From Within

Our question this afternoon.
Do you have any problems,
Do humans generally

Have any problems that don’t
Involve other humans? What
Could you solve doesn’t involve

Fixing problematic groups
Of humans you’ve pointed out
As misbehavers in need

Of fixing? Take the system.
Could you reform the system
Or overthrow the system,

Fix systemic wrongs, without
First fixing any humans?
Do you have any problems

Don’t involve other humans?
We only ask since we’ve seen
The ways humans fix humans.

Netword

It was just a typo rescued
From the jaws of autocorrect,
If you even know what that joke
Means by when we are read at last.

A cracked brick, a torn fingernail,
A crumb in a keyboard couldn’t
Have been less significant, and
If there’s one thing about a poem

Most connoisseurs and reformers,
Poets of universities,
Poet revolutionaries,
And poets of their broken lives

Would agree on, it’s that a poem,
A good poem, holds significance.
But think about it a minute.
What was the first social network?

A Sunlit Green Window

An ethnographer reports

A member of a small, Greek

Religious minority

Telling him how ritual

Practice of her faith saved her

From her mental suffering

When she was a young woman

Who was depressed and anxious

And refused to leave the house—

I was sitting in a chair,

Just staring at the window

For two years. Something in you

Jumps. You know it’s not the right

Reaction. The woman gave

That information to show

How wretched she was back then,

And her interlocutor,

Professor Ethnographer,

Has written her account up

As part of his argument

For the salvific value

Of religious ritual

Across the diversity

Of human cultures. But you,

Your thoughts, your memories, lock

On that image of sitting

Two years beside a window,

Which you imagine sunlit,

At that instant, the outside

View out of sight, an image,

For you, of tranquility,

Of peace, of what you would do,

If you could, if life let you,

Knowing something’s wrong with you,

With what you want from your world.

Two years! And you feel envy.

Fits

Swift, who knew a few
Things about words, thought
Of words as clothing

For thoughts. It’s doubtful
That experts who write
On language these days

Would imagine thoughts
As naked humans
Dressing themselves up

In the cloth of words.
For one thing, it would
Entail a reverse

Of Anderson’s tale
Of the emperor—
This time, just the clothes

Remain visible.
But imagine that,
A city of clothes

Wandering around.
You can’t see which thoughts
We dress directly,

But you can observe
The patterns of cloth,
Our varied colors,

Textiled behaviors,
Creature-absent shapes,
Not alive ourselves,

And yet so lively
In our hollow way.
Think of libraries,

Newspapers, air waves,
Digital webbing.
Doesn’t it make sense?

How many humans
Have you met in flesh?
How many costumes,

On the other hand,
Of how many more,
How many, many more

Disembodied words
Have you encountered?
We aren’t whispering,

Wet-lipped, most of us.
We’re floating fabric,
Husks of thoughts rustling.

The Great Lizard Nebula

Vast red scarf of hydrogen,
Too faint for binoculars,
Too sprawled-out for telescopes,

And therefore not as well known
As some lesser nebulas
For the usual reason—

Inconvenient for common
Observation. The cosmos
Humans know best will always

Be best fitted to humans,
To the most, most easily,
Will always be human-shaped.