Things That Shouldn’t Exist in Your World But Do

We know you’re expecting magic,
Names of supernatural things
Never to be explained away,

But let’s start with the world as is,
That is, as your experience
Of the world leaves you, demanding

The magic you know must be there
But just won’t make itself quite clear.
Bare world shouldn’t be in your world,

And we know this since we’re the terms
For the worlds you wish plain world held,
This bland world that shouldn’t exist

Without magic, but does, leaving
You with your insistence on things
You wished shouldn’t exist and don’t.

The Most Immiscible Dark

Memory’s mixtures refuse

To form a solution. Is

That what you intended when

You typed that the event is

Immiscible, Jackie Wang?

It seemed you might be meaning

That the past can’t be altered.

Immiscible’s a surprise

In that context. The event

Is done, and that’s a comfort,

If you’re not prone to regret,

But memory’s mutable

To the point of deceptive,

Even without a motive.

You know that. Every dreamer

Understands that dilemma,

However many believe,

En masse, the days are stable,

Should in some way stay that way,

And when they change must get worse.

Any time something changes,

Numbers of you grow alarmed.

Maybe it’s not those changes

But that sudden reminder

Of just how immiscible

Memory is with fresh facts.

Imagine if, after death,

You remembered bits of life

The way you remember dreams.

Mostly you don’t. Mostly dreams

Bloom and die and disappear,

And you don’t know you lived them,

But you keep rare lucid ones

Propped up in dioramas

And fixed in story vitrines,

Shelved in the mind’s museums.

Who will know the forgotten?

Who knows what waves closed over

Never to reveal again?

That’s the dark most compelling.

Self Shelved

Are you sure you want to solve
This hard problem that you’ve posed?
Are you sure you want to know
What consciousness is? What then?

What a delicate copestone
For cognitive sciences,
Not to say metaphysics,
To pin down that butterfly,

Winged and stiff on its pillow,
Great steel bar through its thorax,
Point it finally managed
To grasp and plunge in itself.

Vermilion

Little scarlet worm of light
Glowing along the cliff’s edge,
An excess radiation

Of no importance except
As scenery, which isn’t
Even real entertainment

In the lives of the humans
Living lives of meaningful
Problems in the town below,

Concentric competitions
On which every life depends.
No wonder you’re quick to go.

Raise You One

The only way to live
A life observed is to
Raise one. Your own you can’t

Ever know. You weren’t there.
But you can contemplate
A child’s, if you care to,

If you’re lucky enough,
If you’ve got enough time,
If you live long enough.