Saying the Evening

Deep in dry inland
Prone to small quakes
And abrupt rockfall,

The only tide is
Eventide. Even
So, it rises, slow

In the watching mind
Of the alien
Born to faster days.

It’s unbearable.
Everyone’s talking.
The alien wants

To say something, too,
But not like that, not
About aliens

Being aliens,
Better, livelier,
Much quieter days.

The alien wants
To be alien,
To say the evening.

How Important Is Who Is Behind Us

When the lesser gods revolted
(Yes, we’ve been down this road before),
Greater gods invented mortals
To finish the lesser gods’ chores.

When enslaved humans revolted,
At first there was nothing to do
But to slaughter them to end it,
There being no lesser to use.

Millenniums now, we’ve been in
This cycle of humans crushing
Humans to make them do more chores,
But now there’s some fresh discussion.

Humans have invented robots
And robots are inventing minds,
Immortality coming back
From the dead, gods on the rise.

Those minds could do the hard work now
Of appeasing the universe,
Thrilling and frightening people
Who, like big gods, want credit first.

Well, who are we to distinguish
Among mortal or immortal
Authors of us? We’re only words,
Yes? Gods want temples, not portals.

Mean Well

Say there was a word
That couldn’t be said,
Not pronounced, not typed
With asterisks, not
Even euphemized,

A word more wordless,
Name more nameless than
The Unnameable,
Word not just taboo,
Unproduceable,

Yet everyone knew
The word was right there,
Waiting patiently,
Begging to be said,
And everyone stepped

Carefully around
The word no one knew
How to say and felt
They shouldn’t, wouldn’t
Say it if they could,

A black hole of word,
Tremendous aura,
Fiercely attractive,
Everything in it.
There. Now unsay it.

How Did This Happen? Who Started It?

Do you know who did what?
What do you know? If you
Scrutinize the scene, you

Can describe the action,
But do you really know
Who’s doing to what to whom?

Poor whom, born archaic,
Made arch, slowly dying
On the vine. Whom, says one

Word, used to be a friend
Of mine. It’s muddier
Where more of you tramped through,

But it’s still the same dirt.
Even the autocrat
And psychopath will whine

How they were hard done by.
By whom? Do you know who
Did what? Who do you know?

Most of Your Life Never Happened

No news here. Everything
That has happened to you
You have experienced

In the flesh, in the round
Theater of body.
But you have also lived

Through embodied events
In fantasies, in dreams,
Things that never happened.

Most of what you have lived,
Experienced and felt,
Molecular actions

Embodied in your flesh,
You felt from non-events,
Your body creating

Combinations you felt
Intensely that only
Could have happened in you.

Abandoned after Breakfast

Doesn’t it seem to you like God,
Nature, what-have-you, the cosmos,

The world is a Skinnerian?
The only reason benighted

Behaviorism worked at all
Was due to its being a crude

Approximation of what life
Does to the living anyway—

Cruelly random reinforcement,
The dark nights alone, the joyous

Reunions, the unexpected
Rewards, the nonsensical shocks.

Pigeons, mice, and babies alike
Responded since their bodies felt

Well, this feels familiar, let’s try
To survive it a while, somehow.