You’re Responsible for This

If Avedon perusing Arbus

Could claim her photographs will make you

Be responsible for what you see,

Then each word you’ve ever seen or heard

Could make you become responsible

For what this means. Interpretation

May not be the whole of meaning, but

It’s how meaning behaves when meaning

Behaves self-consciously. Did you know

Meanings have selves to be conscious of?

They do. Not always. Your attention

Births them as apparently guileless

As infants, but they’ll explore their worlds.

You all know how meanings grow. Meaning

Adolescents start interpreting.

Facts of Missing Out

Somewhere on another planet,
In another solar system,
A sunset you wouldn’t believe

Sends radiance across the cliffs
In a pattern you’ve never seen
The like of—and having never

Seen something similar, never
Will be able to imagine.
Aren’t you afraid of missing out?

You don’t care about that sunset
In the least, not even now that
You’re reminded it must exist.

It must exist. It’s happening.
So much happening. Most you miss.

Rearranged Loop

If change is an illusion—
Change, which moves in everything—
Then everything’s illusion,

And nothing’s not illusion.
If nothing’s not illusion,
Change is nothing—neither’s same.

Tipping Point Reservoir

On long enough timescales, most
Real-world systems are like this
Long skein of loosely gathered

Verse (call it text if you like,
Whatever name it deserves),
Accumulating slowly,

Not always regularly,
But more steadily than not,
With the influx of fresh words,

Phrases, lines, stanzas, titles,
The pattern of change changing little
From one day to the next, growth.

Someday, this will abruptly
Grind to a halt. Other texts
Elsewhere will go on growing,

But this will not. This will stop,
Since the metabolism,
The historical hot spring,

Folds up and shuts down, or since
This reaches its tipping point.
Not another line, or else.

Up at the small reservoir,
Recent rains have eased the drought.
A few waves shift connections

In a thin surface layer.
Once a future’s happening,
It evolves by different rules.

That is to say it has none.
Still, there’s an algorithm
That can predict when it’s done,

When this dam will break, or when
The reservoir will never
Rise to fill itself again.

Crave that algorithm?
Careful children. Madness lurks
In hysteretic visions.

Once you’re sure you see the end
Of any dispensation,
Some end’s made its decision.

The Sensuousness of the Wrecked Physique

Stretch and yawn, distressed companion,
All pins and scars and compromise.
You’re long past trying to attract
The attractive. How do you find

These little seams in your evenings,
These little threads through your mornings
When, cat-like, you can still slow-blink
And savor rolling on your back,

As if the Earth remained sun-warmed carpet,
Pile plush as moss, moonlit courtyard,
Stones soft as moths. You’ll be gone soon,
Soon enough, although much later

Than you expected, all those years
You absorbed stacks of accidents
Creating this cicatriced shell.
Be glad your wrecked flesh still responds

With pleasure when it pleasure finds,
In delights shivery as pools,
Followed by sun thumbing bare skin,
Followed by parting the clean sheets.

The Portable Part of Your World

Aches and pleasures move with you.
They aren’t wheels. There’s no parking
Garage where you can leave them.

In fact, you’ve got it backwards,
Thinking you take them with you.
Your body takes you with them.

It doesn’t own you or them,
But it carries all along,
And you for sure don’t own it.

Still, you call it yours. How you.
It is sort of portable.
Part of what it ports is you.

Gogo

You gotta have heart to go
With those jaws and teeth that make
You, for a little while, great,

The first top predator fish,
As much as one hundred times
The size of any fish else,

Anything that went before—
You sea monster, placoderm,
Leviathan’s ancestor,

Nothing’s yet got what you’ve got.
You are the revolution,
Each and every one of you.

Someday, the world will catch up,
Full of big-hearted giants,
Hungry, armored, jaws, and teeth.

Someday, being the biggest,
With the biggest jaws and teeth
Won’t be novel anymore,

Won’t be any advantage
Against new top predators,
Little chattering monkeys

Walking all over the place
On their hind limbs, conversing,
Coordinating, killing

Anything they want to eat,
Throwing spears at anything
They crave or fear, including

Each other, and including
Leviathan. But not yet.
You eat this time. Go, go, go.