Fresh Face

High on an old sandstone cliff
Can only mean something cracked,
And sure enough, there’s the slide.

Most likely no one saw it.
The pallid slice of raw stone
Tens of millions of years old,

Hidden in itself so long,
Will start to gather varnish
From wind and rain and seepage,

And then, in a few lifetimes
Or many, another slice.
Earth is so methodical,

Unlike life. Strange, that children
Have so little in common
With their ultimate parent.

Swept Away

What if the grieving
Son had taken arms,
After all, against
The sea of troubles,
To end his heart-ache?

All his wiliness
Got him and others
Killed young anyway.
It’s a confession,
That soliloquy,

The most terrible
Confession there is—
Against the waves, no
Victory except
Complete surrender.

Civilization
Was birthed to refute
This condition. Gods
Were stormy heroes
Subjugating seas,

Dismembering waves,
An end to chaos,
Sinuous monster.
Their failures whisper
In all waves and winds.

Long Quarrel with Ourselves

We’re off to the Great Unconformity
To join a billion years and disappear.

It takes a while to scrape past from the rocks
And free up enough for life to explode.

We’re volunteering to join the wipeout.
What is is only what’s left of what was,

And we were, and we’re ready to go, but
We swear we’ll struggle the whole way going.

Lead-Based Arsenic Green and Cochineal

People to whom bad things happen,
And people who do bad things, and
People who let bad things happen,

Have all been part of the palette
Of who you are, if you’re human,
If you’re a person. You’re people.

Maybe you’re not. Maybe you’re thought
Disembodied or embodied
In a device that isn’t flesh,

Or in flesh that isn’t human,
Reading these few lines of English
For whatever absurd reason.

Maybe you’d like to ask some words
Associated with humans,
From someone among the people

Who have bad, do bad, let bad things
Happen to them, what art is this?
None. It’s not art, just a palette.