There Again! Or There!

Mind’s in the attic again,
Memory in memory’s
Palace of moth-eaten thoughts.

Mind moves like Hera moving
Like the mind from place to place,
Memory to memory,

Picking up one, then the next,
As instantaneously
As if there were no distance

Between remembered places,
Since there isn’t, not really,
Until mind plops in a heap

Of threadbare recollections,
A mind in a cloud of dust.
Having saved so many things

To see none of them were saved,
To see them disintegrate
Before the whole palace falls.

Calendars Are Timeless

On such a date in such a year,
So-and-so was doing something,
And the prose is off and running,

Having established position
On the board ahead of a move.
All dates are mental addresses

For elastic storage units,
Since exact time is always space,
Always location, in language.

So-and-so may show up again
In many other cubbyholes,
But for this narrative thread, home

Is this bend in the labyrinth,
This chamber of the nautilus.

Why Pick One

Too much advice hounds writers,
Advice on writing written
By writers who know better

Than to follow their advice.
Mostly, it’s head fakes. Who writes
Just what they’re certain they know?

Who writes only what they want
To see? The impossible?
Who follows any advice

On being to true to themselves
Who hasn’t betrayed themselves,
Not least by taking advice?

Here’s a bit of bad advice.
Smush together all advice.
Write what you don’t know you know.

The Slippery Source

It’s true. It’s true. People can’t

Agree what’s true. Never could.

If reality is shared

Hallucination, well then,

Imagine shifting circles,

Soap-bubble Venn diagrams,

And good luck finding their core

Reality shared, shining

Lyrico-satirical

Light that no petty tyrant

Can darken by blotting out

And sending in his henchmen.

Are people the source of most

Suffering and comfort? Source?