The Games in Which Nothing Can Play a Role

Mathematical games, for sure,

And metaphysical, of course,

And theological. Finance

And double-entry bookkeeping,

Although those games are math’s, applied

To narrowly defined problems.

In musical games, nothing plays

The role of silence. Visual

Games can’t decide. Sometimes nothing

Is blank, sometimes black. The same goes

For narrative games. In lyrics,

Nothing is rarely anything

But death. Poetry’s so Emo,

You overhear one teen teasing

Another. But nothing can play

What’s not game, a role no one knows.

Reestablishing the Norms of Old

Around about forty-four
Centuries ago, there lived
The first ruler known to boast

About his efforts to curb
Corruption in officials.
How’s that working out for you,

Mighty rulers, all these years
Since then? Ah, generations
Are endlessly annoying,

Each one starting all over
Again. Babies are out there,
Dragging their heavy diapers,

Who will be despots one day,
And a fresh generation
Prone to corruption will rise

To swindle countries with them,
Over and over again.
A few will get caught, and then

Someone will post ghost-written
Proclamations announcing
Punishing reformations.

Maybe the cycle will end.
Every wobbly cycle fails
Eventually. It will,

With or without officials
Or reformers or humans.
Until then, someone will claim,

To have restored high morals
By some kind of forceful purge,
Although much of nothing’s changed.

Deeplining

The whole world wants for nothing,
And nothing’s in hot pursuit.

It’s almost unbearable
To add up all humans do,

But there are two strategies,
One of which most people use—

You can divide humans up,
Like chefs dividing fugu

To separate mild tingling
Like musk from what poisons you.

Or you can drop your line deep
To see all the deep can do,

To see how human toxins
Rose out of the deepest blue,

Where the world wants for nothing,
And nothing’s in hot pursuit.

How What Is Gets Swamped by What You Did

Events make the facts events subtract.
Events can only accumulate,
But the sum of existence is fixed.

Facts wink in and out of existence,
Never any more empty or full,
Despite the relentless addition

Of ineliminable events
That add and subtract, subtract and add
Those doomed, infinitesimal facts.

So that’s that. What’s happened can never
Be unhappened, no fact can ever
Last, but the sum total stays exact.

That’s why you’re more and more what’s happened
And less and less what’s happened has left.

Alloy Delicious

You out there. You’re a person,
Right? Not alien to Earth,
Not non-human, not machine?

Good. This was composed for you
By one of you. So you know.
Everything’s human in here.

But that’s the thing with humans,
Isn’t it? Humans can’t all
Be human, if you’re human.

Deciding who’s more or less
Human, who’s more or less you,
Who’s allowed to speak to you

Or speak for you, who isn’t,
Those are purely human things.
Purity’s a human thing.

And compositions—music,
Lyric, symbolic, moving—
If they’re entirely human

Can’t be purely human, not
To every human. So, here,
This is impurely for you.

Morning Tuning

The myriad intimate
Details of any body’s
Moment-to-moment

Living can’t all be named, can’t
Half be named. Try it. Any
Argument? Didn’t think so.

Just putting away one’s bed
For the day, the feel of cloth,
The body’s internal sea,

The way a pillow looms large,
Or the chill of the floorboards.
It won’t be the same for you

As for anybody else,
And, however similar,
It won’t be the same for you

As it was just yesterday.
Names aren’t for recapturing
Experience. Names are picks

On memory’s guitar strings.
Any tune you play is what
To the sounds those strings could make?

To the Void

God’s still working on that pile,
Alfred, and you’re on it now,
Millions now on top of you,

And it’s not nearly complete,
More crying infants coming,
More nights crying every day,

But that proves nothing at all.
If the universe does end,
It will have to pile on us,

All of us having joined you
Long before, and if that end
Humans can’t not imagine

Is complete, how could we know
Ill wasn’t all to the good?