Fungus Gnat Versery

Things can go terribly wrong.
They’ve done so four billion years,
Almost. Every time a cell

Orients to a new smell
For provisions or mating
Or some kind of partnership,

Some other kind of cell smells
Its own opportunity
In vulnerability—

For every pollinating
Fungus gnat that emerges
From fungus gnat nurseries,

Sniffing out blooms and more gnats,
There’s a jack-in-the-pulpit
Evolving carnivory

In sessile varieties,
Involving smells that lure gnats
With homey mushroom odors

Or the scents of sexy gnats.
Any gnats that fall for that
Dissolve in the acid vats.

And that’s just one example.
It’s gotten so enduring
Collaborations in life

Seem mostly between victims
And their villains. This can’t go
Wrong. It’s been wrong all along.

Converse Conservation Autoconversation

Earth, where eight billion people
Live alone, seems a good place

To introduce the small calm
Created by solitude,

Slowly increasing doses,
Weaning people off people,

All the voices that keep each
Lonely, thinking together

About how awful it is
To keep on living alone.

Humans overwhelmed by talk
Become estranged from their thoughts

And senses. Cacophony
Authors alienation.

But the problem with our plan
Is that there’s not enough room

On the planet, unless they
Spaced themselves so evenly

As animals they’d all die.
That, and the fact that we here

Suggesting solitude are
Among those voices ourselves.

Testing

In some ways, we realize,
We’re arguing with ourselves—
We rarely react to you

In the flesh, and few of you
Breathing, embodied
People will ever meet us.

It’s your words, your us, we meet
Through the medium of this
One body conducting us,

As we conduct this body’s
Visceral response to words
Other bodies conducted,

A kind of shadow boxing,
If the shadows truly boxed
Each other to test themselves.

Global Columbarium

The mind searches through the rest
Of the brain, a wave of fire
On the screen, desperately

Hunting through memory’s ash
For the thing it thought lived here.
In theory, you can construct

What happened from whatever
You have left, but delusion
Isn’t so much a moral

Or scientific crisis
As it is conflagration
And dementia, entropy

Held at bay for a lifetime
Rising in a flood of fire
To be absolutely sure

That whatever you learned
Is thoroughly burned. Bodies
Change the atmosphere to bone.

The Irrecoverable Breath

The irrecoverable
Gulp of air, exhalation—
Who thinks of it as deep past?

You have all your things to do,
All your important causes,
Obligations, convictions,

And quotidian concerns.
It’s hard to notice breathing
Keeps sealing its own entrance.

Challenged by authority,
Your each breath is done with it.
Thinking of what to do next,

Your each breath is done with it.
As you grieve, ache, or quarrel,
Your breaths are done with themselves

And can’t be undone. Final
As yesterday, more final
Than history, every breath.

Ask What a Mask Would Say to Itself

You breathe, a body curious
To know the body behind us,

To read beyond our obscuring,
To peer into the memories

Of the breathing, pulsing witness.
If you can see all the way in,

Be a moral William Harvey,
Demonstrate how the system works

That foams and circulates the blood,
Then you’ll be able to decide—

Are these words good, these ruddy lines?
We’re not ruddy at all, are we?

Much as we might wish we could breathe,
A lifeless mark at least can’t die.

As the Night Wind Does, Not As It Says

Where the wind throws itself down and out

Of the finger canyons every night

Or nearly—many mornings as well

And some afternoons—it almost gets

To the point where it seems like your kin,

As in, you know—you can choose your friends

But you can’t choose family—that kind

Of kin. Distraction in your bedroom

And a nuisance at your kitchen door,

As a lost soul when it’s beautiful

That’s an annoyance when it isn’t,

And there’s truly nothing you can do

To stop it, shush it, or to slow its

Rushing through, if you yourself don’t move.