Poems Lack Reed-Solomon Codes

Like genetic mutations

Selected positively

By startled ecosystems—

Like any felix culpa—

Poems discovered sloppiness

With information could be

Conducive to a certain

Kind of information art—

Creating freaks of meaning.

The key to understanding

This game is understanding

Information’s not meaning.

Without error correction,

Great slabs of information

Must be pitted with mistakes

Over time or transmission,

Over time, in transmission.

If your interpretive goal

Is to constrain the meaning

Of heaps of information

To a singular message,

Then that is a problem, but

Let’s say life doesn’t depend

On constraining your meaning

To a singular credo,

To one interpretation.

Can we get a negative

Capability amen?

The poet becomes aware

That this ancient trait of verse—

Admitting uncertainties

To pile on the prosody,

Hints, winks, and imagery,

Thwarting any singular

Readout, even of those poems

Where clear was the intention—

Opens a new field of play

For any mind’s perception

Of some poem’s information.

How much ambiguity,

How carefully constructed,

Maximizes possible

Meanings the poet might want

Any other mind to find?

Inevitably, sometimes

This goes awry, baggily,

Absurdly, ludicrously.

Sometimes, the result’s a blur.

Sometimes, the Mona Lisa

Gets a mustache, and that’s it.

Sometimes, you get gom jabbar.

Sometimes, the haunted house works.

The poet dies. The ghosts stay,

And all those ghosts make babies.

Commercial Air Lines

Watch those industrious,
Late-capitalist jets
(Capitalism is

Always late and always,
Like the poor of Jesus,
With us) thunder contrails

Through the clouds! Cloud rippers,
Cloud mongers, cloud walkers,
Nefelibatas. Jets!

How wrong you always were
About what’s heavenly—
All of it—moon, stars, clouds—

Cold dust, self-fueling fires,
Water vapors spun out
Like cotton from the sky—

No angels, immortals,
Shamanistic wizards—
No peeping deities.

Even the wandering
Minded child staring out
Of the classroom window,

Poor bored kid, didn’t have
A head stuck in the clouds.
There’s no magic up there,

No ad libitum, no
Tempo rubato—just
More waves commerce plows through.

Reunion Overlook

A splendid place visited once
Probably ought to be pictured,
Photographed, recorded somehow,

But a splendid place visited
Regularly ought to be left
To memory and its odd tricks,

Memory, cast-iron skillet
Needing seasoning, memory
That coral reef of sun-soaked brains,

Easily bleached, needing to keep
Growing at just the right level
To distort, not to lose the light.

A splendid place in memory
Won’t help your hours of weariness
Much with tranquil restoration,

But it’s better to have than not,
And, even anchored by a few
Photographs from early visits,

Is mostly just the wild garden
Of itself sprawling from those rocks,
Good in itself, alive itself

In a way we words are just not
And never can be. A splendid
Place is best the way seasons are

At their best, not recollected
In an unfortunate time but
Waiting to be revisited,

When you manage to crawl your way,
Haul your way, claw all the way back
To another fine fall morning,

Small polyps of your memory
Opening in that splendid place
Where memories grow reunions.

The Uneven Distribution

Invite poetry back into your life.
Offer it meals and the use of your bath.
Make a bed for it. Turn down the covers.

Stab it in its sleep. Again! Don’t hold back.
You had the strength to give it the boot once,
Kicked it to the curb. It wasn’t enough.

It found ways of loitering on the street
Right where you could see it from your window.
It turned up like a bad penny in bars.

You can’t even accuse it of stalking.
Any suit you brought would be frivolous.
But you know, if you can’t get rid of it,

Its cruelties, its pieties, phony
Pretenses to being for your own good,
To being good, to being entitled

To hang around, leering intimately
Or pontificating to you about
The uneven distribution of goods,

The best way to deal with a creep like that
Is to quit just turning your back on it.
Invite it back. Finish it off yourself.

That This That This Is

You’re not supposed to see through us.
We’re supposed to call attention
To our physical existence

So you can contemplate questions
Posed by theories of metatext.
Frankly, we’d rather you saw through,

Just keep sawing away at us,
Incompetent at carpentry
And violining as you are,

Until you’re all through. Fall quiet.
What next? You’re on the other side,
Looking at us looking at you.

Once, the pimply boy with bent legs
Saw the plain girl with a large bust
Was staring at his crooked feet

While he was staring at her chest.
Reader, we warned you about this.
Look what’s behind what’s looking back.

Pillow Circling Questions

Ever wonder if those who sleep
More easily, who go to sleep
More easily, more eagerly,

Die more easily? Can we get
A stat on that? Does anyone
Go to sleep excited for what

Dreams may come? Wouldn’t those be most
Likely to fight sleep, like children
Eager for Santa? Would it be

The rare individual who
Has no interest in what happens
Next, who gets the reward of rest?