How Would You Rate Your Pain?

You know your body best, said the nurse,

And you knew he meant, You are the one

Who knows that body better than us,

But you felt as if the stress landed

Between your and best, as in, You know

Your body better than anything else—

Of what you know, you know your body

The best—and it felt like being told,

Of the vastness of the universe,

You’ve never gotten beyond your room,

The cell that is also the cellie

As well as you, prisoners inside,

The only body you’ll ever be,

But also just one in the sequence

Of ever-changing bodies you’ve been,

Which are also the sole animal

And the territory it’s explored,

And, if it’s all of that, this body

You pretend is in your possession,

How can you possibly know it best

Of all of that, silly solipsist?

What you’ve really known, really noticed,

Is how unlike most other bodies

Is this body with which you’re in league,

Somehow. That’s why it lands hard, the sense

Of being extremely limited,

With nothing but secondhand access

To the embodiments of the rest

Of the beings that can be questioned

And addressed, You know your body best.

In the Isolation of the Sky

Feral pigeons were made

By humans, reads the lede,

Reminding, good or bad,

No one resists hubris—

Humans, humans did this.

The planet is dying

Of humans—it isn’t.

The planet can be saved

By humans—no, it can’t.

Responsibility

Is social currency

Traded in exchanges

As detached from under-

Lying fundamentals

As any stock bubble.

Pop! What made the pigeons

Feral were accidents

Of pigeon-ness combined

With new environments,

Contingent accidents

Of humanness. Take charge,

Now, though belatedly,

Of how you want pigeons

To be, but keep in mind,

Beyond your intentions

Will rise consequences

As feral as pigeons,

Dusky, extended wings.

Not As Costumed, But As Costume

There are so many little worlds
That we could share with each other,
And it’s not that we don’t come close
When trading facts and anecdotes,

It’s just that we never get there,
Except in memoirs or onstage,
To where someone shares the whole years
They’ve lived as someone else hasn’t,

Like lifting an old uniform,
A winter coat, a wedding dress,
Solemnly, out of a cupboard
And handing it over, folded,

Here’s the whole thing, surprisingly
Heavy, isn’t it? I wore it.

False Front

Disintegration, quiet,
The appeal of the ghost town
May be that it matches you,
Your own traits softly echoed.

You can imagine yourself
As final, mute resident,
Maintaining a post office,
General store, and cafe.

You’re open if someone shows,
Closed when no one’s visiting.
Dozing behind the counter
You hear voices anyway,

Dream scraps of conversation
Keeping you from loneliness.
Every now and then, you snap
Out of a nap to notice

Your hands shaping empty air,
Something you’d been dreaming there.
You wish you could put it back
On the dustiest bare shelf.

Go Light

Another gauntlet for the body,
Another unpleasant assignment.
Take a moment to appreciate

Being bathed in sunlight in advance.
Would you be more content if you had
No memories to warn you what’s next,

Or would you be more likely to die
From the shock when the gauntlet began?
The sun cups you as if it held you,

As in a way it does. Close as you are,
It’s the planet that grasps you tightly,
But you know the sun clasps the planet,

So, you’re falling for the furnace, too.
Time to do what you can’t forgive you.

The Unlocked Drawer

Most secrets aren’t except due
To the accident of not
Being something repeated.

The majority lie there,
Untold, without injunction
Not to tell. They’re the good ones—

Or, they include the good ones,
The best, statistically,
Since they outnumber the kept—

So many things that to know
Might change the world, that are known
Like seeds in barren ground, like

Data in the collapsed dust
Of torched palace libraries,
Like small fields of expertise

In the minds of marginal
Brilliant thinkers, Mendel’s peas
For instance—The true occult

Sits behind the door ajar,
In the loose specimen drawer
Since no one’s ever looked there

Who could infer what they saw.
Those are the secrets deserve
The name, the unprotected.

The Sameless

The sun sculpts in dust,
Winged beings being
Coaxed out of sameness,
The secret of waves.

There is no sameness,
Truly, just enough
Similarity
That the infinite

Can be introduced
Through the countable—
The most worn-down flecks,
The most burnished lives,

They all look the same,
So that counting breaks
In the uplifted
Eyes of an angel

The sun carved of light.
No, it didn’t mean
To make the nameless
The impossible.