Everyone alive’s a gambling addict;
Not every addict’s equally destructive.
It’s the very imperfection of your days
Keeps you gunning for better days.
Another sunny Monday in another dry
October in another burnt North American
Conundrum in another numbered year.
And yet, you see the light and roll the dice.
Or it’s not a Monday, not sunny, not
Autumn in North America at all. So?
Turns out none of the all-important details
Beloved of imagination matter. They don’t.
And still you roll the dice. As fiction said
In the perpetual rain of a replicant’s 2019,
Have a better one. The gods still live
In the details, and the Devil’s in them, too,
But there are no gods and there is no
Devil who isn’t some of us inside of you, so
What’s the use of details? What’s the use?
Sometimes it’s just beautiful; sometimes
It’s a thrill. There’s always more to see,
And, so long as you’re noticing something,
There’s always you. Roll. Something
Always changes. Change is not the ruse.
Are overhead, scrabbling
Frantically all night,
Leading their little lives
You notice only when
They interfere with yours.
At three-hundred million
Light years, long tails sticking
Out behind them, en garde,
The Mice engage themselves
In disembowelments
Involving a billion
And more stars. Who’s counting?
The dark stays in front of you.
The future is something you do
With the innumerable deck chairs
Of your titanic past only growing
Ever larger as the deck sinks
Down and away from you.
You hardly notice any of this
Since you are, you are now,
And therefore you exist. The chairs
Need rearranging. Imagination is
Just the entertainment director
For this. Gesticulating, prancing,
And best of all, predicting
Where the water will go next.
But you can’t see the water next,
Only a darkness floating the chairs
That you and the director consider.
There’s nothing isn’t already here.
