La Nullité Trompe-l’oeil

We are tedious.
Pardon our folly
Writing of folly.

In an instant, snow
Small and fine as ash,
Cold, white, wet, fine ash

Responds. No pardon
Can come from the world
That isn’t human,

Offering only
Further weather. Fine.
Don’t pardon folly,

Bury us in blank.
Snow is tedious.

Slate

Cold day, skies gray,
Let’s speculate—
How many days,
What percentage

Of human lives
Have been lived when
Chilly and gray?
Astronomers

With satellites
Changed estimates
Of cloud cover
From half the globe

To seven tenths.
Add up the hours
Of all your lives—
How many gray?

No Message

How specific would a message
Have to be, to count as language?

Linguists argue birdsong doesn’t
Quite pass muster. Songs are displays,

Some say, not intended to hide
A coded message. Let’s leave out

The question whether they’re missing
The coding and go with the claim—

Coded message vs. display.
Doesn’t that seem arbitrary,

Separating information
Into discretely distinct bins?

A continuum of message
From simple to elaborate

Seems a more appropriate fit.
But something’s in there, in their code,

In the flailing of languages
And linguists to define language—

A tiny, trifling, scarlet thread
Of meaning through information,

Of meaning not information,
Of meaning in code that’s not code.

Waiting for Real Feeling

So we wait. We were going
One way. Someone was going
The other way, and we were

Supposed to meet each other
Here, where the wind blows the flags
And the sun is bright but cold

Ahead of a promised storm.
What is an intersection?
Why haven’t we connected

Yet? Someone spits on the ground
As they walk by in the wind.
Not who we were waiting for.

We are waiting for someone
We can touch. There is nothing
Feels as real as being touched.

You’re More Other Than You’re You

Beyond body and embodied
Worlds don’t often mesh well, we know.
Some days, everything’s going well.

Beyond body, all’s beautiful,
But embodied world feels like hell.
Other days are miserable

In all directions except close,
Where embodied world seems to glow.
The discrepancy’s sufficient

To keep proprioception crisp,
To make it feel like there’s a wall
Bounding embodied from beyond,

But there’s not. It’s all beyond you,
What you are, shell of world in worlds.