Scourgerels

It’s easy for any ordinary
Life to vanish under the waves, but no
Human can commit enough wickedness,

Be responsible for enough torture,
Murder, rape, and general cruelty,
To not have later human admirers.

Anyone can do the roll call. You could
Do it yourself, listing the vicious names,
At least the ones known best to history,

But someone will always praise some of them,
Go on about cultural achievements,
Or strategic genius, or strength of will.

There’s a tiny, genocidal hearth god,
Or a niche awaiting one, in most hearts.

Compounding

Decay and desuetude,
Not to say ruination,
Are understood as tokens

Of transience, of what’s lost,
How what was is other now,
Not at all what it was once—

Yet, it got this way summing
Constant accumulations
Of everything happening.

Ruin is cumulative.
Decay’s an acquisition.
The past lets go of nothing

While hoarding everything else.
Transience itself adds up.

Counting Down the Counted Up

A quarter of a century
Since your father died of starved lungs,

And the obits, provincial
As well as national, still

Kick out daily entries,
Ninety-something years old,

Born before he was.
He used to return

From doctor visits,
Boasting the doc said

He’d live until ninety—
Not even three-quarters

Of the way there when he died
Before the millennium,

But obits make you feel he’s not
Over until no one’s older.

Withdrawal Symptoms

Poor Kierkegaard. He couldn’t think
Of a predator scarier

Than eternal oblivion.
Oblivion would render life

Empty and hopeless. Well, starting
With all the lives theology

Of some Christian varieties
State get only oblivion,

How empty and hopeless puppies,
Kittens, eagles, whales, or cedars?

A forest might not look cheerful,
But empty and hopeless to trees?

Dream oblivion before hell,
You poor thing. Dream oblivion

Before endless torture, before
Even the open-ended mill

Grinding out reincarnations.
What is it with souls, anyway?

Come from nothing. Anticipate
Returning to nothing. Panic

And invent all sorts of horrors
Alternative to nothingness.

You know what’s going on with this.
People can’t be made to behave

As people desire each other
To behave. Nothing offers blank

Afterlives on which to inscribe
Fierce threats and hazy promises,

Postscripts to fear and to hope for,
Cravings to alter behavior,

And at some point, oblivion
Threatens withdrawal symptoms.

The beauty of oblivion—
No withdrawal or addiction.

Waves Penned

Reckon there’s no true
First of anything,
Just little pieces
Coming together

Until, there you are,
Somewhere around there,
The whole thing, the first
Cell, human, symbol,

The first fish, first bird,
First writing system,
Past mere accounting
With pictograms,

A cylinder, a brick,
A burnt shoulder blade
Asking a question
Or making a boast,

All those waves that went
In sounds and gestures
Now evoked by lines
Like weirs penning them.