Why Like Sex Much

Biological bribery,
Some call it, and they’re sort of right—

Not just for reproduction, love
Is bribery from life for life,

Nothing if not the hankering
Of matter to go on living,

Or, along with going on itself,
To ensure life itself goes on—

Pleasure and desire for pleasure
Greater than the pleasure itself,

Bodies wanting to smash and grind
So there will be more bodies, so

Bodies will go on wanting, so
Matter will go on making life

Wanting life to go on wanting
To be life wanting to be life.

Cul de Sac

No fate, no contingency,
The past has to be the past
It is for no good reason.

There’s nothing controlling it
And no one outsmarting it,
And yet you’re a part of it

Daydreaming of shaping it
With your own greed or goodness,
Sometimes seeming to succeed,

Which thrills you, but then often
Not working out, which scares you,
And you think, what should I do?

Most helpless in your belief
That you can’t be that helpless.

Whose Father Was a Ghost

It’s hard to think of a people

Who believed they had a short past.

It’s as if all societies

Were born as undergraduates

Writing their essay assignments

Beginning, Since the dawn of time,

No matter how little they knew.

A few populations had myths

In which ancestors had traveled

To their current habitations,

But even that was near the dawn.

Most were created in situ.

This is nothing particular

To peculiar populations

Or to any variety

Of social configurations.

Pretty much every culture since

The dawn of time has sensed their dawn

Was a very long time ago.

More recent peoples sense this, too.