Not Waiting for Anyone

Someone who wasn’t
Remembered a year
After dying young

In a small village,
A nomadic band,
Or a chattel slum,

More than one someone,
Left behind a corpse
That wasn’t consumed,

Wasn’t cremated—
Accidentally
Endured in the ground.

They’re out there. They’re still
Out there, like Ötzi,
Like the Ice Maiden,

Like the Bog People,
Like the Plague victims,
Only quieter

Even, even less
Noteworthy, still real,
The real accidents

Of preservation
Left of dying lives
No one will dig up,

No one stumble on,
The ones you won’t find
Whose faith doesn’t count,

Whose national myth
No longer exists,
Of little interest

Even to science,
Rare but too standard,
Uninformative,

Too damaged, some bones
Some soil simply holds
Of beings who spoke.

And Colonization Is an Awesome, Awesome Thing

To proselytize effectively,

A creed needs to tie emotional rewards

To successful missionarizing.

If adherents become teary-eyed

With a joyous, cathartic relief

At the thought of opening their minds,

At the thought of hearts being opened,

Then that faith has got a fighting chance

To colonize replacement mortals.

Muck under the Text

They’re not good enough.
They don’t say enough,
The novels, the poems,
The talkative plays,
The science essays.

Some are exciting,
Some vivid, some rich
With gossip, fictive
Or factual, some
Fiercely predictive,

Some historical,
Some scriptural, but
They don’t say enough.
There’s something missing,
So you keep reading.

You’re dragging your thoughts
Through the texts, feeling
For something you hope
You’ll brush lightly first,
Before it cuts you

Open, like the tool
You grasped and fumbled
That fell in the words,
The all-purpose edge
Lost under the text.

Out the Door

The knife didn’t get them all.
Neither have the chemicals.
The radiation is next.

This is banal. This is just
What happens, and, in a way,
Is a kind of a mercy

In not being all human
And only human, one more
Humans-hurting-humans thing.

These living cells, no longer
Functioning for the system,
Just race each other to eat

More, reproduce more, live more,
Eat ‘em up, yum, live like life
Always lived, from the get-go.

They may have once been human,
Owe their lives to behaviors
Uniquely human, struggle

Now to escape the human
Interventions (surgeries,
Chemicals, radiations),

But they’re not human beings,
Not even cells of one soul
Anymore. They’re past that door.

No Kind of Writer

You wouldn’t want to write
Anything false to life,
Which has to mean your life,

And so the best writers
Convey their vivid lives,
Their lived lives, their own lives,

Even in full fictions,
Fables and fantasies,
And yet, all that saves them

From mere irrelevance
Is that many readers
And audience members

Identify with them.
So write true to life.
Don’t be a false coward,

But also don’t forget
All the truth of your life
Only counts if others

Find it speaks to the truths
Of their own lives. If not,
You’re no kind of writer.