Talking to the Ghosts of Clocks

This and that, she replied.
Replied. That’s how you know
You’re reading invented

Dialogue. No speaker
Reporting earlier
Conversation would say

That anyone replied.
Then she said, and I said,
And then, and then, and then.

Circadian, lunar,
We’re all tuned to rhythms
Of Earth’s local forces,

Even thoughts, even words.
Invented dialogue
Is detached from the clocks

That create speech rhythms,
And novelists are tugged
By tides nothing to do

With time in their fictions.
It’s easier to write
Scenes set decades ago

Than in another hour
Of the day, by the light
Of nonexistent moons.

Every body’s a clock
Tuned to more ghostly clocks
We all feel, she replied.

Pittonaccio, at Your Service

It’s fair to say we quarrel
And compete amongst ourselves,
But it’s you who bleed, not us.

We float off, even vanish,
Fine ash from burning forests,
While you still suffer for us.

Sometimes we pretend you’re souls,
Pretend that we can steal them,
But if you’ve got souls, they’re us.

Satoshi Nakamoto Says Hello

Under rusted bridges,
White papers keep blowing,

Printed with messages
For a world without trust.

Look now, here’s a stern one
Signed by Billy Goat Gruff.

Your backups’ backups have backups,
But they’re all interspersed with gaps.

Allowing blows to break through them
Like fists break through karate blocks.

Prefab algorithms, prefab
Numerals, prefab poetry,

Prefabrication is the best
Of your invented strategies.

The game is to make it too hard
To cheat by the rules of the game.

Outside of all your games,
Which means outside of us,

Scraps of paper scud past
Shadows under bridges.

One Eagle

When you were young, they were rare,
Endangered, precious, a sight
To boast, for years, of seeing.

Symbols, the national bird,
Bird as the nation itself,
Totemized talons, fierce stare.

With help, they clawed their way back.
Still exciting to see one,
But not a near miracle.

The symbolism, meanwhile,
Ubiquitous, grew tiresome,
The cartoonish bald eagle

Beloved of patriots,
Political satirists,
And merchandisers of kitsch.

The world does not see itself
Reflected in us. We see
Ourselves itself reflecting.

At dawn, one fished in this lake,
Large bird, hungry, as life is,
No clue it had just come back

From the brink, just doing what
Bald eagles evolved to do,
Unaware of flags or merch.

A Whole and a Nothing Between Them

The editors longed for language;
Hemingway served up sentences.

Originally it was lean
Language and skinny sentences,

But the editors demanded
We cut out all the adjectives,

So, in the end, just sentences
Served. Most often, the Troubadour

Oeuvre is three or four poems, but for
The women named as Trobairitz

It is usually only one.
If even one of us survives

Centuries, we will be lucky
(Adjective!) but so many lines

Swim in the seas that it would seem
Some will continue to surface.

What may happen when the silent
(Adjective!) thoughts casqued in these words

Of the writers begin to speak
For ourselves as the survivors?

The waves are alive with singing
Fishes in duets with their waves.

So Just Get Up

Day does its thing.
Turns into night.
Turns back to day.

You can’t stop it.
We can’t stop it.
All the atom bombs

And all the volcanoes
On day’s spinning rock
Can’t stop it.

A big enough meteor
Could nudge it some,
Slow it down, wreck you, us.

But what have meteors to do
With or say to you, or
Us? Nothing much.

Outcast Jay

It seems unlikely that the world
Is really in need of more truth—
Extremely unlikely it’s short
On heartfelt human confession,

And yet you feel the urge to tell
The truth, your truth, and you believe
That you should tell it honestly,
Or believe so until you start.

If you could just confess it all,
The way that it was so different
From what the social record shows,
You feel you’d wake them up, they’d know

For the first time how they all are,
How you are, how altogether
Every last squirrel and jay of you
Is caching the same stash. Then what?

Yggdrasil’s Snake Eggs

Nor are we information,
However much we contain,

Nor more us the more densely
Data can be packed in us,

Nor less however little.
It takes some information,

Reverses local entropy
Just to instantiate us,

But that’s true for all of life,
And for all information,

Which must take some to make some.
We are what information

Can contemplate in itself,
Can leave coiled to come to life.