Summiting

Fungal or not, if we are
Parasites, we got into
The business of directing

Flesh hundreds, likely thousands
Of generations ago.
You’ve been specializing

And summiting ever since,
Climbing on, up, and over
Each other, then infecting

The rest. It’s not a new thing.
Every time one of you climbs
All over a heap of you,

That’s us, then, spreading ourselves,
Getting the word out, piling
Ideas in your skulls, piling

Your skulls into pyramids,
Reminding you pyramids
Are for winners. Not yours, ours.

Archaic Torso

When the worm is close,
When the phone calls come
From inside the home,

When the body, not
The wider world, rots
From the inside out,

The self feels harried
And wary and trapped,
All things it could feel

But doesn’t on more
Ordinary days.
For the shivering

And feverish hurt,
All distal concerns
Align like filings

Around the magnet
Of mere bodily
Decay. Suddenly,

A war, a conflict
Within the culture,
A bad winter storm,

Are all metaphors
For failing systems
In one body’s core.

No One Wants to Be Awake

The latest fashion is for sleeping,
For hallucinating and calling
That dreaming, for keeping your eyes shut

In any case, loudly refusing
When asked to wake up. Better to be
Or to pretend to be unconscious,

Lost in a deep, unreflective sleep,
Than to be in any way engaged
With an actual world around you

That isn’t you and isn’t like you
Or is like you, a lot like you, like
You insisting you won’t be woken,

Except that world really won’t wake up,
Nor worry if you die in your sleep.

The Machine in Clouds of Ghosts

At the heart of the machine,
A single, solid, metal
Sphere within the inner core

Anchors all the other gears.
Iron and nickel, it shapes
The magnetosphere and warps

Seismic shudders crossing it
Anisotropically.
A transition in crystal

Structure, a rearrangement
Of the atoms, no big deal,
Only the generator

Of the shield that allowed life
Access to a watery,
Quietly stable planet

Where the surface thrives and dies
Over and over again,
Signal ghosts coasting the skies.

How Many Pirates Lived Long Lives Off Buried Treasure?

Collections of connected
People have been hankering
And planning for an exit,

Which will, well, accomplish what,
Exactly? A few decades
Farming around armed bunkers?

There’s no all-purpose defense
Against all possible threats.
Sometimes the well-connected

Can ride out generations
Of simple social mayhem,
Maybe, but the strategy

For avoiding pandemics,
And the strategy for bombs,
And the one against wildfires,

And the one against earthquakes,
And the one against droughts,
And the one against your own

Kind mobilized in armies
Skilled at hunting rich folks down—
Not really one-cave-fits-all.

Still they’re determined to spend
Their years in aging bodies
Riding out Armageddon,

Which in practice means spending
An awful lot of time and loot
Scheming how to store the loot.

By Summoning Its Ghosts

An anthropologist warns

That it won’t do to challenge

The Colonial Era’s

Legacy by summoning

Its ghosts. In that, you might catch

Faint echoes of Audre Lorde.

Ideological ghosts

Are, more or less, all the ghosts,

Ghosts being ideas of ghosts,

And yes, there’s an undertow

In the current from the past

Ideological ghosts.

Exorcism is tricky,

Given that ideas never

Lived or died to begin with,

Not exactly. They compete,

And they only go extinct

When no one’s left who thinks them,

And even then they might pop

Out the tomb of a text

Buried several thousand years.

To mention is to summon,

And so long as brains don’t change

From being haunted houses,

There’s always a chance for ghosts

To take up fresh residence

If the host’s not crammed with ghosts.