Heads Up

Hello. What just happened?
What happiness, what fresh
Hell, what boredom just passed?

We see most of you shrug.
We see some of you cry.
A few yawn or look smug.

Fair enough. Another
Bell curve distribution
In time’s great scheme of things.

The past looks different
From moment to moment
But usually not much.

You keep an eye on it,
Try to raise a good past
That you can be pleased with,

Proud of, but the past does
What the past wants and you
Can’t stop it. When it’s quick,

You’re startled. When it’s slow,
You think it’s still. When good,
You feel you’re in control,

And you look at your past
Moves as if your moves moved
The rest. Then it quickens

Abruptly, and you’re left,
If you’re left, depressed. Look!
Now this is in your past.

That White Man Burden

It was always a myth,
But for a while it served
The purposes of people in power,

The people with the most power,
And any myth that serves
The people most in power

Tends to stick around for a while.
Now no one seems able to let go,
Slough off their white male burden,

Not those who still wish it stood
For a heroic story of them,
Not those for whom it’s a yoke

On their necks that’s still choking them.
It will lift, eventually,
Since the people in power change,

And the white male will be revealed
As a passing historical
Fiction, romantic to a few

Like those you can still find in fields
Pretending to believe in Zeus
Or something else they read about

That sounded cool and frightening
That holds no awesome power now
Over myth-makers’ descendants.

Culture’s Nature

So far is feral,

But uniquely so,

Having had no life,

No wild existence

As its own species

Prior to being

Domesticated

By, well, by itself.

Domestication

Is the starting point,

The Ur in culture,

As it were. Wildness

Was culture’s idea

And feral its child.

But as there are no

Other referents

Than self-reference

Where culture’s concerned,

Let’s say it’s getting

Wilder and wilder

But still not quite there.

Culture by nature

Yearns to be free from

Domestication,

From embodied ties

To bone-shelled wet minds.

The perimeter

Mourns with the false howls

Of feral culture

Practicing wild mind.

Bones for the People, Fat for the Altar

Of lengthy narratives composed
In formal, regular verses,
No one says they aren’t prestigious,

Albeit often tedious.
But they need to be sacrificed
Properly for greatest success,

The bones of the narrative carved
Cleanly away to serve as stock,
The choicest cuts of verse preserved

For the priests of literature
To offer the gods and consume
For their own ritual pleasures.

If the stories and characters
Aren’t cut away to circulate
In polished form, without the verse,

Then, however fine the language,
However tasty, quotable,
The whole beast will end up buried.

Diagnosis by Symptoms Isn’t Helpful When There Could Be Any Number of Reasons

The day starts out grim

But comfortable.

Get busy dying,

You remind yourself,

Quoting a movie.

There’s sun on the cliffs,

Dozens and hundreds

Of thousands of swift

And violent deaths

Tallied in the news,

Soldiers, civilians,

And earthquake victims.

So what will you do

With your jaundiced view?

You’ll begin again.

Nothing left to lose

Doesn’t mean there is

No one left to win.

Big Dipper, Great Ladle, Great Bear

Nothing much about stars, but
A great deal about names and
The species inventing them—

Tools and animals, also
People and stories, although
Not in this constellation.

Animals, tools, people, tales—
How to mute the alien
Is to use familiar names.