Wood Oil Coal

Maybe they’ll all run out.
Maybe more will be found.
Maybe you’ll find out how

Much warmth and misery,
Success and cruelty,
Hard deaths and victories,

You’ll have left without them.
Maybe there’ll be no end
To burning the carbon—

A diminution, just
Enough to not burn up
All to ashes and dust.

Camping in what remains
Of woods after the flames,
Your solar lantern placed

On a stone in the sun,
Watch molded lithium
Begin another chron.

Cavitation

In old days, bubbles and froth
Did a lot of work serving
As theological and

Logical analogies—
Life, the soul, aspirations,
The world—all seen as bubbles

And froth. And you can see why,
Staring into your coffee
Or drawing your bath, sitting

Next to any frothing stream.
It’s not just evanescence,
Though there’s that. There’s so many

Of them, all those small bubbles,
Myriad, jostling, each one
Precise and particular,

With its own circumstances,
Its void filled with vapor, gone.
It’s this multiplicity,

Arising and vanishing.
How could you fix the meanings
Of each of so many spheres?

Along Came the Wind

You could sample the ends

Of every recorded

Classical symphony,

The concertos too, plus

Quite a bit of chamber

Music, even, and get

Yourself a collection,

A great, long line of thumps,

All those times composers

Tried to end things, trying

Their best to bang, pause, bang

The peroration chords.

Title your piece, The Ends.

Wind blows them in again.

Play Attention

A month of Sundays,
A year of that month,
A decade of years

Made in that gapped way,
And if you could skip
Ahead you could live

Centuries missing
Most of what you’d lived.
You’re a reader, or

You wouldn’t be here,
So you know sometimes
You sneak peeks, you skip.

Is the book better,
In retrospect, skimmed?

Money God Equality

Systems based on shared faith
In something that does not,
Except as faith, exist

Persist. Prosocial
Coordination needs
A stable focal point,

And there isn’t any
More stable focal point
Than the null, zero, one

That does not exist. Change
Only invades the disk
Of dust that circles it.

The sturdiest systems
Spin pinned on emptiness.

Think Again

Recurring patterns tempt lives
To imagine a complete
Return. The constellations

Come the closest, the seasons
Raggedly regular, days
Always new days but followed

Reliably by the nights.
So much recognizable
In a given moment, why

Couldn’t it be possible
Some things are identical
Some moments exactly same?

Then what’s gone might not be gone,
Exact souls might rotate back.

Questionable Behavior

Solitary as Embrandiri,

Subsisting only on solitude,

Comprehending solitude does hold

A means of subsistence, would be good.

The suffering to get there is great

And not good, and along the way risks

Death without having achieved success

At proper solitude, but it’s worth it,

Isn’t it? Other roads aren’t easy,

Either, and by the time you get there,

You’ve lost any choice about the means.

To be as still as possible now,

Like someone practicing their fasting,

Retreating from people by degrees,

Feels good. But then, some fictional punks

Might show up with their satirical

Anti-religion, seeking blessing

From the recluse—or any manner

Of helpful people might find a way

To get involved, or the state might just

Drag you off to park you in a crowd

To perish with proper surveillance

And a file, accountably worthless.

Even as you drift off thinking this,

Someone raps on your window, Buddy,

You okay there? Just checking on you.

And as always, you’re grateful and scared.