The Problem with Engineering Is Always with the Engineers

Why has kindness persisted
And yet never succeeded
In superseding anger?

We all know how the quick flash
That flushes the skin, tightens
The grip, desires to lash out.

The body’s spontaneous
Gushes—fear, anger, kindness,
Disgust—none programs others

Out of us. Circumstances
External to the body
Can alter more easily,

And in turn, act to alter
How much kindness, how much hate.
Drugs can have short-term effects.

Religions amplify both.
We’ll try engineering next,
But we’ll engineer anger

For our teams, maybe poison
Our enemies with cocktails
That force them to be kinder,

Before we’re likely to let
Ourselves be reengineered
So kindness succeeds in us.

Circuitus

Ask any world-building
Fantasy novelist,
It’s awfully hard work

To create like a god
With only memory
And cultural downloads

For raw materials.
Real gods get the cheat code
Of an actual void.

Any twitch at all breathes
Something into nothing.
But still the brave writers

Writing from and for life
On higher and higher
Stacks of each other’s worlds

Suffer to create more
For the world-hungry hordes
Wanting fresh exit doors.

Keeping the Faith

How has this phrase

Never become

Pejorative?

Well-known writer

Survives battle

With rare cancer

And tells us how

Through suffering

He kept his faith.

Not in cancer,

Of course, not in

Life, life’s hunger,

No, his faith in

His faith. Leaving

Particulars

Of his aside,

It’s not as if

Faith often works

On faith, can’t let

Anyone down,

And has proven

Itself so well,

You don’t have to

Take it on faith.

Forest City

One-sixth built and one-percent

Occupied, dream paradise

For all human kinds. To own

A second-home abroad. Priced

Out of reach for most dreamers,

But that’s what makes it a dream.

Investment. A holiday

Spot, eco-harmonious

Metropolis, waterpark,

Trails, views, bars, and restaurants.

A planet unto itself.

A whole planet to yourself.

Local nickname, Ghost City.

Nothing but you and your thoughts.

Raw Woods

There is, or was, a ball-field,
Hacked out of fast-growth forest,
That sums half your universe,

Metaphorically, of course,
Allegorically, of course.
No one lives in a ball-field.

Poems keep coming back to it,
Also metaphorically
But sometimes literally,

As poems come back to themselves.
There was the forest, growing,
Millions and millions of lives,

Rotten with plants and fungi,
Housing large and small mammals,
Snails, spiders, insects, worms,

And all the birds in its trees.
Then you came along with tools
And hacked a swath of woods down,

Devastation, in one sense,
Ecosystem engineering
In another. Yes, but why?

Your system in the system
Was less like a beaver dam
And more like a lekking ground.

It reflected exact rules,
Abstract and invisible,
Bounding inner and outer,

Places to run, wait, stand, watch.
Places where watchers gathered.
It had no lid, no shelter.

It couldn’t maintain itself.
You came. You performed. You went.
The floating wild seeds pushed in.

For years you cut and pushed back,
So the field could host your games,
Surrounded by waiting woods,

Open to weather and sky,
Allowed by weather and sky,
Sometimes. Sometimes is hard work.

The ball-field was abandoned,
As all ball-fields will have been,
And all those other lives surged

That could take the ball-field back.
The forest is growing fast.
The rules no longer apply.

No one cuts and measures lines,
Paints places to stand or run,
To show off or watch and cheer.

But the poems come back to check
The living progress of loss
Of the field, year after year.