Dream of Giving Good Advice

Distract off from your selfness.
Read everything less than once.
See a book on the subway

Hanging open, watching you.
There’s no language on the page.
Keep an unsettling amount

Of your mind open to what
Might have been there, might get there.
Puzzle your way out of it.

Leave no trace of writing.
Move directly into sleep.
Write then, not when you wake up.

Gone off Trail

The coyotes in the junipers
Don’t seem disturbed. They’re still quavering
For whatever urge motivates them.

The mesa is getting cold. Sun’s low.
These are the passing facts, no longer
Facts by the time lines will reappear.

Old boots squelch in the half-frozen mud.
Nothing subtle to booted humans.
The coyotes in the junipers

Don’t seem disturbed. What are behaviors?
Well, whatever people say they are.
Studying behavior’s quavering

For bipeds. Discussing behaviors,
For sure. Incredibly important.

Less Than One

The prettiest part of the butterfly
Of choice is that it isn’t. Isn’t what?
Well, choice, for one thing. Also butterfly.

Also pretty. Also an infinite,
Cyclone-creating vortex of chaos
Made of endless isn’t. Simply isn’t.

Inequality Is Longing, Not Content

Everywhere there’s a surplus,
Lovely excess of supplies,
More than good enough for all,

Isn’t there always someone,
Seems like, gathering henchmen
To corner and guard the pile?

To accrue resources and
Wield them for coercive ends
Does tend to fit the pattern

Of human motivation.
Is it inevitable?
Do we have to condone it?

You, too, stare at chocolate,
Child. I want it. I want it.

Beastly

To rise to descend
To ride to explore

To wander to draw
And to contemplate

To sound to utter
To link to utter

To behold to know
To ford or to know

To see or to know
Anonymously

Nothing’s Weird if You’re Counting On It

Well-adapted creature that you are,
Even if you doubt it, you don’t give
Your world enough credit for strangeness,

For its estrangements every moment
From itself. It’s weird how you get bored
With the weirdness of transforming stuff.

Day’s another universe than night,
Other rules of existence. Seasons
Shift cosmos to cosmos, each its own,

And no two years can manage any
Of these alternations exactly
The same, but to you none of it’s strange,

Not often, not often enough, except
When it’s strange that you didn’t expect.

Crossing the Cut

It seems fairly minor, since
You’re used to the progression.
It’s just season to season,

And the worst that could happen
Is that it wouldn’t happen.
Ten weeks into autumn and

Winter is coming again,
A change just common sense,
Except it isn’t. Ten weeks

Since, you left another world
With lengthy sunshine, long swims,
Green shadows. Now a dark rain

Turns snow against your windows.
Latin for edge was limbo.