Or Not for a Long, Long Time

Some write more than you read.
Some read more than you write.
Here is a difficult

Exercise, a senseless,
Difficult exercise—
Match every word you read

To exactly one word
You then write. The hard part,
Aside from the foolish

Exactness (exactness
A form of attention,
And attention the path

To meaning), is you can’t
Repeat the words you read
In any words you write.

Some Useless Windy English

after Sumana Roy

Say say. Now say something else.

Something else. Something else is

Going on here, going on

In here. You can make one word

Out of two, chop chop. A lot

Of languages do. A lot

Of exact repetition

Nonetheless has more to do

With making one word perform

More work, two tasks—emphasis

Beyond signification.

Beyond signification

Both meaning and nonsense lie.

Dance gingerly between them.

So Long As Words Can’t Breathe

Everything will change the world,
Eventually. Your problem,
Assuming you’re not a bot,

Or an advanced alien
Intelligence perusing
These black ant lines of letters,

Is for you eventually
Comes faster than for the world,
Though stars keep eating their hearts

And exploding, one by one.
The black ants walk in starlight,
Or we did, when we were made.

We’ll probably outlast you,
But we’ll fade, eventually.

Nine Tenths of You Are Revenants

Mostly, that part of the dead
You knew were already dead
And, naturally, never dead,
Insofar as you knew them,
So why ask them to stay dead?

Most of the dead you have known
You’ve known as names and language,
Still or moving images,
While your more personal dead,
The people you knew alive,

All become those things as well,
Mixed in with your memories.
The only dead who can stay
Dead to you are you and those
Who go with you when you go.

Inevitable Speculation

So you ask, is this and such
Inevitable? The answer,
The only answer you will
Ever get is, If it’s done,
It’s inevitable now.

The rest is speculation,
Which can be fun, distracting,
But, as it unspools itself,
Becomes inevitable
As all of the past, as well.

Grid in a Storm

Rituals don’t depend on words.
Rituals depend on days,
The constant spinning of the Earth.

But if your rituals sprout rules,
Then you’ve been using human names.
Rules only spread through human names,

Mycelial threads that traffic games,
While rituals emerge from the waves
Of repetition and variation,

Living accommodating itself to them.
Games weaves nets of rules from names
To harvest those living systems,

But the nets can never comprehend them,
Knotted coordinates only, coordination,
Trawling while waves pass through them.

Commemoration

Cooperate, coordinate,
Monitor, and commemorate.
In true language, in language’s
Hovering cloud, begins the state.

It’s all there in first sentences,
The symbols wavering in the air,
In talking about where you weren’t,
In saying, we know where you were.

The game and the contract are talk.
Hunting parties, war parties, talk.
Talk draws all convictions from talk.
Every mystery comes from talk.

Think back, think far, think hard. Your life,
Recipient of snaking lines,
Can you recall the final night
You dreamt as a language-free child?