Pesky Wraith

It would be funny if the dead came back

But not the human dead. Just dogs and cats

Or, better yet, just the ghosts of insects

Or only some kinds of flies. That makes sense.

There is a superabundance of flies.

They can be elusive and flit in clouds.

Maybe among the living flies the ghosts

Make up the preponderance. What about

Coyotes? It’s amazing they still howl

Given how determined your killing’s been.

Any kind suspiciously numerous,

A genus suspiciously speciose

May be made up mostly of revenants.

Oh, what, now you find ghosts ridiculous?

Revision

Only one paradox
Really should bother you—
Nothing can be undone;

What’s been done keeps changing.
Everything weird follows
From that situation.

Content but Empty of Content

Zero is not a number,
Is the absence of number.
Absence must be everywhere,

Since math won’t work without it,
And yet, absence seems nowhere
When you search for it. Almost,

Here and there, past atmospheres,
Past stellar winds, almost there,
But no perfect absence there.

If you need it and use it,
Juggle telescopes with it,
Balance infinity’s books

And your own accounts with it
That by definition can’t
Itself be in existence,

What is it, zero? Is it
What isn’t? Then why need it
To keep what is, this content?

If Nothing Else Is Perfect

All done. Wánmēi de. Set.
Ideally accomplished,
Fully finished. Perfect.

Stupid, said Bernadette.
Why should a poem be, if
Nothing is. Quite correct.

Stupid yearning. You slept
Imperfectly, and yet
You slept. A perfect rest

Is just death, you suspect.
Maybe that’s why you want
Badly to be perfect.

Steal a march, gain a step
On the one unique thing
You, consciousness, do best.

While all the else go on
With further stage effects,
Incomplete and churning,

You, that which intersects
Being, body, and breath,
Won’t be left. Will have left.

This Thing, for Instance

Something is happening in the past.
Something is happening to the past.
In fact, that’s all that ever happens.

Every glance you take, your past has changed.
Where the change came from you can’t quite say.
It’s just there, and there, and there again.

It seems to come from the past itself.
It seems to churn in the past itself.
Monitoring and analyzing

The past obsessively seems the best
Way to be able to live with it,
But you can never really know it.

Something is happening in your past.
All kinds of surprises hide in it.