Thoughts Heading Uphill for an Hour

An empty world’s not possible,
And neither is an empty mind.
The waves in air, the tints in skies,

The waves on shores, the dance of trash,
The sensations of any kind
Running messengers up and down

Your fine, elaborated spine—
You’d have to go full sensory
Deprivation to escape that.

Hallucination’s what you’d get.
Ah, but a socially empty
Phenomenal experience,

A breathing time without humans
Or reminders of your own kind
Outside of your own memories,

That’s possible. Difficult, yes,
But worth it if you can get it
For just a little bit. A rest.

Glimmering

Art as composed may be voice,

Point of view, merely ego,

Wholly worship, the effort

To preserve as immortal

Some person, belief, idea,

Outside of the art itself,

But art as inherited

Is beauty saving itself,

Whether or not l’art pour l’art

Existed as a concept

At the time the art was made.

If it doesn’t feel both strange

And gorgeously, obliquely

True to future receivers,

Then, even if it survives

Physically, it’s not art,

Only archaeology.

Not such a bad thing to be,

After all, an extension

Linking ancient to recent

Worlds of cultural remains,

But art’s a little different.

Something wriggles within it

That gleams in new human brains.

Greetings!

The garniture in their
Particular vases
Glitter with glass flowers,

Season’s decorations.
It’s getting to be then,
That northern time again,

When part of the globe goes
Dark, irregularly
Cold, colder, and colder still.

A species of bipeds,
Not one of them truly
Indigenous to cold,

Furless, sweat-adapted
Skin with lots of surface
And heat-radiant skulls,

Makes a fuss about this,
Being prone to dances
Around fires, rituals,

Songs, and storytelling,
Magical charms against
Annual predators,

The winter and the dark,
As if they were lions,
As if they were only

Teeth and claws, and not ice
Reminding the bipeds,
You may wield fires and knives,

You may love caves and stars,
But you don’t know the dark
That has no doors on light.

Somewhere Else

No one really wants the days
To run in place, the same rungs
Of light climbed every morning

And descended every night.
A tree can be nonlinear,
A fungus, ocean species,

But ancestry that includes
Worms committed you to length,
To living from front to back,

From entrances to exits
In a line, however looped,
Curled, kinked, and twisted. You seek,

And that’s a linear lifestyle
For anything like a worm.
You can spin in circles some.

You can curl around a sphere,
But you’ll feel the need to stretch.
You’re shaped for going somewhere.

It’s the rare person who can
Sit on a porch, in a cell,
Letting everything revolve

Without wanting to get up
And wander off down a road,
As if that could lead somewhere.

The Old Fool

If and when
There is next
Time, there is

A next time,
Then you can
Still pretend,

Poor Philip.
We’ve always
Been crippled,

Some of us.
It’s just when
There’s no next

And no you
That you can’t
Then pretend.

Did you find
Out, did you,
In the end?

Not at night.
You ended.
It didn’t.

The Abrogation

The globe spins one way.
The atmosphere slides
Another, being

Thinner than the stones.
This causes friction
Between gas and rock.

Friction is the wind.
It moans around you
Where you wait in sun,

Glad to be in sun,
Happy as you are.
These moans are the sounds

Of waves friction makes,
Like waves on the lake.
How you interpret

These sounds all depends
On how much it costs
You to be patient,

To sit and listen.
The wind won’t blame you
If you can’t stand it.

Hundreds of Times You Lived This Night

Dreams do suggest what would
Happen if your brain could
In fact control the world,

Which is of some use
As a warning. As William
Dement observed, decades

Ago, it’s a safe form
Of brief insanity
You can rehearse nightly,

Which in turn should remind
You, insanity is
No more than a disease

Of the brain’s self control.
Dreaming is a routine
Spell of dictatorship,

And whatever its true function,
Is also that warning
To you not to believe

That if the world conformed
To your wishes you would
Go anything but mad.

Be glad the world corrects
You brain, resets your games.
Dreams are traps to escape.