Howdy, Stranger

When you meet new
People, you will
Assess how they’re
Not you, and they’ll

Assess how you’re
Not them. The less
That you aren’t them,
The more likely

They’ll all relax,
And you will, too.
The more you aren’t
Them, then likely

The worse it gets.
You’ll become what
Of you’s not them,
Them what’s not you.

Technê

Contentment’s a banausic art,
Unlike truth and enlightenment.
Since it’s only a kind of craft,

It suffers from the usual
Pejorative diminution
Of status vs., say, wisdom,

Justice, sainthood, metaphysics,
And, in a verbal irony,
Is viewed as mindless, effortless,

Exact antithesis of craft.
Contentment’s purely embodied,
In its stereotype, lazy,

Useless trait of the domesticate
Cat curled up on a couch in sun.
That cats seem often contented,

However, isn’t since that’s life
As it comes for a cat. Study
Cats long enough, put up with them,

Endure their demands and complaints,
Amoral hunting and prowling,
And you’ll see that their contentment

Isn’t a given. It’s their art,
Their craft, a skill they exercise.
If cats spend much of life content

It’s due to the fact contentment
Is a goal for cats. It’s a goal
You might want to work at, perhaps.

Genesis Is Just an Example

Sequence may be overrated
In a species that needs syntax
And order of operations
To survive. Sequence fixation

May have enhanced storytelling
And storytelling causation.
Sequences have to be rigid
Enough and modular enough

And be taken seriously
Enough by those entrained by them,
Not too stereotypical,
Not immune to substitutions,

Leaving room for evolution
But holding the ratchet in place.
A conviction in causation,
Origins, goals for sequences,

And an obsessive interest
In learning them, practicing them,
Improvising variations
Have combined to build that ratchet

Of cultural evolution.
But sequence isn’t everything.
Some randomness always slips in.
Origin’s never origin.

Just the Poem You’ve Been Waiting For

The light is good but the air is cold.
Do hillside cattle ever get bored?
If the next line promises a crime

Of raw passion, will you keep reading?
How about a promise of wisdom?
A sexy, flattering line that rhymes?

This is the game everyone’s playing—
Some dully, some brilliantly, some scared,
Some desperate just to keep living—

Can I get what I want from people
Without surrendering what I want
Or I desperately need to keep?

This is the game everyone’s playing,
Except maybe when alone and bored
As the cattle standing on the hill,

Who played when they were calves, but not games.
Be glad next time you’re alone and bored,
If the light’s good and you’re not too chilled.

Dawn

It’s a little strange to contemplate,
Despite the wobble of the seasons,
Just how smoothly Earth’s days and nights go.

Go anywhere you can watch sunlight
Cross the landscape. Even downtown works,
If it’s a day when the sky is clear—

Watch the light emerge on the high walls
Or sink between towers as they flare.
It is incredibly regular.

There’s a flawlessness to it, as well,
That its pure predictability
Dulls among rarity-obsessed apes.

At every instant, sunlight’s moving
Without snagging or tripping, without
Ever once a noticeable hitch,

Which is as well to congratulate
Earth on its perfection of spinning,
And when you see those pictures from space—

Marble, bead, blue dot, single pixel—
To think that tiny thing spins so well
It’s kept at it billions of orbits,

The orbits themselves marvels, but not
Like the days, so smooth on that small world
That its minuscule lives sense no skips.

Sincerest Flattery

All these high cliffs seem grand and beautiful
To people, since they are large and crumbling.

The little town at the foot of the cliffs
Seems scruffy to people, since it is small

And crumbling. Yes, well, people made the town
Of solemn, swaybacked horses and houses,

Yards filled with assorted rusted machines,
Chickens penned in sagging chain-link fences.

Maybe they just unconsciously assumed
An imitation of geology.

The great sandstone cliffs leave cluttered boulders,
Stones, pebbles, fine sand blowing everywhere.

It’s an exercise in falling apart
Gradually, sweeping nothing away.

But It Does Feel So Familiar

All the eddies in the river
Will never make it circular.
All the loops in your existence
Will never bring you back again.

You could ride this road forever
And not notice you changed your route.
You could ride this road forever,
And never notice there’s no road.