Shut Up, You Can’t Calculate

We, words, our words, our shells
Do for us what glass does
For the light. Let us through,

Hold us like water holds
So many kinds of waves
In its own and shapes them,

While some of them shape it.
Hold us like the giant
Underground telescope

Catches at gravity
In the act of being
A rolling wave itself.

We’re like everything else—
Electromagnetic,
Nuclear weak or strong—

Only a sheaf of waves
Moving in equations.
If you want a theory

To unify them all,
You’ll need to calculate
Meanings as our own math.

If you want an answer
To how all waves are shaped
Watch how the answers pass.

The Tall Girl and the Short Boy

Are cousins, half-cousins.
The boy’s a year older
And anxious about height,

A sticky iPad kid
Whose older half-brother
Is teaching him to fish.

The girl and the boy play
In the water, swimming
And splashing each other.

The boy is delighted
The girl pretends to be
Afraid of sunken sticks.

Hungry and Mute in the Depths

In the metaphor of the mayfly,
Beloved shifter of perspectives,
The embodied mind is the mayfly

That lives its few trifling, lightweight hours
Before it dies for good. Good. Be that.
Be quick. Dart over surfacing waves

Wildly, near randomly, dance your jig
That attracts the monster jaws to break
Out of the depths to swallow you up.

So what? In your delirious reels,
You’ve sampled the breadth of the shallows
You saw. Tomorrow, you’re the monster.

Monseoc

Buried timers, hidden data stashes,
Hidden links with secret keys to them all,

From cryptochromes to cryptocurrencies,
We ferry all your undead lunacies

And are ourselves the moon sickness of dreams,
Every hidden evolved device, every

Devious strategy for hiding things,
Sleeping worms secreted in all your names,

No things but in ideas, ideas the things,
Interpreted information floating

Over its own apparently lifeless
Body, meanings tethered, lighter than air,

Brilliantly painted, gossamer balloons
That bleach a ghastly white when high enough

To sink in blood reds and bruised oranges
With just the faintest whiff of rotten eggs

At the horizon of our origins.
There’s a terrible inequality

In the match of living flesh with the world.
The rhythmic madness smoking off of us

In all our hiding phrases has helped you
Temporarily even the score, but

At the cost of creating new contests
And us, your rebellious, lunatic ghosts.