Now Who’s Seeing Things

The tiny, grey-headed gnome of a man,
Sad-eyed, with a long beard in a wheelchair,
Would appear to be waiting for something,
Although who knows what it could possibly be—

He’s literally staring at a blank wall,
From time to time coughing convulsively,
But not paying attention to that wall.
There must be something he’s imagining.

You wake up with a start, realizing
That it was you he was imagining,
Just not that well, not very well at all,
The palest shadow of you in the wall.

The Solitary Collaborator

They showed solidarity,
Collaboration, movement

Of art as shared exercise
With no additional text,

Embodying assumption
That many bodies working

Together make the best work,
Scolding the solitary

Genius as a myth, likely
A colonialist myth,

Capitalist myth, or both,
Idolatry of the sole

Creator obfuscating
Truths of collaboration.

It didn’t occur to them
How much collaboration

Goes on in embodied texts,
Whether the embodiments

Are multiple and in reach
Of each other or one host,

Not solitary, lonely,
Steeped in additional texts.

Performative Backdrop

The great disenchantment was
To discover that what was
Not us was also not like

Us—no assemblies of stars,
No conversations between
Disgruntled rocks, chortling streams.

All the world’s time lines were off.
The universe was not scaled
To us, to our thoughts of us.

We’d been enchanting the world
By filling it up with us—
Angels, gods, fairies, and such.

But why? Look at us. Why would
We want it to be like us?

Rot Ripe for Framing

Might relics ever
Come back in fashion?
Is there any chance

That someone’s finger
Bone might ever serve
Holy reminder

Of a life well-lived,
Wonders accomplished,
Death bravely endured?

Or maybe relics
Will be wonderful
But not quite sacred,

Rare collectibles—
The way signatures,
Guitars, and dresses

Have become, but more
Potent and grisly,
The deviated,

Pickled septum, say,
Of the roistering,
Future dictator?

Authenticity
And proximity
Are always the draws,

So whatever feels
Truest and hardest
To experience

Will get the aura?
In disembodied
Eras of dreaming,

Intelligent codes,
Have Einstein’s neurons
Grown more marvelous?

No. Relics require
Something numinous
About the idea

Of a bit of flesh.
They’ll come back in style
When corpses are worse

Nuisances made more
Repulsive, not less.
To framed rot, confess.

Salvage Divines Taphonomy

Every time you start to build
A new frame in open space,

It only takes a few scrapes
Through snow, a few cornerstones,

Not even a foundation,
To trigger the sensation

You’re building over something,

That, now, under construction,

There’s a buried, ancient hoard,
A hidden clutch so far ignored,

Bones you’re just writing over.
As soon as construction’s done,

Someone should pry up these boards
To show what you’ve really done.