Rhythm in All Thought, Maybe, Although Aeolus Has No Melody

Hi! Hey there! How’s the pool? Good! Nice today!
I went for a longer walk today, so
I was glad about that. There’s a couple
Things I wanted to tell you but I can
Only think of one. Ok, well, see ya.

Yah, hi there hey one nice today one thing,
The pool was glad about that. Oh stop it,
Don’t be cruel to the non-melodic chimes
Of ordinary suburban chit-chat.
They are chimes, you know, those voices, they are.

Tell Us, Who Do You Love?

In the dense garden of Erasmus

Darwin, nature is to advantage

Dressed and placed upon a pedestal—

Slow slides the painted snail, the gilded

Fly smooths his fine down, and various

Other lives make themselves attractive.

Most people fall in love with their own

Lives and maybe the lives of loved ones,

As families get called in the news,

But a few large-hearted animals

Seem to fall head over heels for life

As life itself, the whole tangled bank.

Doesn’t stop them from eating their meals,

But a certain ecstasy takes them

Whenever they’re describing nature.

Good for them, botanical writers

And lovers of the exotic words

That name varieties precisely.

We feel about them as about Zen

Monastic poets—slight suspicion

Of polyamory, bigamy

At least. Nature or enlightenment

May be their object, but their language

Is the other lover. When they chant

Verse in honor of their beloved

Gardens, phrases singing selflessly,

It feels like the words are what’s caressed.

The God’s Truth

Moments really have no motion.
You can pretend the day proceeds,
But all you ever really note
Is that this moment’s different.

And that’s where you’re content to live—
If not content, indifferent—
In the middle of the little
Singing that this is different.

Every so often you’re startled
To realize how little’s changed
Except clocks and fairy numbers,
Especially when you’re locked in,

Away from the Earth’s rotation
That rolls in constant difference
Like a dog rolling in the dirt,
Dumb old wriggling, tongue-lolling Earth.

If you’re down in the labyrinth
Where only coordinated
Lighting gets pumped in—offices,
Classrooms, hospitals, and prisons,

The intestines of casinos
Digesting you with slot machines—
You may not notice anything,
Being closer to God’s truth then.

Everything You’re Thinking Is a Proxy for Other Things Out in the Wild

A straggler of a hot day
Lagging the hem of summer
Dragging the opposite way

Sets the air-conditioning
Wall unit in your small space
Into a chimeric state

Of synchrony with your thoughts.
Whenever you have something
In mind, the unit applauds,

But raggedly, waves of cool
Purring together like fans
Who know where the music ends

But also some sputtering
Outliers of machine noise
Like arrhythmic innocents

Trying to anticipate
When the chamber piece is done.
Your thoughts fall in line with one

Then the other course of sounds.
The universe looks the same
Everywhere in the system

And yet the oscillators—
Your thoughts, cool air, odd off clanks—
Respond differently to

Identical conditions,
Most bizarrely on the beat,
A few bizarrely off it.

Introspection’s a Soft Spot for Thoughts

Things are walking around
In your skulls as your thoughts
And they aren’t even yours.

Don’t bother asking them
If you thought any up
Or where they all came from.

Think! Who will answer you
Once you begin asking
Questions inside your head,

Start interrogating
Your own thoughts? Your thoughts will.
How can you trust them when

You know they’re pretending
To really be yours but
Were thought so many times

Through so many other
Skulls before, before yours
Had closed your fontanelle?

Slant

Down in the corner
Of the casita
Where sun hits the floor,

Right now, this angle
Of an afternoon,
The illumined dust

Is bright as a cliff
At sunrise, as bright
As cathedral light

After a bombing.
So much detritus.
Not enough credit

Is given to drifts.
You study orbits,
Circuits and spirals,

Nurseries of stars,
Tottering empires,
Scalar exotics

Like Mandelbrot Sets
And Fibonacci
Golden whatevers.

But what are fossils,
What are moving dunes,
What are waves themselves

But drifts piling up?
Look how these precise
Details spread through dust.

No, Why

Pull your hair back
Until your head
Feels tight, then start
To write. Not what

You think you should,
Not even what
You would most like—
That’s fantasy.

Write what you can.
Write what you’re like.
Write like your life
Depends on it,

Knowing it does
Not, rarely might.
Rev your device.
Show yourself. Write.