Positioning System

Wherever writers have defied
And criticized authority,

Wherever writers have suffered
Imprisonment, execution,

Wherever unlettered locals
Know the names and quote the verses

Of ancient, defiant writers,
Of recent, defiant writers,

Wherever verse has a good name
In the streets and public houses

While being reviled by the state
As unpatriotic poison

Fomented by degenerates
And decadent agitators,

Wherever hymns to beauty hide
Parables and allegories,

You can stick a pin in your map
To mark the country of poets.

Parable of a Living Planet’s Fate

Earth is a table
Set for an angel,
A table that turns
And goes on turning.

Ha! Cries the angel,
Evening and morning,
What will you do now
The tables have turned?

The settings all cling
To where they were placed
To serve the angel
Who loves tables turned.

Every so often,
The angel grows bored.
Once, the angel seized
The tablecloth’s edge,

Then yanked the whole thing
In a white flourish
From under settings
Somehow still in place.

Ta-da! The angel
Cried out to deep space,
Arms full of linen
Forever displaced.

Meanings Never Wholly Tethered

Some people never were,

Nor felt, as one writer

Wrote in one poem, lovely,

And infinite, and young,

But what is infinite

Anyway? Tractable

In math but otherwise

An impossible word,

One of many like it.

Imagine a language,

A poetry at least,

Made only of those words

That have no tangible,

Experienceable

Referents. Wonderful

Such words exist at all—

Eternity, afterlife,

Divinity, nothing,

Soul. Lovely, infinite

Terminology, loose,

Unmoored from the senses,

Who first invented them?

How is it anyone

Can find meaning in them?

Some people never feel

The divine as a wind,

The infinite as pools

Of clear ink to swim in,

Youth as a quality

Of firmness, lost by them.