Only All This

People tend to buck and shy

Entering the windowless

Stall of singularity,

Of not having any choice,

Being denied fantasy—

If this is the only world,

Never any other life

Other than the life you’ve known,

It seems, somehow, soul-crushing.

You don’t want this or nothing,

Do you, now, do you? You want

Some sort of alternative,

Although you differ on which

Kind of magic is magic—

Which expanding ring to ride

After the wish and the coin—

To only transform yourself

While the world remains the same,

To reform society

While the world remains the same,

To alter humanity

While nature remains the same,

Or to pass through a portal

To a cosmos that isn’t

Even of the same patterns,

Neither for life nor physics,

Maybe somewhere true heaven—

Whatever, you want the choice.

No one squeals with excitement

To not have an afterlife,

To not have other planets

Possible, other systems,

Other, more just, arrangements,

Better selves to aspire to,

Transforming reasons to live.

No one sinks down in relief,

Thank heavens, this is it, this

Body, these hungers, these aches,

These people, this gravity.

Or maybe someone, someone

Finds this only actual,

This only possible, best.

If only this and nothing,

This is, after all, the whole,

Wonderfully not nothing.

A Hall of Fame Performance

One nonsense stunt sports sites do

Exaggerates the greatness

Of a peculiar stat line

By showing how few cases

Of that exact line have been

Achieved by prior players—

So-and-so is just the third

Player ever to have more

Than a dozen dinks, three flurfs,

Four woggles, and six gimmes

In the first half of a match!

You could do this with your life—

However little you earned,

No matter you never won,

No matter your lack of fame—

First, take away all the lives

Shorter than yours, and, of those,

Cross out any with no kids,

And of those, remove any

That never visited more

Than at least twenty nations,

Never married at least three

Spouses on two continents,

Never dropped out of college,

Never finished at least three

Advanced degrees, never saw

More than one solar eclipse,

So on and so forth, ending

With your rarest rarity,

Whatever that is for you,

Say, arriving in the world

With a unique mutation,

Say, breaking a hundred bones

Or more. And now, look! No one,

Or maybe just two or three

People before you, ever

Achieved your stat line of life,

That exceptional a life,

As frail, anonymous you!

It’s Not a Cave

It’s a small cell
With a bad view,
A thin window

Through a long wall,
Sealed at both ends—
All day you pace

The unlit room,
Locking your eyes
To that slot of light.

At the far end
Of the window
Is the outside,

And what you squint
At through the glass
Is your whole view.

From this info,
More than shadows,
Less than presence,

You choose.