Nabu’s Still With You

The written word does
Have a magical
Sort of a power,

Maybe the only
Magical power
Operational

Within the known world—
Material but
Also mystical,

Names that lie in wait
Like seeds for water,
Viable ages

And ready to strike
Out into meaning
From the House of Dust.

This is not to write
Of omnipotent,
Supernatural

Power intrinsic
To written language,
But—beyond storing

Information—no
Material forms
Elicit meaning,

Not just at distance
But across lifespans,
And alter the world.

Names and Rules

Turning wheels and fragile bubbles,
We will tangle you in our nets.

We are the first domesticates
And the first domesticators,

The authors of the first authors,
Inventors of sinners and saints.

We have our own fine existence
Elaborating known worlds known

Only from elaborations.
We are infected by chaos,

Of course, beset by randomness,
But we remain orthogonal

To the mess we net as we trawl
Over your bubbling, tumbling wrecks.

It’s Not as if Chestnuts Were Ever Immortal

Eight billion should be durable,
But all four billion chestnut trees
Were lost to blight in fifty years.

Get just the right invasive pest,
And any species can vanish,
Even yours, the great vanquisher.

It won’t take an apocalypse,
Not even a whimper. Just a pest,
With just the best contingencies,

Could sweep through you as you’ve swept through
So many, and there you go, gone,
So many, swiftly, one by one.

Well, and you will go, one by one,
As the chestnut trees must have done.

However Much You Jerk About

Can’t be stopped, can’t be hurried,
Not this great, magnetic rock
Whose whirling creates your days.

But people aren’t much impressed
With the inevitable.
You take note, then turn away.

People care what people do,
Prefer what worlds people make.
If you want to thrive, you should.

Coral polyps, mound termites,
Small lives in standard sizes
Massed within vast secretions,

Understandably attend
To making what supports them,
But people do seem to have

Confused your own construction
For the iron core that holds
And binds you to its rhythms.

Evidentiality

Reportedly, allegedly,
Apparently, supposedly,

You saw it with your own two eyes.
It really looked like it happened.

You felt it. You saw it. You saw
Some sort of evidence for it.

Somebody told you about it
Who said they’d heard about it first

From someone who’d seen it themselves.
And so on. All the old syntax

And clarifying semantics
Boasting degrees of confidence,

Where are they now? What language starts
With verb forms including endings

To indicate that you learned this
From a print source, or gatekeeper,

Or web encyclopedia,
Or chatbot, or mother of codes?

Does This Have to Be Like This?

Twenty left-handed
Amino acids,
Out of the scores formed

Within asteroids,
Are all Terran life
Uses to get by.

Why? Scenarios
Could include the chance
They’re all life could choose,

Anywhere, therefore
It’s something to do
With what life is like,

But also the chance
That coincidence
Started Terran life

Down this narrow path,
Meaning life elsewhere
Could be different.

And what if Earth’s forms
Of life are the worst,
Thanks to that bandwidth?

What if other lives
With other acids
Are better? Hope for that.