Washing Attention

While the sweet drum thrums
And the strong voice quavers
Through the hours-long folktale,

Other voices chorusing after each
Small narrative segment,
The mind trained elsewhere

In an unrelated language
But capable of recognizing
Rhythm, voice, and segmentation

Settles into the coils of song,
Letting the reticulated dragon
Embrace and crush all other

More articulate, ordinary thoughts,
Like wringing the dirty water
From the progressively cleaner

Clothing of a body tuning
To the pattern of a story’s structure
It can’t parse, can’t parse, can feel.

One Big Man

The ratio grows only more
Ridiculous—from city states
To kingdoms, kingdoms to empires,

Regional empires to global,
Or nearly so, empires of dirt
Or open ocean, ruling over

Millions, then hundreds of millions,
Then a billion people or more—
Preserving the fetish of one

Person, chairman, leader, ruler,
One great helmsman, one divine king,
Whatever the local twist is.

One among tens, among hundreds,
One to lead the millions, billions.
How is it that part never goes

Away completely, the notion
That one social organism,
Ordinary size and lifespan,

Is just right to ride the monster,
The more and more massive monsters
Of billion-souled hegemonies?

It seems like another failure
Of human imagination.
Someday there may be a tyrant,

One body, one biography,
One mediocre living brain,
Perching atop ten billion skulls,

And how will that work, then? God man
Dead in decades, like Qin,
Like Sargon, Caesar, Genghis Khan,

Then inevitable troubles
With succession—can humans not
Attain a scale without a Big Man?