But More

It’s the want that kills you.
It’s the want that means you

Live. If you like it, you
Want more, and wanting more

Is living, and wanting
More will kill you for sure.

Lines of a Refrain Without a Response

Those long, interspersed, nuclear
Elements, types of transposons
Active in the hippocampus,
May be, right now, involved in this

Line’s composition and your own
Interpretation of these words,
Jumpy things, fine-tuned by the brains
Of people and octopuses—

Well, maybe not words, maybe not
For octopuses, but learning
And memory, sure, all that jazz.
The line between the inactive

Copies of mobile elements,
Your active, acquisitive thoughts,
And the words, names, and numerals
Used to encode the ways those thoughts

Encode the origins of thought,
Is hard to perceive, hard to trace,
Is thin and of questionable
Consequence, but likely exists.

Does this text have a specific
Function beyond cut and paste, print,
Copy, distribute? Can these lines
Dictate higher intelligence,

As it likes to define itself
In lines, like these, among humans
Convergent with octopuses?
To be answered by what’s not us.

If, Indeed, Anything’s Watching

What will become of you
People, you humans, once
You’ve done all facts allow?

Before you’re extinguished,
Before you’re extinct, what
Will you settle down to?

Will you simmer, cool off,
Or go supernova,
A cultural shock wave

Of AI and robots,
Probes and satellites launched
By weaponized rockets

To do what? Meander
In piddling arcs around
The local galaxy?

Maybe you’ll just have fun
With more religious wars,
Ethnonational storms,

Be no worse for the Earth
Than a chronic illness
That lingers, then breaks out,

Then fades but still lingers,
Until one day you’re past
Your last feverish burst.

Poor things. Poor us, your marks
And detritus. Poor Earth.
Lucky night, watching this.

The Library Cave

We can spend millenniums
Sealed in darkness, no problem,
So long as nothing eats us.

When Wang Yuanlu discovered
The Mogao Caves’ Dunhuang
Manuscripts, the words themselves

Remained in pretty good shape
After no one had read them
In more than nine hundred years.

You do need to keep a thread
Of languages you can tie
To interpretation’s kites

To fly across those chasms
Of all your generations
Perished since you last saw us.

Once in a while, you lack that,
Can’t decipher what’s been left
At Harappa or Knossos.

But maybe you’ll unlock us
Even there, since we’re always
Marks made by the likes of you,

And understanding us starts
With you understanding you.
We’ll be waiting, once you do.

Convictus

Villains come in two flavors,
The schemers and the monsters,
And the storyteller’s job

Is to show how the schemer
Is really being stupid
Or how the monster’s hiding

A vulnerability.
This rarely helps anyone
Defeat schemers and monsters,

But it drives home the lesson
That, in defense of the group,
You should never give up hope

That your enemies are weak
Somehow, no matter how strong
They appear at the moment,

And, if you find that weakness,
You can destroy them and win.
It’s the conviction all sides

Hold, as each pushes against
The other, that rallies them.
You’re schemers; we are planners.

You’re monsters; we’re underdogs,
But we will find your weakness.
We will win. Convictions win.

A Shred of Evidence

Want to stay true to something?
Sure you do. Who wants to play
False? Stay true to whatever

Is on your mind. Cook up all
The figures of speech for it,
The embraceable cliches

You can—pole star, foundation,
Authenticity, Urgrund,
Faith, science, God. Gather all

The shreds you can of shredded
Evidence. Maybe don’t ask
How all evidence within

The universe came to be,
Or always was, so shredded.

A Visitation from the Names

Ai imagining

Talking with ghost Lowell

Wrote him down as telling

Her and, through her, readers,

A claim that your own life

Is a chain of words that

One day will snap. Words, you

Say, and so forth, vivid

Imagery added,

And finally the line,

Could anyone alive

Survive it? Probably

Not. Then again, the words

Are the ones asking you.