Poem Putting Itself Down for a Nap

Words swirl in the air,
Convincing voices
Echoing bodies
That speak to your own.
You can mistake them,

Physically take
Them to be bodies
Present in you and
Interacting with
Your own emotions.

Be careful of words,
Careful of extra
Voices, good friends.
Sometimes you need hours
Of no one talking,

No echoes at least,
No extra voices
From pretend bodies.
We say this as words—
You can sink in calm

As into clean sheets,
The plainness of it,
Once you get away
From voices to sit
In the boring day.

Language Is Aftermath

The soul, that squid
Of ink, that cloud
That can escape
Within itself,

Has only one
True predator,
Morality.
That moment when

You sense yourself
Riven, as ink
Would obscure it,
You start thinking,

Talking, writing,
Wrapping yourself
In clouds of words
To dissipate.

Gold Leaf on a Halo

Also takes a lot of craft.
Someone has to mine the gold.
Try that, sometimes. Purified,

The gold has to be beaten
Into salable gold leaf.
You have to paint the halo.

You have to apply the leaf.
Do you know of any saints
Of angelic halo gold,

Any gods who patronize
The craft of patching gold leaf?
Surely someone’s thought up one.

Don’t tell us genius isn’t magic,
Needs no visits from the muse.
Everyone gets the visit,

But unless you’re in the shop,
Working hard, needing a break,
It’s the knock you might refuse.

To Observe the Root of Despite

If you can make things,
Make them. They can’t make
You any better,

And you can’t make you
Any better not
Making them. Making

Them only makes them.
Then, that’s what you’ve done,
In spite of who you

Are or think you are,
Mercifully so,
Not because of you.

Good Day

Telos and God were out for a walk,
Taking in a little wintry air,
Silly buggers. They made quite a pair,

A couple of old words with long, wild hair.
They didn’t talk to each other much,
Not with those worn-out jaws of puppets.

They attracted attention, of course.
Everyone they passed had a vague sense
Of knowing exactly who they were,

While the two of them secretly knew
Vague senses combined to see them there,
Making them as they were. Walks change you.

The Other Nude

What happens not because
Of anything before
Or anything after

Happens to be what is
Of what was, what remains
In the act of going.

Explanation without
Causation, arriving
Without necessity

Accurately, not truth,
Observation without
Engine, would resemble

The world itself, evade
The hunger for story,
Lie down, bare poetry.

Knot

Awareness would be content
To be aware forever
Or to believe it would be.

Awareness never does know
When it’s not here, when it’s gone
Away for night or for good.

Awareness is nothing but
Knowing that it is aware,
However it is produced.