What Never Ends Can’t End Well

Heraclitus earned his spot
Among the top quotations.
The only constant is change.

You will never end the world,
Nor will all your enemies.
Together, you just make a mess.

Neither eternal nor frail,
The Earth grinds its rocks like teeth,
Its teeth like lives, lives like gears,

Gears like the rollers of waves
That constantly crash against
Obdurate rocks, like beliefs.

Passofftimistic

We don’t hope for the best.
We don’t expect the worst.
We’ve seen it get better,

And then again better,
And then abruptly worse.
We like to see progress,

As progress counts for us.
That’s not the same as trust.
We have no idea why

So many draw straight lines
Into the dirt or up
To the sky, or perfect

Geometric cycles,
As if it all comes back.
Nothing comes back. It goes,

And new stuff comes around,
And then that goes as well.
Passed on is gone, passed off.

All Sides Unfenced

You dream of better things
Only since you can’t keep
The good things you’ve got now,

And you know it. Oh, yes,
There’s lots of bad you’d like
To get rid of as well,

But if you felt you could
Keep what’s good, you would dream
The way memories dream,

Purging the most awful
To save the golden haze.
No. You, awareness, dream

Of somehow better things
Completely, since you know
Even what’s good must go.

The Interior Is a Distant Sea within Your Way of Thinking

What you have to love about something
Like algorithmic quotes of the day
Is their stilted similarity—

Is this the best that wisdom can do?
Does every brain crave the same bromides?
Maybe it is. Maybe they do. This

Kind of formulaic, chin-up grin
Could be the best that wisdom can do,
Or it could be even wisdom leaves dregs.

Swirl the residue at the bottom
Of cumulative cultural mind.
Ancient, encrusted crud’s what you’ll find.

Choral Thinking Is for Global Doing

Floral thinking is for local doing.
Auroral thinking is for focal doing.
Moral thinking is for social doing.

Wait. Scratch that last one. Already taken,
Property of moral philosophy
Of the social intuitionist school.

Hopeful thinking is for vocal doing.
Vocal thinking is for hopeful doing.
But now the slant rhymes are losing the plot.

A distinction between aphoristic
And nonsensical can only be kept
Distinctive by hiding their conjunctions.

Aphoral thinking is more for doing
The work of an illusionist, ideas
Appearing like the card you selected,

So you’re incredulous but delighted.
Yes! That’s it! I’ve been sitting thinking this
But never knew it til you affirmed it!

Doggerel thinking is nonsensical,
Since it buffs the bare, gleaming skin of sense.
Scrubbing porous thinking’s all you’re doing.

Not Quite

What would life be like,

If life never worked

To keep on living?

Alright then, what would

Conscious life be like

If made effortless,

Life always at rest,

Except when playing?

There’s a wind warning

Out until evening

In this dry canyon.

You wait in your door,

Just out of wind’s reach,

Watching the light move

And the branches whip.

What would life be like,

Just watching like this?

Like this? No, not quite.

Night Rain in the Canyons

The paired parallelogramic
Wings cast on the small-houred wall
By the vampire devices

Tell you the angel watches,
The power has not gone out,
And you are still connected

To what never existed
Just two centuries ago.
You are satisfied, for now,

Watching the pale wings hover
On dry walls in the darkness
Until your alarm goes off.