One Evening When I Was Still Living

Who doesn’t hide out from themselves?
Most don’t bother to be quiet
About it—most drown themselves out

With all their blathering vigor
And vigorous blather to show
They’re the opposite of hiding.

Give us the soul in the motel,
The heartbeat on the empty street,
The spirit in the winding sheet

Waking tangled in the morning,
Sweating from marathons of dreams
Where who is was raced by what seems.

On No One

Intelligence is worth something
In an intelligent species,
And deceit is valuable
In a species prone to deceit.

People, of course, sport both these traits,
And depend on them to survive
Each other. However, only
The first trait should be advertised.

Which is comical, in a way,
Since good lies are proofs of some smarts,
While intelligence mostly serves
As a dogsbody for deceits.

Of antiquity’s weird heroes
With their opaque character traits,
Only Odysseus gets through.
Only Odysseus rings true.

Slow

We suppose, if you really
Want to live longer, you should
Practice dull activities

That seem to take forever,
Anything not unpleasant
During which you are tempted,

Frequently, to check your watch.
Feel how your life slows itself,
How your time expands. Hours start

To feel like eternities,
Like sentences in prison
Or in Henry James. Hours start

With no idea how to end
Only to begin again.

In the Era of Omics and Isms

We should study omeomics,
Make a map of every ism,
Decode every last ideome

From macro to microschisms.
You could use this work like mirrors.
You’ve done wondrous things with mirrors,

From telescopes to funhouses.
Maybe you could complete a poem,
Every term a beveled mirror,

Fire it past the heliosphere
To greet those alienisms,
Present them with our poemeome.

Haunted Curves

Sometimes, you’ll be reading merrily
On, as you are now, as is your wont,
Taking it all in seriously

But calmly, enjoying words on trust,
Only to be brought up short or thrown
Completely off by the appearance

Of some offensive term of abuse,
Sprawled like old roadkill on the smooth curve
Of your own or someone else’s words,

And suddenly the world stinks of corpse.
You don’t want to read on anymore,
Not even your favorite author,

Not even your own earlier self,
A writer you normally indulge.
How could they or you have written this?

Here’s the word, gypsy, in your own verse.
Here’s the off-hand, objectifying
Term, mulatto, among someone’s lines

Re mountains, maps, suburbs, and bird tracks.
Small but grim remnants from the gory,
Grisly histories of quiet roads,

Like those crosses with fading garlands
Of false flowers placed in memory
Of the tragic drunks who crashed right there

Miscalculating capacity,
Or in memory of their victims.
Sometimes who appears was your victim.

War and Cake

All coyote hours

The wind disease blew

Through town hill’s dung gate

And, with its motion,

Mined night’s soft sift sands

In a curious,

Glassed combination

Of greed, war, and cake.

Pause here, a moment.

Imagine that this

Has somehow endured

Thirty centuries—

Too long for a life,

And long for trees or

Cultural tendons,

Probably longer

Than an English tongue

Will still be spoken.

It would make no sense

Then, given it makes

So little sense now.

Imagine this that.

Imagine that, when

Nabu-kusurshu

Picked up his stylus,

Instead of neatly

Transcribing the terms

Of Sumerian

With Akkadian

Near equivalents,

He had invented

Some nonsense about

Bioscriptural

Allusions, ancient

Toponyms, folk names

For anxiety,

Etc., all

Without explaining,

Much less translating,

Maybe adding some

Weird, cruel children’s rhymes—

Are you a witch, or

Are you a fairy,

Or are you the wife

Of Michael Cleary?

We think that something

Like that, like this, was

Your Linear A.

No One Ever Falls Forever

This exquisitely balanced
Universe can never be
Wholly evil, wholly good,

Which is, frankly, maddening.
Goodness itself stays balanced,
And those who overdo it

Feel their evil deficit,
And must do something wicked.
It’s a terrible tightrope

For crossing, this existence,
Since you can’t fall off of it
Until you’ve run out of it.

Then you lose yourself, and just
To accomplish what? Balance
For whatever follows you.

The day is in the branches,
Balancing the fading night.
If a black hole eats your sun,

Be sure somewhere a new sun
Just burst from a cloud of dust.
You’ll balance, somehow. You must.