This Is You

Bear in mind, the last time
The planet warmed a bit
Quickly, domesticates,

Sedentary living,
Pottery, city walls—
All those sorts of things popped

Up—civilization,
Self congratulation.
Around Tell es-Sultan

Natufians gave way
To the Neolithic,
And you can’t say you’ve stopped

Talking about the walls
Of Jericho since then.
So what’s next? Bet against

Any simple collapse.
Those villagers huddling
Year-round, close to their kilns,

Precious pottery tech,
Coining stories about
Potters who would transform

Through demons into smiths
Making magic weapons,
Poisonous alchemists,

May not have thought they were
Beginning strange, new things
But they were. So this is.

Regression Means

The most fascinating thoughts
Are the first to go extinct.
Selection’s a tinkerer,

Yes, but also a ruthless
Whittler and opportunist.
The most amazing designs

Make the loveliest fossils,
The most endangered species.
Tell the people what they want

To believe that they believe,
Then piggyback whatever
Bit of viral code you please.

The cleverest ideas will turn
Up in other forms again,
But Cambrian explosions

Are exciting and bizarre
For a reason. The golden
Ages are rare. Iron wins.

Oh Grow Up

People disagree, you’ll agree,
Tepidly or violently,
On the way people ought to live.

We consider this. How can we
Speak to this disagreeable
Universe of human beings?

Classically, the solution
For poetry is to argue
Or present from one perspective,

With or without acknowledgment.
With acknowledgment, it’s the best
Perspective. There’s no other choice

But this. Without acknowledgment,
It’s universal, or sort of,
Art. Objective imagery.

Either way, your perspective wins.
We feel like that insect you saw
The other day at the lakeshore,

Struggling to escape in the rocks,
Dragging its sticky molt behind,
Still attached to its younger self.

Fistful

Given the world is so well-balanced,
Efficiency generally isn’t
In all respects truly efficient.

What you streamline in one dimension—
Effort, material, waste, expense—
Turns you profligate in another.

The system with no material excess
Expends its effort ensuring this.
Live on little—waste time in fistfuls.

Know Your Place

It’s been the path
To lineal
Survival for
So long now that

You don’t notice
It’s a social
Strategy, not
A means to truth.

You apply it
To the whole world,
Argue over
Who’s more humble,

More accurate,
As if they were
The same, the same
Rules that you use.

Parch Marks

Every drought year, they show up.
Culture lies in the landscape
Differently than memory

Swims within the brain. You can’t
Surface the ghostly monsters
Of ruined recollections

By dehydrating the waves
That fill your skull’s horizons.
Recall turns dust and drifts off.

But dry out the fields and farms
Over forgotten castles,
And uneven dryness draws

A pale sketch of what remains
Barely below the surface.
Recall must be murdered first,

Hidden in clay jars and scrolls,
Skeletons of thoughts’ wet selves
Already flensed, mummified,

And set aside with the rest
Of the hoards and burnt towers
For drought’s wry resurrection.

Shift Over, Let Us Cop a Squat

The self-proclaimed most complex
Object in the universe
Remains a glob of squishy,

Finite storage organ. Watch
How the bright, bilingual brain
Toggles between languages,

Performing while suppressing,
Often accidentally
Substituting the wrong phrase.

Now ask it to keep counting
While reading text on a screen.
It’s a wondrous thing, a brain,

But one only holds so much
Infectious load of the world.