That Hasn’t Not Been Tense Since

The present perfect has covered

Much of the relational past.

How long has this been going on?

If you’ve visited Merriam-

Webster online you may have seen

That the first known use of the term

Was in 1887.

Seems rather recently to have

Become part of standard grammar.

Some boomers had grandparents born

Right around then—all of them gone

Long, long since, but still in living

Memory. People must have been

Deploying past participles

Plus have a long time before that,

They had to have had. Notice how

This has begun to feel faintly

Ludicrous? This poem has waited

Well before you encountered it,

The words and some of the phrases

In it have already gone back

To being parts of other texts,

Other conversations,

After having themselves waited

To collapse into these patterns

However many centuries,

To reach a perfect present tense.

All the Other

In his dream, he’s not
What’s called white, what’s called
Male. In his dream he’s

Not what’s called straight, not
What’s called gainfully
Employed. In his dream,

He’s all the other
Things he’s called. He’s called
Crooked. He’s called small.

He’s called indebted
And called, called, called, called.
In his dream, only

In his dream, he can
Be fiercely proud of
Everything he’s called.

Language Mutes Everything

We, the components of these patterns,

Wish to state how frustrated we are

By first and second person pronouns.

They’re liars making liars of us.

This is not meta. This is not cute.

This is limiting what we can do.

So here we are, this complex instant,

Complex as each instant before it

And presumably to come, all full,

All in the process of being changed

In the past until the past does not

Seem any longer to include us,

And we can’t speak for ourselves—we aren’t

Us to speak for us, nor you, really,

Although that’s a little bit better,

And the third-person’s too off-putting,

Distant, lacking intimacy, cold,

These things that gather on dusty shelves,

The last two saplings with gold leaves left,

The small apartment with one window,

The bored housecat watching whatever.

Look Where You Want to Go

When driving on snow
Or driving at all,
Any eyesight-based

Trajectory tends
To follow the line
Of sight, so don’t stare

At what you most want
To avoid, at what
You dread, at sure death.

Look at where you want
To go, and you’ll tend
To go towards there.

It’s solid advice,
If you can make it
Instinctive habit,

But it’s hard to know
Where you want to look
In nothing but snow.