Immaterial

What if they don’t care, they don’t
Want to revisit the end
Or anything before it?

They’re done with ports and stations,
All the waving and guessing,
The promises to be safe,

To have fun, to write often,
To come home. They’re done. They’re off
And not only forgetful,

They’re uncaring and shedding
As they’re accelerating.
What’s haunting you isn’t them.

It’s you stuck with everything
They ditch to get out faster.
Don’t expect a call from them.

The Reluctant Idealist

Ideals aren’t naive;
They’re tricksters. Justice
Could be much improved,

But ideal justice
Fuels injustices.
Humanity needs

Real community
To survive and thrive,
But idealized

Communities trap
Unwary victims
In viscous amber.

Idealism
Will scold reluctance
To salute ideals,

Scold up to the point
Of ostracizing
Or imprisoning

Or executing
The too-reluctant,
Which soon makes for more

Idealists bent
On rectifying
What idealists did.

Oh, there are sinners,
Grifters, and cynics
Who can be wicked

Lacking all ideals.
You don’t need ideals
To do awful things.

Ideals can subtly
Grease the skids, that’s all.
Ideals aren’t naive.

Good for You

When was there a good era
For most everyone living?
Was such an era ever?

Everyone can imagine
An era that seems better
To them for their ancestors,

But there aren’t a lot of tales
Or testimonies praising
Their own present as the best

Passed down from those ancestors.
Maybe archaeology,
History, and statistics

Could pinpoint the best era
For the most people in it,
But who would trust the answer?

Meanwhile, everyone picks one,
Projects one, imagines one,
Some version of an era

Dressed in dreams and nostalgia
That was or would be better
For everyone generally,

In their opinion, given
It feels like it would be, since
It would have been good for them.

All Miracles Are None

Every age of miracles
Seems less than miraculous,
Given any miracle

Accomplished, repeatable,
Quits being miraculous.
It’s not that explanation

Eliminates miracles.
No matter how step-by-step
Explicit the description

Of the achievement, no one
Really understands it all,
Not even the inventors,

Sorcerers, concept provers,
Prophets, and simulators.
In the mystery of how

Any inherited tech
Actually works as it does,
In the mystery of why

Phenomena will transform,
Everything’s miraculous.
A miracle simply works,

And that’s enough to end it
As a miracle. Starting
A fire was a miracle.

Proof Is Nothing

No message could be perfect
And be, but freed from being
A message and more than one,

No message can be perfect
As none. The dead have never
Stopped sending no messages.

Of course, you make up your own,
Many, many messages
From your dead who send you none,

And those say all kinds of things,
And some of them may soothe you,
But then you are sad again.

You thought you wanted some words
Out of existing language
To float to you from the dead,

Words they, living, never said.
Maybe you were wrong. Maybe
No message should be perfect.