A Cloudy Sunset

It’s nothing special.
It’s not in the news,
Just another one.
No one’s commenting
But these words right here

Stuck in this pattern.
Who did what to whom?
The bright light’s a smear
Against gray vapor.
It’s getting colder

For a little while.
When you were a child,
What was the worst thing
You can remember
Linked to the sunset?

They’re hard to recall
Aren’t they? Down the road,
Tourists are parking,
Setting up tripods,
Practicing poses.

But the clouds are wrong,
Thick on the wrong side.
Have you thought of it,
Yet, that memory?
That colorless pearl?

Observing Triumph and Vision

Is this what envy feels like?
Words feel along the bottom
Of the narrative, like crabs

Or spies feeling for a latch.
Where’s the weakness in this shell?
Where’s its point of poverty?

It’s the robins’ turn again,
Up in the sunnier world.
Dozens are mobbing one tree

Like teenagers gathering
To be around each other,
To compete, flirt, and complain.

Is that what envy feels like?
You can be peripheral
To both the admirable

And the noisy collective.
Do you want to be the one
The safe-crackers want to break,

The one with the pearl inside?
Do you want to be just one
Among the wings in the tree,

Desperate for a better perch,
Desperate to be secure,
Consoled by community?

You’re actually not sure.
You want to be safe, not loved
At the price of safety’s peace.

You adjust your position.
If you could be, if you could
Be certain, you’d rather flee.

New Way to See Them

Many people you know are words,
Which is to say that words are all

You know of many names you know.
You may know faces and voices

Of others you’ve never met, but
Them, too, you may know more as words.

You have opinions of people,
Strong opinions of people

Known mostly or only as words,
And of some people who exist

Only as words, not one moving
Image or portrait left of them.

There are people you know as words
Attributed to them, people

You know from some words about them,
People you know are fictional

Concoctions of words that you know
Can’t be them, but still you know them

And have opinions about them.
People being no more than words

In so many cases, it seems
Rude to say words can’t be people.

Volplane

If you are alive as you encounter

This patterned language, and if you are one

Who considers life not a burden but

A privilege, then you are already

Highly privileged, at least with regard

To all the lives lived centuries ago

And most lives lived in the past century,

Which consumed themselves in the end and lost

The privileges you are now burning.

Whatever the engines were that hurled you

Into this atmosphere of awareness,

They’re cutting off soon enough. Try to glide.

One of living’s peculiarities

Is that, while everyone shares a planet,

There are enormous local differences

In the waves and weather, in their currents,

The supportiveness of their atmospheres.

It’s one reason why atmosphere alone

Seems like a poor basis for ruling out—

Or ruling in—life on other planets.

There’s a bounciness to small, thin-shelled worlds

And a pillowy depth to gas giants.

Europa even looks embryonic,

Egg veined with streaks as dark as lines of blood.

Who knows how long life might remain aloft

On any of those, once it got started?

But back to Earth. The surface is growing

Closer. You can see waves from the window.

You explain to your recalcitrant self,

Which has now begun spinning in circles,

There’s time to pull out of this foolishness,

Still time to extend a long, quiet glide,

To quit what you’re so often thinking but

Can never seem to well enough express.

To opine as you descend that all art

Is the product of the entirety

Of a person’s life seems both right and just

A bit ridiculous, as if to say

That all the ocean approaching below

Is the product of the entirety

Of a tsunami’s existence. It blooms,

Each wave, as you are about to blossom

Down there in the moment you rush toward.

There’s some event got that shock wave started—

Earthquake, undersea volcano, bomb test—

But art’s ocean only propagates it,

And the wave did not produce the ocean,

And not all of what went into making

Any wave, little or great, any splash,

Will go into the ocean. See them crash?

Level off above the spray of the foam.

There’s no entirety to anything

That breaks, not to a person, not to art,

Not to any ocean, surface, wave, flight.

W and the Ladle

At some point, any animal
Only senses a multitude
Of any numerous likeness—

The brain can’t count holistically.
It takes in one, a few, many.
Exact counting’s algorithmic

Beyond maybe half a dozen,
The pips on the side of a die.
After that, you sense by clusters,

And at some point, the brain gives up.
How many stars on a clear night,
Visible to the naked eye?

Let’s say you’re out in the desert.
It’s moonless, and you’re in dark skies.
The brilliance is overwhelming,

The sprawl of the heavenly host,
So weirdly silent and solemn,
The myriads in procession.

You’re actually only sensing
A couple thousand points of light,
But the brain wants to cry millions.

There are millions, of course, and more.
There are billions upon billions.
But an animal sees many,

Only overwhelming many.
The rest is for machinery,
Cultural technology, math.

Settle for the landscape of night.
Know what you know thanks to hive mind,
But hold the small architecture

Of your perspective to your chest.
Stand in your door of the bright frames
Circling each other in the dark.

To Always Feel Wonderful

If possible, would be
The only drug you need—
Not temporary, not

Declining over time,
Not difficult to get,
Not just for the elite,

Just to feel wonderful,
Anyone, everyone,
Always, no matter what—

Inject that in your veins,
And then live and die, be
Kind, clever, or not,

Love or not, mate or not,
It wouldn’t matter, if
Everyone could always

Feel wonderful always.
Let the world go to hell.
So what? So wonderful.

Who Has Humanitarian Dreams?

The surface of the planet
Bears a thin but seething sheen
Of people telling people

Telling people what to do.
Consensus yields enforcement,
But never more than local,

And every consensus shoves
Up against another one.
Often this gets violent.

Everyone’s telling someone
Or trying to rip telling
Gifts away. There’s no telling

What will come of this. It’s no
Surprise there’s so much conflict.
And yet, so much of it works,

Since people like to be told,
Sometimes, as well as to tell.
Who can be trusted to tell?