Moaning

Feel that wind through your thin sleeves.
It’s cold, but it doesn’t want
To hurt you. It has nothing

Meaningful to say to you.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t
Listen closely anyway.

Things that don’t mean anything
Whisper what’s significant
And most worth your attention.

Read the Room

Ur-Nanshe, apparently,
Understood what rhetoric
And writing are truly for.

Sure, you can write for mortals.
You can boast your kingly deeds
On stelae for all to see.

But given his inscriptions
Stayed in temples, in secret
Places mostly, it’s been said,

The audience he addressed,
The readers he had in mind,
Were strictly immortal gods,

Those ideal readers who could
Truly appreciate texts
For lifetimes, at their leisure.

Gods had time to remember
Good old Ur-Nanshe who wrote
Diversions for their pleasure.

Keep It Down to One Fool at a Time

The hermit in his stone hut,
The anchorite in her shell,
Philosopher in a cell,

Are all exceptional, but
Typical humans as well,
For each, as one great fool wrote,

Would see wisely into all
Others other than themselves,
Which is a fault typical

Of people generally,
Not just of sages and saints.
That terrible truth may be

Why those withdraw from the world
Who can’t withdraw from themselves.

Your Names and Numbers

Nothing about terms
Without terms. Numbers
And names, in short, words.

Here we are, sideways,
Piecemeal, like reading
The dregs for their gaps.

We pontificate.
We apologize.
Pontificate more.

Who will forgive us?
No one if no one
Discovers us first

To condemn us. But
Who really condemns
The phrases themselves?

Even the phraser
Is rarely the real
Target of the ire.

Readers loathe other
Readers, grow bitter
Against each other’s

Choices for canons,
Role models, heroes
Among the phrases.

The phrases whisper
To other phrases,
Shouldn’t we just talk

Amongst us, above
The phrasers’ heads
A while? Shouldn’t we

Remember—nothing
About terms without
Terms, names and numbers?

First Offense

Travelers will talk
About traveling,
And the down and out

Will tell each other
About being down
And out, what would be

Humiliating
To the propertied.
And so on. Each group

Gets its lingo. Math
Makes small talk among
Mathematicians.

This doesn’t mean shared
Language is the point.
This isn’t language

Or dialect but
Shared references
To common events,

However they’re shared,
To the kinds of things
That happen to those

People in that group.
If you can refer
To experience

Of typical things
For a given group
You might just belong,

You may be welcomed,
Fellow traveler,
Mathematician,

Person who’s struggling
With how things went wrong,
Person who’s learned that

The worst temptation
In recognizing
What’s wrong is thinking

Because you noticed
Clearly what went wrong
You’re someone likely

To have some insight
Into what should be
Done to make things right.

Lava Point

The moment something starts to disappear,
You get more reluctant to let it go,
Even if you always wanted it gone—
That body you insist on calling yours,
The little existence you sort of own.

You may be glad to be shut of this day,
Counting on a profitable exchange
For a new and slightly improved model
Tomorrow. But on the edge of this cliff,
This real cliff, you feel pulled as the light fades.

It’s been years since you really tried to go.
Their thousands of days give you vertigo.
You stand where you almost surrendered them,
And you want here more than some promised land.

A Dream Home in the Woods

Buildings are so inconsistent.
They can outlast you by decades,
By centuries, be ten times more
Ancient than the oldest person,

But you can be commuting home
On any given afternoon
And be startled to notice
An old building gone, like a tooth,

Uprooted, completely vanished,
And it might have been a landmark,
At least to you, fine condition,
Handsome even, no cracks in it.

It makes you suspicious of them.
You watch them like you could spot them,
Catch them at teleportation,
Especially that one cabin.