That You Aren’t

Something should be going on right now
That you should be observing. But no.
You search around the most recent past,

Which passes for the present, the world
Within reach or at least within reach
Of the senses as the brain interprets,

And you hunt through books you have to hand,
Recent issues of journals, hoping
For something substantive to sink in.

You skim through several conflagrations
Burning online like high-steppe brush fires,
Fast, fierce, brief and scrubby. Nothing much

Going on such that you feel you should
Be observing. You’ve grown squinty-eyed
On approach to the bright light of death,

And, heavens, how you appreciate
Having been granted the long, sure, swoon,
Much as you always craved the lightning.

But there is a strange obligation
Seems to come with this sort of dying—
A something you should be observing.

The Dozy Lyric

It’s gotten into the habit
Of unscrolling straight from waking,
From whatever you were reading,
Words before you know you’re asleep.

Often it just extends a poem,
Your own or someone else’s, styled
In your head in the same manner
As original, waking text.

When you do startle back to life,
You realize the dream version
Was more vivid, had more action,
Maybe some pulpy elements,

A monster, even, in the words.
You wish could keep such monsters,
But dreamed poems remind you of fish—
The most boast-worthy get away.

And anyway it will be back,
Bizarre, and you’ll lose it again,
Doze into it, lose it again.
The way to prevent loss is death.

Nomad

Your address / Remains unnecessary, for the rain / Will find you

Some people do

Manage to stay

Dry all their lives,

Fortune’s bell curve

A tent for them,

Nicely centered,

Never caught out

Near corner stakes

Under wet flaps

Where rain leaks in.

Peaked curves serve them.

But water pools,

And canvas sags.

Tents collapse, and

The little rain

Finds everyone.

Miracle Strange

You’ve gathered your collection
Of miniature voices
Arranged in tidy boxes,

All labeled and beribboned
And stacked up in your closet,
Ready to talk when opened.

And if no one opens them,
And none of them are chosen
As internal spokespersons

For minds come to adore them,
What then? May a volcano
Belch ashes to bury them!

May a mudslide crush your house
And make their closet a tomb!
May all your tiny voices

Wait quietly in the dark
However many ages,
Until the unimagined

And unimaginable
Audience discovers them
And finds the miracle strange.