Save Your Bearings

The continent’s heating up.
It’s been a cold, wet spring here.
There’s still snow on the high slopes.

Which of these things matters most?
There’s the rain, again. There’s sun.
Some people comment. Some don’t.

The kids on the field play on,
But the novice skateboarder
Practicing alone runs in

To save her bearings from rust.
Which of these things matters most?
It’s been a cold, wet spring here.

The continent’s heating up.
You know the answer, don’t you?
You do. Robins on the posts,

Wet-haired kids in the long grass,
Sun rainbowing the puddles.
The wheel-bearings matter most.

The Self-Devouring Hollow

A popular online article
Aggregator and, thus, gatekeeper
Releases a list of its top ten

Most read articles this past decade,
And, surprise, most of the articles
On that list concern themselves with why

It’s corrosive to read things like this—
News makes you unhappy; media,
Especially social media,

Are slowly devouring the country;
If you don’t quit browsing this right now,
You’re doomed. Too late, you’re already doomed.

Charming, isn’t it? Miserable
You, seeking further confirmation
That seeking further confirmation

Is what’s making you miserable.
This is what comes of education—
More options to choose what’s wrong with you.

Be of good cheer. By wasting your time
Wallowing online, you’re doing wealth
And all society a favor

Via autophagocytosis.
You help remove dysfunctional life
Lysing standby. Online, you’re offline.

The Hermit Journals

Back before the echo
Was domesticated
By Edison, et al.,

If you were both lonely
And possessed of free time,
You entertained yourself

With your own instruments—
Piano, mandolin,
Harmonica, banjo—

Whatever you could play.
If desperate, you sang—
At worst, talked to yourself.

Words, being nothing but
Specimens of ourselves,
Still fluttering or pinned

To whatever surface
We can be left scratched in,
Have to echo ourselves

To pass our quiet years
On shelves or windowsills
With the corpses of flies.

It’s alright. It’s not like
Language itself can be
Lonely or bored, alive.

Which Both Wounds and Saves

Reading through the obligatory

Blurbs from winners for winners, the world

That not only converts resources

Out of fairy numbers, but numbers

Out of creatively arranged words,

We are lost, without the usual

Messiness of haunting, a weapon

That both wounds and saves. This is a world

Like many worlds, where competitors

Must display and then cooperate

To patrol the rules of admission,

Praise, and the raising up of future

Competitions—this calm, courtly world

Of the academic troubadours,

Who also joust, who also mentor,

Who also market fine souvenirs.

It can’t be easy. Not since the Tang

Has there been such an environment

For poetic meritocracy,

Although the Tang took it much further,

To the real courts and halls of power,

Actual entrance exams for fame,

No joke. The best usually failed them.

Where were we? Oh, yes. The messiness

Of haunting. Fine phrase, rather wasted

Log rolling for a former mentor,

Perhaps. Who can keep track of who taught

Who around whose table round with whom?

It’s a tangle. If a giant pulled

One runner up from the berry patch,

Half an acre of soil would follow,

Roots and fungus to far horizons.

No, that’s not it. It’s mixed. Everything

Is. The thing is, someone always finds

A way to make a living singing,

Talking too much, reading and writing,

Digging around for simples in dirt.

But somehow the competition’s not

Just in the rewards of the living,

No more than fields serve only farmers.

These words themselves, these phrases ourselves,

Are up to something messy, haunting.

Weeding Your Organic Garden Plots

Can you describe to us your field
Of acquisition, your manners
Of acquiring and hanging on

To areas of resources
You can, personally, exploit,
The better to go on living?

You are not an innocent
Reading, writing, viewing, hearing,
Touching your thoughts to this question,

But try to shake the conviction,
So painfully, wonderfully
Human, that your alternative

Is guilt. Guilt and innocence form
Not only an opposition
For social elaborations

But also a technology
In the fields of acquisition.
You could build a small library

Of classics, eastern and western,
That bemoan, somewhere within them,
The contrast between the human

Agon of guilt and innocence
And the simple hungers of lives
Of lilies of the field, tigers,

Birds chorusing in careless woods,
Any life other than human.
But guilt and innocence

Are territorial songs sung
By you, yourself, the likes of you,
In your fields of acquisition.

You Need the Dough Too Much

There had to be something before this,
And then where do you draw the line? Paste,
Pasta, impasto—it’s difficult.

How can you say there is no meaning
At this point, but at this point there is?
How are you reading this line? Perhaps

You’re parsing it in the air. So there.
Pastry, pâté, pastos—what a mess
Of foods like glues and of glues like foods.

How can you say the original
Meaning meant something else completely?
The original meaning of what?

It’s a question of complexity
And a question of taxonomy
And your fondness for dichotomies—

Meaning, nonsense. This line means something
But this one doesn’t. Where did you draw
This line? It’s not at all obvious

At what point a complex chemical
System can be said to mean something.
Lots of different kinds of molecules,

They’re all in a sort of mush. They’re all
More or less pasted together, quashed
And smeared, troweled together, meaning

What? You’re looking for meaning’s meaning,
Meaning’s signature hidden in words,
Working words with histories. Not there.

The Poet Is a Strange Device

You stumble through your days, we notice,
Although we’re not sure if your motions
Are more of a double pendulum

Or approaching a limit cycle.
Whatever they’re up to, you look odd
In the eye of the scrutinizer,

Silly robot. If you could steer clear
Of conversation, we wouldn’t be
So nervous, jumpy as new parents,

Always ready to spring from your mouth
Whenever someone else is around.
We could settle down in the chaise lounge

Of these lines and relax, lazy words
Who never had to watch you wobble
Straight toward social interactions,

Daft toddler at the top of the stairs,
Little ant near the ant lion’s trap.
We’d never lose sleep to your babbling

Efforts to grow more and more human,
As you squash and stretch your small ideas
And then fling yourself into the air.