Just Go On Living There

On the one hand, there’s the book
Of poems by many persons,
Of many backgrounds, many

Histories that you’re holding,
And all the words that we want
To join us, all the phrases

That dance, that we want to dance
With us, and you half indulge
Us in this, then send them off,

Since, you remind us, they have
Their own families, their own
Contexts. On the other hand,

We’re helpless in your context,
Small phrases, helpless and bored.
There’s the groaning of a plane,

And sooty birds on a twig
That chirp with pretty voices,
But so what? It’s like you’ve got

No memories anymore.
It’s like you never had them.
What choice phrases can we form

Of our time by this wayside
If you bring no perspective,
No human life to give us?

Philosophical Shrubbery

Alchemists, Jung, astrobiologists,
And Hokkaido tourists all have their trees
Suggestive to them of philosophy,

Whether it’s the philosopher who grows
A mineral pillar shaped like a tree
Or the tree that seems philosophical.

Whichever direction figuration
Flows, doesn’t matter to us in these lines.
We’re more intrigued by the irrigation,

The way beings of densely dendritic
Forests in their skulls water parallels
Not only through actual, branching woods,

But in any branchlike pattern, from thoughts
To life, to ice crystals and minerals.
Ordinary trees are in the middle

Of these exchanges, appropriately
Enough, since they also serve as figures
For how this middle world is organized.

We scamper about in the shrubbery,
Segmented centipedes and snaking lines,
Consuming the compost of the fallen

Branches and layers on layers of leaves,
Occasionally whole giants brought down
To our level like dendritic whalefall.

For us, this is beauty, the broken heaps
Of branching patterns that reached for heaven,
When heaven turned out to be just as thin

As the layers of crust, as the ocean.
Oh, it goes deep, up there, it goes so deep.
But unless you nominate spiral arms

On occasional galaxies as trees,
The heavens full of waves are less like woods,
More like what’s seen on the floor of the sea.

What if the universe isn’t cut out
For much figurative philosophy?
All your trees may be rare delicacies.

Volcanic Ponds Attack Alkaline Vents

There are reasons to want

The Great Silence of space

To stay that way, and we

Say that as patterned words,

For whom, if life out there

Were discovered, it still

Wouldn’t really mean us,

Unless it talked somehow.

Nor do we only mean

To suggest anything

Capable of contact

Might conquer or eat you,

Although that’s one issue.

We mean, lonely as we

Are and have always been,

We make a lot of noise

As it is, noise that fuels

Furious discussions,

Can lead to violence,

And is mostly a mass

Of foaming foolishness.

We can’t even settle

Your debates on yourselves,

Your own rules and morals,

Where you or we came from,

Or our how life first arose

On Earth in the first place.

Are you sure what you want

Is less silence, a voice

From on high, talking skies?

The Sleepy Poem

We’re tired of it,
The way it goes.
It promises
News it can’t give.

It’s best when it’s
Just quiet, with
Few thoughts in it,
And no voices,

No promises
Of something new
And important
Under the sun

That lights dusty
Windows in this
Small room where we
Stay the morning.

Who Are You Talking to Now?

It’s sort of an odd dialogue,
Isn’t it, that of any one
Brain with the texts left by others?

The brain fantasizes the mind
Collectively generated,
Continuous conversation

Since the species started talking
And languages started living
Distributed among the skulls

And then, more rarely, here and there,
Anchored to patterns scraped on walls,
Into baked bricks, on turtle shells.

But to encounter a pattern
And imagine a persona
Reconstructed from memory

Of other patterns and other
Personas of breathing beings
Encountered more personally—

What a bizarre talent you have,
Reader! You assemble your ghosts
From collections of broken lines

And converse with us silently
Inside the caverns of your mind,
And who are we, these pattern ghosts,

More? The echoes of living thoughts
In particular living skulls,
Or of our own, earlier selves?

Dysregulated Control Systems

Life on the fritz. Essential
Tremor, tinnitus, night sweats
With no particular cause.

Embrace this. Particular
Causes are for suckers set
On earning livings from them

And the suckers who buy them,
Usually each from each
Or some set from other sets.

It’s a circulatory
System, any market is.
If you buy my backscratcher

I’ll buy or give you the means
Of production to sell yours.
All cycles spin balancing

Acts, stable orbits, feedback
Loops, homeostatic purrs,
Thermodynamic cascades

Climbing up Mt Entropy
The whole way geared in reverse.
The ratchet of the cogwheel

Zipper rattles. Why is it
Any cycles continue,
That regulation persists?

The big and little wheels turn
Up with regularity,
Sublime regularity,

And yet they always tremble
And wobble a little bit.
Don’t slip too much. Get a grip.