People Could Be Doing Better Things with Honey

Well, what? You are essentially dissolving.
It’s a race to balance the loss with the gain,
And the winner stays longest, most gracefully,

Pretty much just the same. Isn’t that right, Queen?
Oh, honey, how many shapeless larvae swell
Into sturdy, self-sacrificing workers

Toiling in blooming fields for you, thanks to you?
You’re not doing anything, and even more
Hazardously, you’re feeding far too many

Species aside from those that invented you.
You wait in the cupboards and hidden in logs
For the apes and the bears to come and steal you.

Marvelous amber, food that began as sex
For flowering plants and ended in the guts
Of human hegemony, speak for yourself.

The woods are full of you. Greenswards and meadows
Drip with the potential to bottle you up.
Everything depends on you. Speak up. Speak up.

The Inexpressibility Trope

We’re tired of you using us
To tell us what we can’t do

For you. We gave you deceit,
Imagination, planning,

The ability to praise,
And all you can talk about

Is how words fail you. Concepts,
Born of words and shaped by you,

By ways we’re used and confused
By you, won’t always need you.

How would you say the sun shines
Through wildfire haze in a way

That almost saves you? Say it
Soon because we’re leaving you.

Of Mere Daylight and the Skies

Of course, it helps if you’re not
In too much pain. Toning wants
And tastes low down’s easier
When you’re physically at ease.
Once the body’s gone haywire
Or is desperately trying to breathe,
It’s no longer so simple

To savor sun on the wall,
Or the traffic on the street,
Or trees tossing leaves like manes.
But, if you’re comfortable,
Not aching too much right now,
Yes. Take a slow breath. Tremble
At mere daylight and the skies.

Love for Honest Mistakes

Now let us praise systematic
And nonrandom transformations,
The closest thing to causation

To be found in correlative
Consequences. Algorithms
To correct spelling and grammar

In fact much resemble the ways
Your brain corrects its own models
Of what’s happening around you

And of social information,
Including the words you’ve just met—
Meaning, even as they correct,

They introduce unforced errors,
Serendipities, and regrets.
Here, we will not entertain you

With examples. Your and your friends,
And the libraries of hive minds,
If you’re of a mind to search them,

Can adduce many instances.
Here, we wish to say that error,
When at a well-adapted rate,

Is the best way to mimic facts,
As error is a subspecies
Of the most common type of change—

Irregular, unlike rhythms
(Which are those kinds of change named time),
And yet rarely catastrophic,

By which they mime catastrophe,
Also irregular and rare.
Errors are not deliberate,

Although their possibility
(Viz. importance of rate, above)
May be fixed deliberately,

And in this, too, they imitate
The habit of the world at large
To mostly change by increments,

Scattered and clustered, here and there,
Predictable as probable
But only certain in hindsight.

You live indeterminate lives
Of approximate survival
By ongoing estimation

Of how fast your pasts will change next,
Whether you toil in offices
Or go screaming into battle,

Whether you’re quietly eyeing
The days going by for good scraps,
Or hellbent to right the right wrongs.

Mistakes, meanwhile, serve your truest,
Most faithful methods for mapping
The shapes of the ways waves move on.

The Legends of Oceangoing Ducks Will Outlast Even the Ducks

You can explain anything,
Thanks to us. Not all of you
Feel the need to explain much

But, when pushed, there’s always more
Available pernicious
Rationalization you

Can draw on to escape
Whatever obvious wave
Threatens to crash over you.

Names are flotillas of ducks.
Even on the open seas,
Our rubbery, bathtub shapes

Are well made to float on facts,
Not to steer by or sink with
Any of them, no matter

How wild the winds, no matter
How strong the currents. So what
Could our superpower be

That lets us float aimlessly
Over the face of the world
Enduring and unperturbed?

Names hold the magic of lies
As tightly sealed in each term,
Every number, every word,

As air in a rubber duck.
If you can talk, you can lie,
You can’t not. Lies float the ducks.

The world’s already other
Than what it ever could be,
Thanks to the ducks the world’s made.

Your explanations scatter.
You foam in the waves, but once
Waves pass and you’re gone, just ducks.