How Meaning Works

The slip of paper wasn’t
Worth the cost of printing it,
Which was less than a penny,

Until magic transformed it,
And it became worth mansions,
Lawyers, charities, trust funds,

A terrifying value
In a scrap of cheap printout,
Easily torn and destroyed.

But you see, that’s misleading.
Nothing about the paper
Other than a few atoms,

Maybe, changed at all. It stayed
The same printed slip. Numbers—
Routine, calibratedly

Random, independent picks
Of numbers—as selected
Every few days, usually

To no effect, in this case
Coincided with numbers
On that worthless paper slip.

That’s all. Only the meaning
Of the slip of paper changed,
Far away from the paper.

Weaker and Less Personal

Too much discomfort,

Ache in the belly,

To down anything

Solider than tea,

The weary trembled.

What did young Lowell,

Harvard-bred, handsome,

Tall, and well-to-do

Title his volume?

Lord Weary’s Castle.

That was years before

He decided poems

Would be stronger if

Made more personal,

Which worked for a while.

Lord Weary. Noble.

The condescending

Melancholic bowed

His great, weary head.

Nevermind the Lord.

Here there is only

The weary, the small

Disintegration

Of something weaker

And less personal.

Pierre Petit

The little poet
Had some unfinished
Poems on his table,

Just drafts, when a draft
Of wind blew a few
Out of the window

To the street below,
Where a passing priest
Caught them and scanned them

And, in a minute,
Declared heresy
Immediately,

Saying the poet
Ought to be dead. So,
The poet was killed.

Note it was a priest,
A countryman, one
Who spoke the same tongue,

Not an enemy,
An invader, not
A god or machine,

Not artificial
Intelligence. No.
Just someone local

Who didn’t care for
What he read, who had
The power to make

Good on his demand
That his countryman
Deserved to be dead.

That Was Now, This Is Then

Tiny tincture bottles,
Nothing but air in them,
Hold the dark energy

Survey of origins
Of colorblindness and
Evolution of heads.

The books indirectly
Fatal to their authors
And the books directly

Fatal falling from shelves
Are empty as tiny
Tincture bottles as well.

All Lessons Are Eventually Forgotten

All well and good to confess
Most of your failures have stemmed
From doing the easier,

Pleasanter thing, rather than
The harder, more correct thing,
But what kind of creation

Consists of situations
In which every pleasant choice
Must be punished, and the right

Is almost always hardest?
You find yourself living, faced
With hard and pleasant options

Just to learn the hard lesson
There are no pleasant options?