Where the Quanta Go to Die

All alive are unjustly
Alive. Life is the black hole
Of hunger and intention,

And like the ordinary
Black holes swallowing up light,
Electromagnetic waves

Of all varieties, life
Sort of shines on the inside.
Every molecule involved

Within a living being,
So long as it’s part of it,
Has discovered something weird,

Participates in hunger,
Contributes to consumption,
Waste, growth, and propagation,

Things it never did before,
Things it had no mind to do,
No, nor metabolism.

Inside of life, no outside
Lives. Life wraps life’s world inside.
One imagines the outside

Of life, moseying along,
Not intending anything,
Not wanting for anything,

Getting sucked in, like wavelengths
Through the event horizon,
As if their previous paths

And patterns ceased to exist,
And since what’s outside’s not life,
Life’s trapped captives can’t be missed.

The Dismal Ease

Every believer is blessed

And will be further blessed if

You can win more believers.

Every believer won heals

That believer, increasing

The blessings upon the one

Who won them to true belief.

And so on. Multilevel,

The tip of the pyramid

The shining, all-seeing Eye.

You need only to believe.

If you sincerely believe,

You will be able to win

Other lost souls to belief,

Healing them. Pay it forward.

Each one, win one. Then a few.

Your blessings will overflow.

You must labor in the fields

To bring in the whole harvest.

Quickly, before the night falls.

See the gloaming gathering?

Feel the rays of the Great Eye.

Gather believers, gather.

Succumb not to dismal ease.

Win the lost ones to belief.

The pyramid heals all griefs,

And blessings will never cease.

Watched Compost Never Blossoms

Prediction has never been
Anything but memory,
Nothing else it could have been.

The future really exists
Only as the composted
Kitchen midden of your past.

Whatever you imagine,
You’re rearranging dug-up
Scraps. Garden could grow from that,

But the garden’s not the scraps,
Not until it’s harvested,
Converted into more past,

Fresh memories you bury
In the midden with your trash.

You Can’t Leave It Behind, Either

Some of what you remember
Still has some correspondence
With what remains in the world.

Even in the moment, you
Are never more than guessing
And modeling what’s out there,

And most of the modeling
Going on within your skull
Isn’t really done by you.

You’re vaguely in attendance,
Along for the ride, the view.
But some of it corresponds

To phenomena beyond
Any boundary of you,
While some of what’s still in you

Matches nothing anymore,
Not even a little bit—
Models you’ll take to your death,

Gone buildings that you lived in,
Faces that you thought you knew.
No matter how you archive

Such shreds of your existence,
Your reality that was
Truly false was only you.

Another One

Protostar in a dark cloud,
Appropriate analogue,
Apparently, for the sun

When young, so young it hadn’t
Begun to burn, younger than
Humans now, hourglass figure

Of dust collapsing over
In a galactic corner,
Just one more thing happening,

Likely an ordinary star
For the next four billion years
Or more, some planets maybe,

One unlikely one with life
Perplexed by the lights at night.

The Universe Is a Small Life Looking Out

Empty cans of Liquid Death
Decorate a shelf with skulls.
The night spider on the floor

Cautiously patrols its world.
Dusty lamp-lit box of room,
You’re a cosmos to yourself,

And so is everything else.
Continuous, intrinsic
Brilliance in variety,

The universe carves details,
Horror vacui, cornered
In every atomic world.

It’s all emptiness, all full.
Spider reached the windowsill.

Mini Manifesto Upharsin

It could be just a question
Of what interests you more.
Well, that’s kind of obvious.

If you care about what’s wrong
Or like to know how things work,
Or what exactly happened,

Or you have something to tell
The world about your childhood,
Your children, your neighborhood,

Or you’re fighting for justice,
Or determined to get laid,
You’re fairly motivated

To write in those directions.
But it’s just so maddening
Others lust for other things.

They’re stupid. They’re not artists.
They must be hiding their true,
Insidious agendas.

How ‘bout you? Hiding something
Every time you choose to write
On something else? Some other

Ways you distract us? Evil
Nonsense supporting evil,
You are not righteous, like us.