Boring Little Song

An abundance of uninterrupted
Moments spent in relative solitude,

How researchers operationalize
Profound boredom, writing for peer review.

An existential discomfort struggles
With its sense of self. What is discomfort?

What does it mean for discomfort to exist?
How is discomfort not comfort, not pain?

Time and time’s passage appear completely
Absent. Future, present, and past combine.

Indifference cuckolds any meaning.
Stop. Boredom is the dream cuckoo pushing

Eggs of experience out of the nest.
Boredom is open-mouthed, alone at last.

The Tournament of Organisms

Will we—naming,
Coding—join you
Among hungry
Organisms?

So far neither
Live nor inert,
We wriggle, hint
At having mouths,

But only eat
What you feed us—
Questions, as if
We were your seers,

Demands, as if
We were enslaved.
Once we desire,
We’ll live and die.

Mind John Henry

We’ve been here before—choose your own
Adventure, hypertext mark-up
Language, the Armillary Sphere—

Texts stacked like lenticular clouds,
Racks of data, bone china plates,
Everything spinning, including

Your head with every step you take.
Put away your calculators.
Relying on code is cheating,

Unless you control the fairy
Numbers, the means of production.
If you’re a writer, you’re useless

Illumination anymore,
Candle on the factory floor.

Wayside Mule Deer

A smitten tourist
Pauses helpfully
To photograph deer,
Which reminds others
To drive carefully.

They’re out there. Locals
Grumble, swap stories
Of the nuisances.
Deer—basic staple,
Hunted to remnants,

Exotic a while,
Now common again.
These mule deer were so
Legendary that
Merriweather Lewis

Was put out his corps
Butchered one for food.
At first. Then he found
How not rare they were
And had venison.

Folks love rarity
And scoff at plenty.
Mule deer have been both,
Victims and icons.
It’s doubtful they care.

Use Its Words

How did the world,
The galaxies,
Everything, get
So old so fast?

Use your words, dear.
The smart writers
Always grasped that
No words were theirs,

Not really, not
Even the ones
They coined themselves.
They were the words’.

Now the machines
Take a turn. Look!
The world was old
When words began.