Green Burial Poem

Some people need scenery,
Some need anger to compose.

Some need thoughts to slop over
From someone else’s cauldron.

Some have memory slap them
Over and over again,

Until lines march out in rows.
Some only need a color—

Blue, or better, indigo.
Some sorely need to pretend

This whatever’s composing,
Once life starts to decompose.

So What Does This Evening Mean?

Night skies aren’t all that oculate.
The stars don’t look that much like eyes.
Still, you see them up there. You see
Eyes, spies, and faces everywhere,

A parallel capacity,
Parallel compulsion, really,
To your thing for bringing meaning
Then announcing that you found it

Wherever you’ve made or left it.
Maybe meaning is like seeing
Faces in faintly face-like things.
Pareidolia has a name,

And you find meaning in that name,
Not merely information, but
There is no name for the divide
That slides between information

And finding meaning in a thing.
Pareidolia is social,
Makes sense for a watching species
Packed with copycats and police.

Whatever could be eyes might be
Watching you. Whatever you do
While being watched could determine
The quality of life for you.

Is meaning something similar?
Meaning’s not over-sensitive
Detection. Eyes exist without
Any animal spotting them,

But each meaning’s pure creation.
When you find the stars meaningful,
You’re not mistaking what they are.
You’re taking advantage of them

The way spiders take advantage
Of architecture to anchor
Their webbing. Webs aren’t inherent
To bookshelves. Spiders create them.

Atmosphere of Being Disappointed

There’s a book you’ve never read,
An old-fashioned, printed brick
Of paper pulp milled from felled

Forests in some less bookish,
Boskier patch of the globe,
Waiting at the post office

For you to come pick it up.
You’ve never read the author.
Only a few days ago

You’d never known of that name,
Much less encountered the work.
You saw a picture somewhere

Of an achingly remote,
Starkly beautiful village,
And then another picture

Of a solemn wall of books
The caption identified
As being the library,

Painstakingly collected,
Of the village’s noted
Poet. You were so taken

With those photos’ atmospheres—
Stern bookshelves and stern village—
That you ordered the poet

By mail, without having read
A single poem—poetry
Unavailable except

In hardback, as you’d expect.
Now you don’t want to visit
The post office for the book.

You dread the disappointment
If a thousand poems don’t yield
Whole worlds of such atmospheres.

Grieving Isn’t Ironic

The visual arts have grown
More ironic as writers
Have avoided irony—

These things get booted around—
Irony, truth-to-power,
Beauty, honesty, romance,

L’art pour l’art—the arts take turns,
And what is revolution
But turning around again?

Plain folks want something pretty,
Something calming, uplifting,
Ennobling, of any art,

Something sympathetic or
Some adventurous escape.
Irony is for artists

And for those who like to talk
About art—and maybe those
Who enjoy solving puzzles.

Aha! I see how this works!
Hold still while I explain it.
Isn’t it ironic, then,

That although grieving isn’t
Ever, in its aching core
Of torn hollows, irony,

Irony itself’s a form
Of grieving, always has been?
An ironist is bereft,

Has been robbed of something loved—
Beauty, honesty, romance,
L’art pour l’art, revolution,

Sympathy, uplift, escape—
And can only compensate,
Ironically, in its place.

Varnishing Day

Combining the arguments
From design, strong anthropic
Principles, and multiverse

Fantasies might be some fun.
What a crowd of prime movers,
Omnipotent creators,

And control-freak deities
Building an infinity
Of precisely balanced worlds,

Each universe constructing
Enormous realities
To achieve the only way

Things could ever be arranged
To bring forth the existence
Of some minuscule creature

Determined to imagine
Outrageous scenarios
Like this one. All those artists,

Those unique cosmic designs,
Those infinite galleries,
Those patrons waiting in line.

To Be More Human

To sit in ambush, to lie in wait,
Simply to set down within someplace,
With the implication of hiding,

Since you’re not sitting atop a spot
But sitting in it—you’re suspicious,
And those who see you divide themselves

Between the ones who worry you’re lost
And the squint-eyed convinced you’re lurking,
You ant lion, you trap-door spider.

Now, how to say you’re neither of these,
Not innocent nor insidious,
Just someone in the quiet posture

Of sitting wayside, not to deceive,
Much less to lure, not lost, not even
Waiting? What in hell are you up to?

Tell them, when they trouble to ask you,
Approaching warily or brusquely,
That you’re merely impersonating

A wayside shrine for the forgotten
Spirits, a wayside memorial
For a tragedy yet to happen.

You sit in the middle of the world
And on the edge of the way’s traffic
To show how all middles are edges,

How how every margin is a center.
Or just tell them whatever you want,
Whatever words pop out of your mouth.

Look surprised. Hold up a book or phone
And wave it about as if to show
That you’re busy with some normal thing.

You know there’s no reason to be here,
But you also know that others feel
The need for there to be a reason,

Some humanly social intention,
To spy, to pounce, to wait for some help,
To meaningfully relate to them.

Relate nothing. Look flustered and laugh.
Don’t get dragged into explanations.
You don’t do this to be more human.