How to Become All Attention

You hold still, arms crossed,
In the simple hold
Earned by listening.

Whoever listens
Attentively earns
Nothing in the way

Of wealth or wisdom,
But there’s a pattern
Worth the attention

Of the listener
Who’s vaporizing
Into attention.

For the connoisseur,
The finest voices
Aren’t the podcasters

Or the broadcasters,
Haunting as they are
Falling from the dark

Of rural highways,
Driving, windows down
In the right weather—

A soft night, few lights,
Shadows of black cliffs
Or scents of spring blooms.

The finest voices
Are family members—
Children, spouses—

Or the murmuring
Of old, haunted friends.
Just sit in the dark

And listen, listen
As attentively
As you can to speech,

To cadences most
Of all, forever
Asking yourself, what

Am I doing here,
What is my value?
Paying attention.

Disintegrating Figure

You intend fire and ash,
But dirt’s been on your mind.
Arrangements have been made

For cremation, but dreams
Have been circling the grave.
Makes sense if you divide

Your afterlife between
What happens to the flesh
And to the words you’ve left.

Divide it as body
And soul, if you prefer,
And that also makes sense,

Up to a certain point—
Reversing the graveyard
Arrangement of bodies

As rot in soil and soul
As vapors dispersing,
Leaving body as text

And counting the soul as Earth’s
Pure disintegration.
Up to a certain point,

The analogy works,
The best you can ever
Say of figured language.

There’s no questioning—dirt,
For whatever reasons,
Keeps making itself part

Of such analogies,
Good or bad, that grab you.
Think of writing a poem,

This poem, any poem, lines
Of poetic language
You’d like to accomplish,

And you think of treasure,
Of a hoard in the soil,
Lightless below the phase

Transition to bright air.
You think of the hidden,
Sweet-smelling acreage

Under the roots, the roots
That shelter the treasure,
The poem that waits, date-stamped,

Dug to be discovered,
Passages made to be
Found as though always there

In place of passages
Always there, made to be
Seen as discovery.

Just Now As It Started Snowing

It’s not a strength you ought to have
Been given, not a strength you ought
To own—to be able to shift

The scenery, alter mundane,
Local weather, to break the rules,
To make it snow. Darling, physics

Is just to the real world what rules,
Basic instruction manuals,
Are to things like sports and courtrooms.

It’s not that they can’t be broken—
Breaking them creates different games.
Mess with physics, change your cosmos.

It’s not a strength you ought to have,
And until just now no one did.

Bad Faith

Your email asked,

Why did you choose

To walk away

From your faith in

God? And a whole

Theology

Rose in my mind—

To choose, to have

A choice to make.

There’s a kernel

In that question

As posited—

An assumption

That faith is good.

Faith is not good.

Faith is wicked,

And that is why

I walked away.

A Note

Two creatures pawing at a pill
That had dropped to the kitchen floor,
Then at a dried flower on a shelf.

Boredom’s a great motivator
For the brainier animals—
It’s not true curiosity.

These beasts don’t really want to know
What they don’t know, much as they want
Something to preoccupy them,

Staring at an apparently
Motionless, cluttered stretch of shelves.
It’s just a bit shocking to spot,

As one of the more murderous
Cooperators, a human,
Other monsters also get bored

And don’t know what to do with it,
Haven’t yet learned to worship it,
Either (few if any humans

Really have, anyway). Without
Boredom, what’s intelligence but
Residue of second-hand minds?

And there he slumped, top of the pile,
No idea left what he should do,
Or should have done, save leave a note.

Alligators Aren’t All Alligator Skins

What is it other people want
That is nothing wanted by you,
Waiting for your tribe to come to

Its senses? What is it you watch
Come crawling through swamps of events
Like a monster in a novel

Focused on moist biohorrors
That only you seem to notice
As such, while people around you

Still see a contest for something
Desirable to them, something
They think’s desirable to you?

You see hazard. They see rewards.
That’s what a monster shows when bored.

Moving the Furniture

Thoughts get in the way
Of each other, each
Day—it’s not just room

For the processing
Space of synapses,
Whatever model

You prefer for room.
It’s that thought
Negotiates thoughts

For other virtues
Besides compactness.
There’s weirdness factor,

There’s thought’s novelty,
The way thoughts connect.
Better you’re ready

Later, with streamlined
Thinking, than now,
Thoughts caught in the way

Half the time, unclear
Up there, in the ways
Of clear thoughts at all.