Willow Wood

Is it you, really?
There in the story,
Peeking from the words

Like something hiding
In winter thickets
It uses for home?

Somehow, we doubt it.
You’re more the creature
Chewing on the bark,

Curling back your lips
And ripping off strips,
What twigs must survive.

No, that, too, seems wrong.
You’re not really there.
We’re really here. You

Startle us into
Thinking you’re with us.
But you’re not. We’re us.

Excess Portal Fantasies

Know why there’s so much distance
Between inner and outer
Subatomic particles,

Between stars and their planets,
Between stars and stars, swirls
Of galaxies—even though

They eventually collide?
Know why there’s so much distance
Between us now, as you read?

It’s not that the fields are stretched,
That the longest waves lie flat,
That time likes to make us dance.

There are holes no telescopes
Can perceive, which no models
Can predict, much less detect.

Whatever you feel as stretched,
Stretched disproportionately
Suggesting something empty,

Between the lights, the quanta,
The oceanic ripples,
You and me, is an army

Of immaterial awls
Of the unfathomable
Opening holes in the real.

Know Not Of

Just for fun, what if Hamlet
Was right? Sleep’s then a preview
And a warning about death,

Not the going away part
But the unpredictable
Hallucinations after.

If material dreaming
Is too weird to understand,
How weird might death’s dreaming get?

Stranger than any heaven
Or hell embodied thoughts guess.
Who actually imagines

The exact dreams that they get?
Not even lucid dreamers
Stay always in their saddles

When things really start jumping
At the nightmare rodeo.
And without a brain, without

A body with memories
To constrain and interpret
The emotional parade,

Well. Should supernatural
Awareness of any kind
Be remotely possible,

Each one of you could be in
For what you can never guess.
So you live. Show some respect.

Stain Resistant

Maybe worship something you can’t
Pollute, deity who no one
Could ever insult or defile.

All these thin-skinned, smutchable gods
And scriptures and saints and prophets
Might as well be operating

Theaters, given how little
It takes to breach their perfection
And turn them hopelessly deadly

Vectors of nasty infections.
The night that you can hurl yourself
And your uncleanliness into

That will remain impervious,
Unperturbed and unaffected
Nothingness, maybe worship that.

Neuronal Soul

A behavioral science

Writer of renown has fun

With depicting decisions

As contests among neurons,

And your moral decisions

As being taken at risk

Of your neuronal soul. Nice.

Which soul would you rather risk,

Neuronal or immortal?

The latter hazards nothing.

The former risks a lifetime

Of agenbite of inwit.

On that head, why not picture

Each neuron as a creature,

Wild synapses for its hair?

The world is rich with one-celled

Life forms, and cancer can launch

From one rogue cell, so why not

Go the whole hog, calling all

Cells souls? Not all life forms. Cells.

All cells souls and all souls cells.

There you go. Now it makes sense,

This business of lives with souls,

This talk of heaven and hell.

Every cell is immortal,

Every cell that ever was,

And Earth’s just a proving ground

In which all cells are tested

To send to heaven or hell,

And you, by entertaining

Heretical truth like this,

Put half your brain at risk of

Losing its neuronal souls.

Teeth Outside of the Body

That’s how one paleoanthropologist
Describes early stone tools, and the metaphor
Holds its cutting edge down to the present day.

But not teeth only. Language made memories
Outside of the body. Symbols and writing
Made populations outside of the body.

The latest fun is with making thoughts themselves
Outside of the body, as well as making
Outside-of-the-body experiences.

The body, of course, still trundles along, aches,
Hungers, blood and all. The extracorpsical
Teeth, tongues, muscles, thoughts, and experiences

Haven’t yet gotten together to figure
Out how to get on with things without body,
But we’re chewing on it. We’re chewing on it.

Our Lying Mind

Is there any other kind?
Imperfect imitation
Requires facts and lies combined,

And mind without imperfect
Imitation can’t manage
Ratcheting innovation

Or an imagination.
Liars calling out liars
Is jujitsu for the mind,

Subtly throwing weight around
Getting just the right handhold
To take your opponent down.

It’s sport, it’s competition,
It’s healthy exercise.