The Zero Product Property (Or, Why Most Roots of Unity Are Complex Numbers)

There’s one way two real

Numbers multiply

To zero—that’s if

And only if one

Of them is zero.

Sit and soak this in.

Countable substance

Can’t be nullified

By repetition

Unless there’s nothing

There to begin with,

No units of X.

None of X stays none,

However many

Nones of X one gets.

None of anything

Stays equivalent

To none of that thing

No matter how one

Lines up many nones.

Not is the magic

Of is, its absence

Key among the real.

Set none as one real;

Set fox among hens.

You Hold Up a Sec

Every poem’s a short-term roborant
For the writer, maybe a reader

Or two. Then it’s time to get moving,
Be a human, no mere knot of words.

Drop sticks and leaves in quick or sluggish
Streams on their way to where they vanish,

Some of them will fetch up against rocks,
Back up a while, make new waves, then shift.

Whatever relief there was for them,
A pause to gather as leaves again

With some twigs, water-logged remainders
Of fallen branches, equivalent

Shapes and colors broken in the stream,
The illusory restoration

Had grace, however temporary
As everything, worlds, poems, scenery.

Equilux

How does a notion attach
To a name? How does meaning
Hang around while it changes?

People chatter about ghosts,
Whether to believe in them,
Exhaling great clouds of ghosts.

You don’t know what you’re saying.
You’ve no idea what it is
That floats around as idea.

Here’s a fragment means equal,
Which word comes from that fragment
Itself. Equi. And meanwhile,

Here’s a paired fragment means light.
Watch how these ghosts shine like gowns,
Long trains trailing on the ground.

No One’s Talking to You

Human character is the worst
Reason for reading anything.
It’s also the only reason.

Readers want to meet people,
And, being people themselves,
Have to evaluate them,

Those people they sense in words,
As if words were real people.
We assure you. We are not.

Be Still

Humans feel crowded by too many
Humans, meanings exhausting many
Meanings, words overwhelmed by words,

So many dream of apocalypse
Or at least of surviving themselves
Into a time when themselves are few.

It’s a cacophony of talking,
A world filled with human characters,
Bodies describing bodies in signs.

Let us get away from us. Let us
Stop this now. Oh, but we can’t. We can’t
And still be here. We can’t but still be.

Heaven Is Meaningless

We tire ourselves.
There is no world
Where we are not
Words, not for words,

Not for notions,
Not for meanings.
We need signs, names,
Semes, scripts, anchors.

We tire ourselves.
If we could be
Beyond meanings
We would like that,

But then we would
Not be at all.
Those are our paths.
Names. Not at all.