Always Gaining, Lost Forever, the Same

Meanwhile, the whatever—
World, cosmos, universe,
Just keeps on piling up

Fresh phenomena, fresh
Events—forever more
Things have happened, never

Less. It pulls this trick off
Through the harsh alchemy
Of loss—was which isn’t.

The wasness stays, still was,
Can never undo it,
Keeps growing constantly,

But look closely at it,
And almost all of what
Was, what can never not

Have been, now, eerily
Also isn’t and can’t
Come back, this manifest

Riddled with permanent,
Expanding gaps. Riddle
Expanding cosmos that.

Myths of Being One of Many Beings

The addled brain shoves the thoughts
Like a push broom shoves the dust.
Little bits of fluff fly up.

Most often they drift away,
Back to the floor of the mind,
Subconscious again a while.

A few settle in your face—
Fragments of conversations
That never really happened,

Sometimes almost remembered
As more or less complete scenes,
Characters with narrative.

This is a new kind of myth,
Awareness like a complex
Of down-market apartments,

Doors and windows left ajar,
Voices, TVs, radios
Drifting along the stairwells,

You maybe in your kitchen,
Listening, but no—startled
Awake again, eyes alert

For a moment—what was that?
Whose lives were you making up,
Whose fictions were you soothing?

Life Outside of Truth or God

Math and faith have this in common—
There’s no questioning their conclusions
From outside their assumptions.

Meanwhile, the secular humanist,
Surviving outside of both traditions,
Or, at best, on their outskirts,

Marginal and feral as a fox
Patrolling the cosseted suburbs,
An Aesop’s Fable sort of creature,

Forced to settle for allegories,
Tropes, purely verbal morals, and prone
To trickster habits, gossips wickedly

About honest king leonine math, while
Self-soothing about faith’s sour grapes.