in a prison

Soothing damaged inmates,
An essay about trust,
The latest in music,

Society gossip,
An essay on reasons
People will find a way.

You let the lid down. Click.
How much is going on
Outside the magic box?

Open Pit Mine

An organism being
A vortex that’s maintaining
Its vortex by consuming

Additional vortices,
While being consumed in part
Or totality by more

Vortices continuing
By consuming vortices,
Peace lies in alliances

Between vortices that don’t
Consume each other’s kind or
Compete over the same kinds.

It’s relatively easy
For a deer and a pine tree,
Or a human and a . . . well,

Actually humans will
Consume almost anything,
Even what isn’t living.