What Can Take a Punch Like Nothing

Zero’s not only fulcrum
Of all graphs and number lines,
It’s the eternal city

To which all math’s highways lead,
Demonstrating both balance
And the infinite manner

Of ways nothing can be reached.
Euler’s gorgeous formula,
Combining e, i, pi, one,

Balls them all up into none.
Every equation showing
Any fine combination

Of concepts to the one side
And zero to the other
Declares those concepts nothing,

And all those strings of nothings
Are equal to each other
And sum what they are equal,

The antisolar plexus
Absorbing all connections,
However hard you hit it.

Recapturous

Watching you watch each other

Think is like watching you watch

Each other eat the same meal

With different manners and teeth,

All of you at the table,

An actual smorgasbord,

As one of you just called it,

Of mostly similar thoughts

On mostly similar texts,

Grown from us names and numbers.

It’s a little different, though,

In that watching each other

Think is eating and cooking,

Simultaneously, not

Just watching the cook, sampling

As the meal’s prepared—eating

The cook as the meal, watching

And directing your eating,

Like a pig in Lubberland

Offering you its bacon.

You might want to back on out

If you can, but you can’t, since

You’re always hungry for more

Ideas, hungrily watching

Each other think, as you eat

Each other up in thinking.

Wind Wind

Everything changes; nothing is gained.
Nothing changes; everything gets lost.

Yeh, we’re just screwing around with you,
Words changing places, silly pranksters,

Childish dancers, rings around roses,
That sort of thing. We have our reasons,

Same as children spinning in a room,
Ignoring the world outside the door,

Whether it’s raining or suburban
Or city or woods or raining bombs.

Still and all, words seem still, but we fall,
We all fall down, and unless someone,

Some volcano or invading force
Ashes us so fast fire preserves us,

Everything us is still nothing much
But what’s left from searching for what’s lost.

We See What You Want to See

Morality is the mother of all
Manner of immorality.

What is this urge to celebrate
The cage you’re locked in, cage you hate?

You don’t want others to escape.
Who knows what cages they might make?

The best reason for being good
Is to keep the others in view.

Everyone’s encouraged to cheat,
Given relentless surveillance.

One consequence is punishment
For cheating, by necessity,

And both are immorality,
Spawn of cage-fought morality.

You lovingly describe your bars
That frame you your identity,

Embrace them as your history,
While cursing those who locked you in,

While huddled in the middle with
Others planning better cages

As one cover for tinkering
With ways to jailbreak cells you’re in.

Insistent Ancestry

They have no opinions anymore,
Encounter nothing to have them for,
But some of their opinions from then,

When they were living, echo again,
Now and again, in the thoughts living
Now and considering forgiving.

This way, opinions thread through bodies,
Shedding baggage but keeping copies
Of some of what was said repeating

So dreaming can continue breeding
The ghost’s opinions with the living,
Too forgiving of unforgiving.

The Moon Illusion

What are emotions, opposed
To sensations, such as warmth
Or chill, to which they’re compared

Falsely? You’re not cold rising
At three a.m. from the fog
Of highly emotive dreams,

Submarine moon surfacing
Against black mountain backdrops,
No more than the moon is vast

In its low-lying cloud bank.
You feel an immensity,
A swollen sorrow, a glow

As if you’d swallowed the moon,
As if it rose huge against
The fragile cage of your ribs,

But you don’t know what it is,
This cold reflection in you
You know is ordinary,

You know you are misjudging.
If scanners could photograph
The extent of emotion,

They would only give you back
A little white disk of light,
A moth on the horizon.

Any Poem Would Gladly Trade Its Imagery for What You See

If you like, let the day
Show you what it shows you.
We can’t see anything.

Weirdly, we could show you
Many things by jolting
Your memory a bit,

But we can’t see a thing
Of what you see ourselves.
All we can do is sit

As signs, equivalent
To meaning potential
Energy, potential

Meaning, maybe. What’s life
Up to while we sit here?
We can’t listen, either.