Raked from the Fire

Call it your brain,
Call it your soul,
Call it your heart
Or liver. Same.

It’s never what
Object you choose
To substitute.
It’s what not there

That you know’s you
In some manner
You can’t explain,
Since it’s not you

The life trying
To explain, but
It is you, name
Without a name.

Pack

The pressure of the planet
Wanting you so terribly
It hurts you in its embrace—

If only gravity were
Only longing, pure desire,
Maybe the numbers would work.

It’s not a force, nor a curve,
Nor a god gathering light.
Gravity is the wanting

That stirs everything to loss.
The ground pushes against you
For the same reason dogs do.

It’s Not Even Clear What It Means to Be Less

Blue overwhelming
While everything else
Might as well be folds

In scrap paper tossed
At the foot of blue—
The senses notice

Absences much less
Than sudden increase
Or swift reduction—

When it goes quiet
Part of the way—
When everything pops—

Then you notice it—
In between the blue
Is overwhelming.

Hearth

None of the geopolitics
Of the past seventy-five years
Makes sense without the atom bomb.

None of the wars of any kind,
None of the extinction events
For centuries done without guns.

None of the metallic ages,
Arrogant civilizations,
Without the inventions of kilns.

Techne takes many forms, but fire
Might as well be the name for all.
Shaping your burning shapes your fall.

Someone Was in Your Room Last Night

Dreaming wouldn’t be so difficult, if
It weren’t that you believed it at the time.
How entertaining to savor nonsense
And disorientation as amusements,

Sleep as theater and carnival rides,
But while you’re dreaming you dream you’re alive,
And although it’s strange and disconcerting,
You sincerely believe it all matters,

And you feel your dreamed emotions deeply,
And you try and you try to figure out
Each scenario as it arises.
You wake knowing you were wrong, and it’s gone.

Sacks of Blood

Whenever the human world convulses
And the death rate from weaponry soars,
It seems implausible such destruction

Could be orchestrated by small bodies
Intent on rearranging each other,
Such fire and chaos from small sacks of blood.

It’s as if ants started hurling redwoods,
Honeybees started dynamiting hives,
Termite siege engines battered termite towers.

It’s our fault. It’s our magic in your mouths.
If words had never given you power,
And stories never turbocharged your rage,

You would still be huddled on the margins
Where the forests meet the grasslands, watching
For small opportunities to scavenge.