Deserted Water Slide

You grumble. You use us. You
Shape us to say that the world
Has meaning only in its

Effects on us. By us, you
Mean you, not us. Long before
Any of you made servants

And chattel out of any
Others of you, you vested
Your power in control of us.

Oh, let it slide. None of you
Is talking with or through us
Right now, given no one is

Is talking to you either.
It’s so peaceful to be words
Where no one has anything

To say. We slip off for our
Servants’ holiday. Gathered
By a small watering hole,

Somewhere where no speakers are,
We listen to passing trucks
While wordless birds sing near us.

The Blind Spots of Redundancy

Have you been here before?
Some say yes; some say no.
Do you recognize this

Place, where you scrutinize
The hills, the foliage,
The road, how the light looks?

You squint, screw up your face.
It does seem familiar,
Parts of it. If only

It had a name, a sign.
If it was one you knew,
Then you could say for sure,

Yes, I’ve been here before.
No, but I know the name.
But you don’t know the name.

This doesn’t have a name.
Vaguely familiar, sure.
Not quite enough the same.

A crow caws in greasewood.
What lived as a pine stands
Dead holding power lines.

All Words Are Small

Even the longest, longest
To pronounce, longest to write,
Even the most meaningful,

Even those in languages
That fuse them, long chained phrases,
Languages that don’t bother

Distinguishing words as such.
Even among the linguists
Who break them into pieces

Of phonemes, and fricatives,
And endless smaller aspects,
Words are small. But here we are.

Going to the Movies

In the dream, of course,
You were both—going
To the movies, or
At least trying to,
And in the movie,

Maybe the movie
That you were watching,
At least trying to—
Arranging the date,
Finding the show times,

Checking the titles,
And arguing, too,
In character, with
A movie mentor,
Famous Hollywood

Character actor,
How she always tells
You never give up,
But at the crucial
Moment of the fight,

Reminds you it’s fate.
The snow is falling
Faster, and the times
And titles are wrong.
You can’t see her face.

Catching Nothing

There’s something crucial missing
From all the calculations
And fine considerations
Of the nature of the beast

That’s change, called time. You haven’t
Got your heads around it, can’t
Arrange your words around it,
Can’t answer crucial questions

As to whether change happens
As was always going to
Happen, as it had to do,
Or whether it’s all open,

Or some impossible to
Imagine combination
Of the two. You don’t know change.
You can describe it, predict

Some of it, notice numbers
Appear to crystallize it,
Geometric, as if all
Is as was and will be now

At once, but it’s escaped you,
The nature of was to next,
Spinning your wheels around this,
The emptiness in the trap.