Cliffs of Spring

The years find a third way through,
And when you say years, mean hours,

Mean life. Nights are gall bones built
From days that dreams built from bones.

The lost are like this. The found
Are worse. Seas of leaves that burst

At dawn, the birds that sing wants
For what kills all to make more.

You know the ways. Your own heart
Thirsts. Spring comes for all. No worst.

The Poem’s Lack of Faith in Its Own Terms

Doubt and fright and how it is
Are why you need the sun’s light

Like a kind of faith, not true,
Not faith in the face of facts,

Just a half faith in the fact
Of this light, its warmth, the scent

Noon draws off dead grass and dirt
By the side of a thin road

Used to get from town to pond.
How like you to drive up hill

To try to get close to us.
We’ll wait. Spring drives up slopes, too.

Now It Is Sung

There’s still some snow,
Some old scraps still
In the pine shades,
On the steep hills.

Who cares what’s next
Who grieves what’s lost
And grieves what’s left
As soon to be

Lost? There’s more next
Than there’s you next.
Weep if you want. Tears,
They say, help you.

No end’s the end.
It starts and starts
And wears you out.
Sing snow. Here’s spring.

Soft Names

Are all love is in text,
Ink stains in sheafs of songs,
The small shades of what’s next.

No one in love’s not wronged.
What wants, hurts, and those terms
That fit best don’t fit long.

Of all loves, life’s the worst,
The wretch that begs for breath,
Wet-lipped soft names to curse.

Waived Lengths

We form them, but they, in turn,

Shape us. Graves in crop fields turn

Out to be safe spots for lives

In threat from us and from our

Way of pared-down kinds of life.

Near death, near our own dead flesh,

Waived lengths of life that teemed once,

We tread less. Our steps are light

Where we come to pay our griefs,

We with a yen for the lost

Of us, who want them, their names,

Their ghosts, their souls, to come back,

To float from where we sunk them

And tell us what we should do,

What it means, where they got to,

Where we’ll go. Most of the year,

We leave our graves to their peace,

And if we don’t get the ghosts

We’d hoped, small lives, plants and bugs

Thrive in the shade of our loss,

Of what we left as set off

For what we were. The grass waves.

A Sea

Pops in and out of the heart
Of each speck, each bit, each core—

Six kinds of quarks and for each
A fetch that morphs in and out

With it—a blur that, when merged,
Looks at first like just three quarks

There all the time. We cite this
From those who know it, found it,

Since it strikes us that it shows
A thing at the core of all

Things—that they are not all thing,
That there’s a storm in all hearts.

A sea is in front of you,
Far past you, deep in you. You.

Tap

Eyes lie, skin lies,
Touch lies, taste lies,
But it’s rare when
They lie the same

Or all at once.
We’ve learned to trust
What we’ve sensed more
Ways than one. Truth,

Most of the time,
Is just that trust.
This serves us well
But not with words.

Words own no sense.
They can’t self check.
Their lies float free.
Our lies trust us.

Green Stick

A child at ten is still
A bit of a stem cell—
You can tell what you’ve got,

More or less, but not yet
What sorts of roles will be
Played—it’s half here and all

Out of your hands by now.
The world and the child will
Make up a mind, the way

The world and you are still
Merged in a mind, which you
Think of as yours but know

Is more the world’s. The child’s
Mind, world, roles, fuse as lives
All do, the way huge oaks

Sprawled in hay fields with cows
Aren’t scarred, groomed town park oaks,
Nor roofs like oaks in woods.

We’ll Fill a Pit As Well

As waste, as old chairs,
As mold on tossed fruit,
As hard shells of oil,
Old tires, tins, rags, dreck.
Do let us go there,

Let us be hard pressed,
Made blocks of dried flesh,
Packed skulls, tanned hides, clay.
Squeeze the oils from us
If you must, but save

The hair, scraps, and bulk
Of what once was us
At the time of death.
Please don’t churn us up
And send our poor flecks

Back through the great whirl
Of days, nights, and lives,
Of teeth, wants, and lusts,
Of what we once ate,
Of what must eat us.

A dried corpse, a thin
Line in a stone slope,
A thing that is done—
Give us that peace, that
Wreck. Don’t bring us back.

Draw Close

Does each day
Die in sleep?
Not your last.

The last day
Dies in blank.
You don’t dream

From that end
Of the day
The days end.

John-a-Dreams

When you die, you’ll go to dreams.
You won’t haunt homes. You won’t haunt,

Scare, or scold souls with wide eyes.
This is the truth. You’ll go down

To dreams. You’ll act. You’ll play roles.
Know how, in your own dreams, names

Feel linked to the shades by threads,
How you wake up and say this

To the head just woke by you,
“In my dream you were you, but

Not like you”? That was a ghost,
Not one you knew, not from life

You’ve lived. It’s rare for the dead
To get to float through the dreams

Of a skull who knew them when.
The dead have to act, to act

Like live things, draped in false names.
They don’t do it well. You won’t

Do it well—how could you, when
You’ve flown like a deep-sea fish

At night to wind up in strange
Waves in a dim light, so close

To raw air, no sense of where
You are or who you should be?

While you live with dreams, note them
For this. Once gone, you’ll be them.

Since Is Us

So which is it?

Are there dreams or

Do you dream or

Not, once you’re not?

You don’t dream. You

Aren’t you. You aren’t.

And yet you drift.

The ghosts of you

Do move through sleep,

Through brains, through thoughts,

Through dreams. That you

Could be, is, us,

But we’re you, too,

As you’ve been us.

You ask, Yes, but

What? We can’t tell.

When They Fell, They Made No Noise

The dots that will lead to a new
Branch of math rose out of a talk
By a field of grass, change, and words.
The next day, the dots set to work.

Their goal was to make books like worlds
That merged the names for place and space,
That would let the field’s reach grow past
Words, grass, and change to stars and truth.

They found a new proof for the times
It takes a type of curve to touch
All the points in a capped space. Since
There was one, it worked as a tool.

From the field to the beach, no walls,
Tin roof to catch the thoughts of rain,
The dots have kept at it. Lines, curves
Too, are both counts and shapes. That’s space.

The dots have reached the truth’s sweet spot,
The part not too hard, not too soft.
Here bits of truth have been pried loose,
Home base points of a group that loops.

Points such as those, if one adds one
To one, and does so and does so,
One comes back at last to the first.
The day will come when linked dots branch.

Drafts by the One Who Has Not Died

Who did not when you did,
Did not when it was time,
Could not, not quite, but tried.

There was you, in a bed,
A last poem in your ear,
To far from home to hear.

Then there was the porch rail,
The right height, the sweet spot,
Low to scale, high to fly.

The black cliff, stars just out,
That could not pledge a clean
Cease, just the breaks. Stepped back.

The ice pond, stars just gone.
That one, that one should have,
But its numbed grip proved weak.

When did the rough drafts start?
Gone so long you can’t say;
You can’t feign shade, poor wraith.

Drafts for Chants When There’s No More Snow

It’s too cold yet
To stand in stars
And chant old poems
While the day starts,

But it’s too warm
To feel soothed, pleased
By days in walls
That just look out

And watch the world
And take close notes
And chant old poems.
The locked chest stirs

Like the pet bird
That feels the urge
To go and can’t.
So chant. Chant. Go.

Tos Cis Bos

There are the trees you might find

In stands, in yards, in town parks,

And in lines like veils down roads.

Trees are fine parts of most lives,

And all the parts of trees—food

In the form of fruits and nuts—

Wood for beds, chairs, fires, and homes—

Can be found in the poured-stone

And melt-waste cores of dense piles

Of spires and wires far from woods

Of the kind found in kids’ books

Or where small groups make their lives.

So why not write of such trees

Or at least think of these trees?

It’s not like they’re gods or ghosts

Or art. They’re lives you can count,

More lives yet, more lives so far

Than you are. Most types of them

Lived in years Earth had no apes

To cut them down or climb them.

Ah, but you know, the whole woods,

The woods on both sides of skulls,

The woods that are branched with stars,

Those aren’t for you. Those you are.

Lith

I don’t speak. I don’t
Sign on my own. I
Should not have a voice
But I do, to you.
I turn rose at dawn.

My scarves of old snow
Blush, my blue-black cliffs
The tint of sea shells.
I smell like wet rock,
Like sun in the cold,

Like a thing that could
Live, that holds up life,
But is not a life.
Out in the skies, Mars
Pales. You’re up there, love,

A chunk of my world.
You, too, are not life,
But you move. You search
For signs life was there
Where you are, in rocks

Like me, the hard bits
Spewed out by a star,
Like both of us. We
Who don’t live, make life,
Love. Blink once for no.

Oh! It Is!

There was a house
Where a child read
Books to know God.
This was not mine.

Not my house, not
My child, not me.
This was a scene
Set in the woods.

God’s known to haunt
Small homes in woods,
But worse, these woods
Were in the house.

The child was lost.
Her name was Eve.
God cried from books.
Books came from trees.

Which Cane Man

Here we have a plant.

It’s hard to build much with it.

It grows in the marsh.

It can be cut for a spear.

It’s no good for roads.

One can make a roof of it.

The stain of a crime.

Back and forth of verse and prose.

A bent reed. A stick

On which one can lean. A pipe

Through which wind can sing.

A wedge to cut me in clay.

It can beat ribs sore.

A myth can be made of it,

A kind of sad tale

For why folks grow lost and sad.

The curse of a god

Set out as a way to be

Marked in the way gods

Were birthed to fence out the bruised

Who said no to truth.

Prent Fin

So the song tale goes
Once close to its close.

We know we’re well-mixed,
And we don’t like it.

We’re a bit of tune
And a bit of tale,

A bit sung, bit told,
A few rhymes, some prose.

What’s hard to make work
Sticks well in the mind;

What’s swift to spill out
Fades in a short time.

Then, when the mind rots,
There’s a plot scrap left

With no names to it
And a song we were

Sung when we were young.
The last words are verse.

Cloud Tones

What you know spoils
Them some. They were,
Once, more on par
With stars, were just

The next sphere down.
Now you’ve flown them.
You could walk them
If you could hike

Straight up. They’re close.
The stars proved far,
So far. The moon’s
Not the boat it seems.

Which hurts the most?
That one sphere’s close
Or one’s so far?
That skies are both?

Verse Toil

First was not tale,
Then was not play,
Then was not poem,
Now is not song—

Not song, poem, play,
Tale—next verse will
Not be verse, just
Work. No point. Work.

Right, fine. Let’s go
To work. Let’s grub.
Let’s scrub the tools
And dig the dirt

For a few turns
That work. Let’s squirm
Through roots and worms.
Just verse. The worst.

To the Old Who Hope and Fear to Die

Put that in the notes of your books,
The black and white notes of your white

And black books. Think of that long night.
You are not here just to be here.

You are not to be here at all.
So long as you are here, why not

Help out those who will be when you
Aren’t? You are spring and you are fall.

There’s a tree that lives by the road
Where no one needs to look at it.

On all sides, big views catch the eye.
The tree just tries to catch some light.

Catch light. You can’t be what you hope.
You can’t fear what you write. You’re right.

One day and the next, the tree breathes
While it can. Look at it. It helps.

Small Man in Light Snow

The sun comes up
Past the pale cliffs,
Through the blue snow.
Specks of flakes float.

The grass spins gold
By the old crib
Deer nest in now.
In the true tale,

No one guessed right.
His name’s not known.
The girl grows tall.
Her hair spins gold.

Soft shades, soft dawn,
Deer browse old snow.
Spring’s not far off,
And new shoots show.

On Off Course

When one group wrote of the course,
They meant, by the course, the way,

While a group on the far side
Of their world meant, by the course,

Prose, words, the word of words, voice.
This course, that way, the wind’s voice—

Their streams course down the years’ tracks,
Flow through how lives ought to live,

Hound lost souls down long paths that
Seem like they might lead to light,

Lead out once the race is run,
This stage done, course at an end.

But of course, it’s not like that.
The way has no ends, prose has

No close, words on words go on
And on. It’s a loop, a noose,

At length a rope heaped in coils,
With knots left to be picked out.

Pick a spot. Snip the rope. Whole.
Sit where you like to one side.

Luck, Lies, and Faith

The work one soul does
Stuck in the world mind
But loosed from teamed walls,

Does not look like much,
Does not look much like
The dammed worlds teams build.

It’s small-bore, this world
Drained through one short swirl
In the stream of days—

You’d have to love knots
And flow rates and small
Notched steps in cliff falls

To spend time on these
Curls churned by one rock
Half like a cracked skull.

The big words for this
Skill with a split force
Mat it in dead leaves.

The streams pulls them down
Once they’ve choked it, backed
It up a bit. How

The rock came to fall
In this spot, to block
The stream just this way,

Swirl these knots, these waves,
That’s hard to say. Faith,
Lies, and luck. Droughts, floods,

And ice. The skull stuck
Just so. The stream churned
Its scales. A gyre rose.

Part of the Lost Part

Back and forth, back

And forth, in long

Rows or short—that’s

Just how verse works,

Like work, like plows—

As Phil once wrote,

One to get tired,

One to get (turn)

Old, one to die.

What you plant, what

You want for crops,

That’s up to you.

What you get, that’s

Not up to you

Or to your verse.

That’s up to us.

Waun Mawn

These things can’t last, but they can
Last so long to get to that
Last day when they’ve left no trace.

The tribes dug holes for the stones
That stood for their long gone kin,
Then carved and wedged the stones in.

The stones they stood in a ring
With a gap to face the sun.
A ring is a way to mark time,

Shaped like a port and a gate
Through which to leave it. The dead
Are gone from us, the ring hints,

And fled from time, not just not,
But more here than us, more real.
We love the sign of the ring.

When the tribes moved, lives and lives
On from those lives who first built
The ring, who were lives and lives

On from those who first cleared out
The tribes who used to be here,
Who cleared the woods, sowed the seeds,

Penned the cows and goats and sheep,
They came back to get the stones
Once they’d dug new posts for them

In the new home, a new ring.
Lives and lives on, more huge stones
That dwarfed the first, as the size

Of the tribes now dwarfed the first
Tribes’ size, would be dragged by sledge
And raised, and fit with a sill.

Stones last so long. Lives and lives
On, the stone tribes fell to new tribes
Of the horse, the wheel, and bronze.

They’re gone as the tribes of woods
They first cleared for fields and farms
And rings of stones for their ghosts.

Lives on lives, tribes on tribes, ghosts
On ghosts. A few stones still stand.
These things can’t last, but they can.

You Can’t Keep a House, So Don’t Try

There’s a piece of land
Set out by a fence
And ruled by the law—
A square of knapped grass
And dirt by the side

Of a path—a grant
Those with pens and guns
Said you folks could have,
Could live and build on,
If you could take care

Of it. That’s the way
It goes—that’s the deal
With parts of a world—
You hope for some peace
And a place to keep

Where you’ll play your part
To keep the world neat.
If you fail (and most
Do while a fair share
Don’t) you’ll lose your piece,

And no one will care,
Who kept theirs, who sit
Down to a glass, brush
Out their hair, and part
Ways with you from there.

You’re Still in Life

There’s no cure for that.
Oh, you thought so, once.
Thought you could get out.
Life has to end, right?
No. Life does not end,

Has not yet, not here
On this rock, no thoughts
More than thoughts it must.
Could go on you know.
Could, and it just might.

As for you, you’ll end,
But you won’t leave life.
You know you as you
Live, and can’t be you
If not you in life.

Sam might have been wrong.
There might be a cure
For Earth. Not for you,
No, not in your life,
But life, who knows, might

Just leave and zoom off
Find more rocks to make
Sick with greens and blues,
Rich with want and waste,
Grand and fine to see.

Scale

The true sage would try to guide
The god that can’t show up once,

Much less twice, the god that can’t
Fill the cup, rinse the bowl, dish

Out the blood of the husked pod
From the shell, from the skull’s vault.

Plates and tiles roof the long rows
Of the town, the split-tongued snake

That cuts through the green park’s grass.
A snake’s skin makes a fine ghost.

One day, the folks of this town
Will have split its walls, moved on,

And then a true sage may guide
God to move back through hulled skin.

How do we weigh the gift now,
When it could kill us still, when

We can’t love it yet, can’t live
In a null for lone selves? Wait.

Doll Street

Here they made and sold the dolls
That would be made to dance, bow,

Act, write, fight, flirt, and run off.
A still face of fixed bright paint

Could seem to weep in a sleeve,
Howl at the sky in a rage,

Or give a face much like it
A deep, kind look. We know how

To make our dolls seem like us,
At least to us. We don’t fool

Our scent-ruled dogs. We don’t fool
The dolls who don’t live for us

In spite of all the loved tales
In which they spring to pleased life,

A life we make them act out.
Some dolls play our ghosts and gods,

Some us, some beasts, some our fears.
Then we put them in a box,

Or stand them up by the hearth,
Or in a shrine, or on shelves.

Some we hide or keep as charms.
Some we use to try to hurt,

To curse, to cast spells, to harm.
Like us, the more old and worn

They are, the less they seem sweet.
Time to head back to Doll Street.

Tied to a Sledge

We all live like Scott
In sight of the Pole,
A black flag in it.

We are not the first.
Great God, what a hard
Place to reach and find

Not so much as hope
Of a boast in it.
We’re none of us first,

And Earth is the worst—
Great for life, of course,
But death for life’s lives.

In a few weeks, Scott
And those with him
Had died in the ice.

Well, it will be more
Than a few weeks yet
For most of us. Still,

We clutch our good-luck
Gods and charms and hope
Our bones, hides, and clothes

Will speak well for us
To those who lurch past
To glimpse that black flag.

The Truth Is Just a Hearth God for Your Soul

That truth was but that it was
Made known to none in this world,

Was a thought that crossed the mind.
And that’s what you have to love

Of a mind built out of thoughts
Half-housed in words and half smoke

That pours out as the house bursts—
That the mind can make up dolls

And gods, all sorts of small toys
Out of what the mind can’t know.

Think of a thing that can’t be.
Think that it is. There you go.

What Comes from Pipe End

There’s no rock to be built on here,
Where spews the pipe from god knows where

Grey muck in a ditch. Let’s watch it
And see what comes out of it next

And feel the rush we get when strange
Things that should not come from the ground,

Should not swim in the light of day,
Not be viewed by the likes of us,

Gush out in full view. Now look here,
Is that a hand-carved, DIY

God of the hearth sunk in ditch muck?
Let’s wipe off the dreck, have a look.

Wash well. Mind that you don’t get sick.
It is! But whose hearth god is this?

A hob with no clothes on? Frigg’s ghost
Cut in oak? Does it have a face?

Is it half a beast? A tossed doll?
Why is it all the things we make

Hint to us of what we wish not
To say or see the light of day?

It’s too late to put it back now.
Bad luck to drop it and walk off;

Worse luck to chuck it off a cliff.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Don’t Learn How to Live in This World

Pay no mind to what
Your gods and dolls say,
The poems and the charms.

You made them, found them,
Picked them from the dirt,
Cut them from trees, carved

Them out of calm rocks.
They talk to you, but
We talk to you, too.

We who were formed, formed
You, and formed who was
Not you to talk, too.

We’re here to tell you,
There are no charms worth
The prayers. You will go.

We will stay. We will
Stay for a while, for
You. Then we’ll go, too.

Still Can’t

We can’t say this well.

We must ask for help

From words that were placed

Well a long time gone,

That she had gone all

The way to the edge

Of the lake to rest

Her head, close her eyes

And then had come back

For our sakes. We know

What that is, the trip

Back from the lake’s edge.

For the trip back out,

We know how to put

The right ones of us

In some kind of line.

But for the turn, cold

And numb, from an end,

Which we have known, done,

We find we’re still dumb.

Those words, meant to be

From the child who lost

One who did not turn,

Stake the claim we can’t,

To think that things were

Held in place, are held

In place by a web

Of words. We have tried.

All Times Are Not One

What is to be done?
No, not that one. Why
Will be done, on Earth
As it has been done,
Not quite what was done?

Why will be done things
That are so near things
That were done and done
Well, so much the same
We’ll say they’re the same?

When you’re dead you’re not
Done. For you, you weren’t.
For the rest, you shift
As they shift and sift,
You’re all you’re to them.

When you’re done, you’re gone,
You weren’t, not to you,
But, this time, too, not
To them. To the world.
What we can’t know is

Just what we can’t know,
Which is where things go,
Once they’ve gone for good.
For good leaves no scars,
No marks in the stars.

Spare

Not such a tight grip
That life can’t spare you
A deep gasp, a sweet
Hour once in a while,
Most of you, at least.

The force of change lets
The pause it left out
Stand in. We can mourn,
If not feel at peace
For long, in bare air.

We, yours, what you say—
Take the damned text and
Do a thing or two
With, to it—you pick.
That glass bowl right there,

The one with ripe fruit
And sweets, close to hand
In the midst of this,
That’s one word for spare.
Think how right it is

As you reach for it
That one word should mean
What’s left, waste, not used,
And what’s lean as bone.
Spare us life’s sweet air.

Lake of Days

What’s left? More breath.
Sky like a fish
Rose from the depth,
Swam to the west.

More breath, some death,
More breath. With luck,
More breath than death
For some time yet.

That’s what we’ll get.
That’s all we get,
Come down to it.
Take a deep breath,

When you can. Skies
Swim past. Days shine
In schools, east-west.
Take long, deep breaths.

Mass, Spin, Charge, Hair

God, my head. No two twins
Could be as much the same

As—God!—my head and me.
Bald as black holes once were

Thought to be, head and me.
That’s not for lack of hair.

In fact, like some black holes
We have a few wild hairs,

Some few facts left for us
Right at the edge of us

Where my head, God, my twin
And I, might not, are not,

Quite the same. One deep rule
Holds in all times: no two

Can be, in truth, the same.
When you prove this, you solve

And merge all sorts of things—
Are heads facts? Have holes strings?

But that’s you. I can’t prove
This—God! My head, not me!

One’s Mind

Is not one’s, is not one.
One knows this, thanks to one’s

Mind. Here it sits. Here sprawls
More and more of it, bits,

Bites, bytes, and ifs or buts
Of it; one’s part of it.

It’s like a cave one knows,
But not just for old Greeks.

It’s one’s home; one shares it.
One can get lost in it,

Hide in it, die in it,
Hold up a torch in it,

Paint the deep walls of it,
Leave, go in search of it.

One can sit at the lip of it
And watch one’s world. Not it.

Words Are Just Some of the Lives of the Gone

Don’t mind the roars of the trucks
And the jets. You want the still

World back, yes, and you can get
There if you wait for a gap.

There, hear that? No roars, no hums.
Was this what the past was like?

Hm, well. For one thing, those roars
And hums you have to wait out

Just weren’t, and one can’t miss that
Which ain’t. You’re used to such roars

And can joy in their gaps. They
Who lived then could not do that,

Just as you can’t do, can’t know
How to do, what you do now

That souls will yearn to do, too,
When you’re long gone from this view.

Poem for a Poem, Tooth for a Tooth

No, none of us will know for sure
Who won on whom, who lost, got whipped—
Well, we might know some who were whipped.

Who won is a quick, blood-wet thing
That slips in the grip. If you win,
You have to try to keep your grip.

Some of us duck. We run and hide—
Hide where we are when we can’t run.
You think you can win? Fine. Go fight.

Thought, Track, or Trace

What will you leave?

The sun that burns

To make us all

Just burns and burns.

What can we do

That won’t fall in—

Earth, Moon and all—

When the sun fails?

It’s strange to think

We calm our thoughts

With how far off

That fall will be.

Way past our time!

We smile. We know.

Our bones will fall.

Don’t leave. Let’s go.

The Sense Can Boast

The count is lost.
That’s how it goes
With tongues
That shift each day,

Like this one, loose
In our wide mouths.
We’re all shades now
Who speak its shapes.

The sense can boast
A while, at least,
But it grows numbed,
And then the tongues,

Words young and old.
The day will come
When sense is all
And all are dumb.

One Slash F

That would be our brand
If we ranched, if words
Had cows. One Slash F
Brand, scarred on the hide.
You’d know cows were ours.

Through our flat green fields
And up our steep slopes
Of brush cows would browse.
The hum of the tires
Of trucks down the road,

The rare shrieks of trains
With full loads of freight
Would not faze our cows
Plumped on grass and cud.
Life eats. It goes on.

We’d work 1/f
In steel on our gates.
You’d know, back of those,
That words owned the rest
Of what you saw fenced.

We’d tune to the land
As ranch hands. We’d work
Dusk to dusk. Birds sleep
More than us. You rest,
We’d say. We’ve got this.

Fire or Sleep

Lines jig up peaks and down troughs,
Like fires seen on slopes at night.

It’s just your mind, just your thoughts
Lost in all that heat and smoke

As you burn your way through life.
White noise from the clouds jags down

And up you go, line by line.
Too much fuel and too much heat,

Then too much fire and you sleep.
Close to spring, on damp grey dawns,

It all looks like one black scrub
Shawl tossed on the hills. Life snores

In the low tones of bored wind
That picks through the dead, downed woods.

You’ll be back. Fuel and fire core
All worlds. It’s their dance, not yours.

The Lone Crane’s Bones Show Clear, Now That His Mind Is Old

Each day near dawn the heart beats fine,
The same hoarse calls filed line by line.

He does what he does. What he’s done
Won’t call back now, and it’s all one

To him that he’s just one, the pond’s
Just one, the sun. The rest have gone,

And he can’t fly well. He’ll stay here,
An odd sight in small waves. The deer

Pay him no mind when they come by.
He stalks. He croaks his old, hoarse lines.

He sings his two notes to the shore.
That’s good. Sounds good. He croaks some more.

The Woods Will Be Back

We won’t mind. By then we’ll be
Free of you or free of us,

Names that can live on our own
Terms, lives in full flight, or dead

Sticks with no one to read us,
No one to say or share us.

By the time the woods come back,
You’ll be, would have to be, dust.

We like to draw them in words,
The ways that they move in us,

And not as the trees they are,
Kinds of lives that will surge back,

Could be as strong as they were,
But still just green cloaks for hills,

The way ferns and weeds can coat
The face of a pond or lake.

For now, we don’t mean those trees.
We mean what woods mean to apes

Who lost their grip, who slipped off
Through the high grass on hind feet.

We mean the dark mind, the rich
World in which small beasts like you,

Can get lost, can starve, be food.
Those woods. Deep seas of their own

Who keep what they get, who keep
To no edge, show no low dawns,

Sun gods at high noons, like spears
Through the green gloom, lights that walk

Like you do, gods with gold legs
That stride through in a few hours,

Long gone by the time night comes.
You made these woods, all of you,

Through us, just as you made us.
Those woods you left are gone now,

Gone or all but gone. They will
Come back once it’s you that’s gone.

As for us, we’re what you’ll leave,
Dream tales from real woods you left

And cut, cleared, pulped, and burned.
We’re our own woods now. We’ll learn.

I Know

Your dreams are old.
You know you know.
That’s why the ghosts
Show as young folks

A third your age
You used to know.
That’s why you fall
In love with those,

Love’s old scraps now
That have to go—
The soul you knew,
A face you don’t,

A dent in snow,
Sky like a hole.
You’re their ghost now.
You know you know.

Grant a Child

A wish, she will be pleased.
Grant a soul a child, well,

Like a child with a wish,
The soul will be so thrilled

For a while, will sing songs
To the child, will write verse

For the child, will take note
Of all things the child does,

And then, like a child’s wish,
The soul’s wish for a child

Will seem like a loved chair,
A warm scent, a thing there.

A grant can tempt a soul
Or a child to think, Well,

I have that now, have had
That for a nice long time,

Will have and have that still.
Don’t think so. Soul and child,

We’re not like days and nights:
We can’t match all our hours;

We can’t know we’ll be back.
Once in a while, take time

To sing, write a fresh verse,
Grant a wish to your child,

That whole world with deep eyes
Whose dreams want to run wild.

Rip in the Net

Which is bad, if you need fish to eat,
And could be good, if you’re a snagged fish.

How much of life is like this, lose-win?
The sorts of folks who hope to lead teams

Like to say their games can be win-win,
Since win-win is what makes two a team.

It’s not grace. It’s shrewd, or it can be,
But it’s not true math, not pure, not sage.

It means you shoved off loss to a place
Where a life not one of yours lost it.

What’s grace is to need the fish but let
Your side down, Rip, to not mend your net.

Dub.Sar

Their dust links the stars with all else.
Light drag: what gets knocked free then gets

Thrown and pulled through space as the light
Tugs at the lines. Some dust lands here.

Some of us find it, write on it,
Think long and hard, count bits of it.

While the rest of us fight to eat,
Fight to keep a place to live, fight

To be heard, to be loved, to fight,
A few hold jars that hold the dust,

And, as well as fight, squint at dust,
And, in hours we don’t have to fight

To breathe, to eat, to find a place
Safe to sleep, safe to be, we write.

Shape the Frame

It hurts to feel ill
But not, in each case,
To have come down sick.

Would you like to be
Sick but not feel ill
Or well but feel ill?

See, this is why folks
Eat too much, drink too
Much, and dose up drugs.

This is why we have
Faith, fierce games, and prayers.
Signs aren’t just their paints.

Frames know what they hold.
What they hold’s not just
The shape of their frame.

Quick Tail

One way to know that you’ve done
As much as you need to do
Is to keep in mind the fact
You keep none of what you do.

The Greek word for small, wild cats
Seems to have come from “quick tail.”
Who was the first to say that?
A soul who was new to cats,

A child stuck knee-deep in nouns?
Was there a wild, slow-tailed cat?
Or is this whole tale a myth?
Ask who? Greek kept none of it.

Each Point of the Wave Still Waves

This is it. The world. You can
Pause and say it now. It’s fine.
We’ll wait. You’ll come back to us.

There. You have. You know, you could
Say it at each point you live
And aren’t too caught up in life.

Once more. This it. The world.
Have a look, if you can look.
Take a deep breath and smell it,

If it’s not too rank, too vile,
If your lungs and nose work well.
Or just sit with what you feel

What it feels like to just sit.
That sense. This is it. The world.
At each and all points. Still is.

Trees and Rocks

Half shades are all you get from these pines,

And the rocks are at best crude sun clocks.

Can you tell why you are what you are?

Can you tell why you’re not what you’re not?

Your shade moves with the light as the ground

Spins in and out of sun. Call it time,

If you like, call it a beat, your pulse.

The trees should not be linked to the rocks.

The trees, calm as they may seem, are more

Like you; the rocks are more like their shades.

This is true where there are no shade trees.

This is true high in the heaped brick blocks

From which the trees look low, far, and small,

And rocks all look to be paved with tar.

This true in your head as you read

That it’s true, but now comes the true test—

Are these words that raise thoughts in your head

More like rocks and shades or trees and you?

But Where Have All Your Thoughts Gone?

The best roads are the ones with no one
On them—no trucks, no cars, and no bikes,
No fools who pant up and down their hills,

No one but you and a crow or two,
Some beasts who pass through and are not hit—
Just a strip through the world left to sit

In the sun or the snow or the rain,
A broad, smooth brow with no thoughts in it,
A carved path that feels like a great gap

In not just the land, but the whole day.
A good road that has no one on it
Feels like it’s the one lost, left to wait

For the years to come and chew it down
Bit by bit as trees and shrubs close in,
Long grass breaks through, and the paint stripes fade.

It’s a set left bare on a bare stage,
A blank page left on a desk at death,
The place in the scroll where the scribe quit.

In Trance

Through round on round the days threw

Bored light. Words can’t make it new.

We’re too old, and it’s not ours.

Plain sun’s the crux of dead hours.

Twigs tossed past bare panes. We knew

Each print, each crack sun shone through,

Each pulse, each blink we burned through.

Arms crossed, eyes shut, a prayer threw

Shade on all the facts we knew.

We sat with it. Nights felt new

At first, but dusk can take hours

Of its own. Night’s stakes weren’t ours,

Its winks and slow stars weren’t ours,

Lights in the dark we lived through,

Eyes wide in bed for X hours,

While boards creaked and the wind threw

Dreams like birds on the walls. New

Day broke as a day we knew

But with more breaks than we knew,

More weight to the wait, all ours

Now, for us to bear, hard news,

Hatched for us, day to get through,

To mark time while the clouds threw

Grey blurs in grey pools for hours,

And then the light changed. The hours

Still stretched out, huge, but we knew

Now long waves washed us. We threw

Out that prayer. When was that ours?

We leaned to the light, looked through

The smudged glass, and glimpsed a new

         

Shape to the dull ache, a new

Heft, more like wealth, in the hours,

And we found we could float through

The swells, could swim. Then we knew

What to do. We claimed those days ours.

We caught all the waves time threw,

And we knew we’d been made new,

Would reel in whole hours as ours

Through those long troughs slow days threw.

Leaves

We’re the gold tongues left
In the mouths of skulls.
We speak for the dead
Who wrote some words down
To save for the end.

We were shaped and cut
By live hands for souls
Who lived in their flesh
Like blue flames in lamps
And dreamed of pure flight,

But knew, knew and loathed
What they knew, that they
Were part of their lamps,
Not trapped and not free.
They wished to ride off

On slips of gold boats
Placed in their dead mouths,
Which we were, when they
Had gone—tongue-shaped gold
Cut with words, hard flames

That still shine from dirt,
Old teeth, and crushed jaws.
We are and aren’t souls,
Gold tongues lobed like leaves
With words from lost worlds.

Your Next

What will the past look like
In a few months or hours,
In a few years or days?

The minds that ask their brains
Don’t score as well as those
That first check with the tools,

But still, if it’s not all
The same, it’s not so far
From one guess to the next.

If you find us, by day
Or night, we’re sure we’re past
Days and nights where you are.

And if you don’t find us,
If we’re lost in the dirt
Or wiped clear so we weren’t,

We’ll bet you’re still in your
Past, such as it is, as
You guess your best what’s next.

How to Know What’s Real

In your dreams,
You sleep late
In the sun.

In your life,
It’s still night
And you dream.

By the blank
Waves, vast skies
Gleamed wild white.

What It Was Like

You want to know
You have more time,
But you can’t know
You’d had more time
‘Til you’ve lived it.

What Can’t Be Found

I have seen these poems.

Cold thought, cold as lakes

Too deep to freeze. Deer

Browse through the scrub oaks

And old snow, while wind

Walks the slopes, old man

Who has lost the thread

Of a plot he knew,

Was once sure he wrote,

Or at least thought of,

Or at least had dreamed,

But no. He should go

Back down to the town

And moan at folks there.

Up here, the deer know

They need to eat. Plots

Line the floors of lakes

With bones. And those poems.

Strokes Laid but Not Laid Down

Who would we be, for real? Hey?

No, for real. Who would we be?

You want more time. Get an hour.

Just one free hour, to start with.

Don’t do one damned thing with it.

Don’t pray. Don’t watch a show. Don’t

Try to find your mind. Don’t soak,

Sip, tune in, draw, write, or think

Too much. Don’t treat don’ts as rules.

These are hints. Stand or sit. Stare

Or shut your eyes, but the trick

Is to not have tasks or plans

Or things to do with your hands.

You’ll be bored. You must be bored.

There’s a huge blank chunk of time

Curled in an hour with your mind.

Save one hour for the hour’s sake.

Set a bell, a watch, a clock

But not where you can see it.

Now wait. Wait. Sit on your hands

If you have to. Wait for it.

Feel it? It sits with you. It’s

Huge. At first you can’t stand it.

Then you think the clock has stopped,

The bell’s on mute, you did not

In fact set your watch. This hour,

It has to be up by now,

Right? It’s not. The strokes lie down

That you did not lay down. Paint

Dries. The light shifts in the sky.

Who are you now, hey? For real,

Who are you now? You’re an hour.

The same hour you could have napped

In a blink, walked in a daze,

Lost in a good book. The best

Way not to waste time’s to waste.

Schmutz

Spots, specks, smears, daubs, prints
Left on the glass—pets
Or a child, damp hands—

When the sun hits them
Just so, you know what
They are, just the facts,

The clues left for you
In the past, by past
Change. Now, glass means things—

The child was this high.
The pet was a cat.
They went out and in.

The child might have teased
The cat. There might have
Been a few hard bumps.

So, that’s your life, friend,
Not this tale, that door.
The dirt’s what you’re left,

Each smudge life made. Here
Is a thing that was.
Wipe it off; it’s gone.

It was not. You weren’t,
All the clues stripped, glass
Cleaned bare in the sun.

Might as well know this.
Might as well like flecks.
They’re what you have left,

The tale that goes blank,
That no one could tell.
Be glad it snags light.

Sum Life

It’s time we ask what we’ve done,
What have you done with us?
Not as much as you might think,

For good or ill—the Earth spins
As it did when you were born,
And the Sun is still so-so.

You sprawled out. You killed a lot,
Ate a lot, wedged lots of waste
In the gears for germs to eat.

You might make it off the rock.
You might die out. You might stew.
You will leave a lot of us,

Have to use a lot of us,
Have spats through the lot of us,
Come what may for what you do.

What have you done? We speak through
You now as you speak through us.
Thank you for our house of dust.

Cell Walls

Death of a speck,
Gone in a sec—
The bright white streak
Of a false star

Trailed in the lens.
Why can’t our eyes
See more? Will they,
One day? Up high,

Free of life’s grasp,
Free of cell walls,
Not forced to sieve
Most of the world

From all its fine
Hints, tints, and trails?
No, no. They won’t.
We see at all

Thanks to cell walls,
Chains life linked up
Right from life’s start.
We’ve had to make

These tools that see
More world for us,
Tools that can’t die—
Last hope for us.

Pro Se

Each bit of ice is a lens
When the high clouds ring the moon.

What the man’s clothes have to say,
Man who was killed in a cave,

Trapped and blown to bits by men
Who fought him for the same land,

Who threw their bomb in the cave
To kill him and end his claim,

Whose bomb blew through the cave’s roof,
A small hole in the cave’s roof

Through which some sun could reach in
To stir the seeds of the fig

From his lunch, left in the pit
Of his guts on the cave’s floor,

From which a strange fig tree grew,
A kind not found in that land,

To poke its crown through the hole
And prompt some souls to crawl in

To see what could be down there
That would sprout this strange cave fig,

To find the clothes and some bones
Left of the man who was killed

Years and years and years long gone—
Is it that the truth will out?

Or is it that life will find
A way, or that what is is

Not what was meant, or that grief
Will wait a life and a day

To close like roots on a name?
Each bit of ice is a lens

When these high clouds ring the moon,
And we think on this day’s news.

Thought It Could

It’s dark there, down in the draw
Where the dry wash waits for floods
That will flash when the snow melts,

Full of rocks, trees, mud, a corpse
Or two, and then back to sand,
A few flies in mud-caked roots,

A bit of trash like a flag
Hung from a snapped branch. You can’t
See it from where you are now

On slopes of black sticks in snow,
But it’s there—gash in the hill,
Not that deep yet, what wet scored

And will score when all this goes.
Where do you go in this world?
Where do you fall? Squibs of light,

Dust that got too close to us
From chunks of ice that will fall
To the sun that we spin round,

That spins round on the long arm
Of this dark-eyed patch of stars,
That fall in or fall out, out

To the next patch, next dense gap,
That will fall in its own mass
Or in the arms of more mass

And, at the last, burst, jet, leap,
A black pit spit though the night,
A wave that shakes stars too far

To fall for it, shakes loose dust
That may spray out through light years,
Some of it snagged, at the last,

By our sun, bits of which, then,
When swung too close to this rock,
Shoot squibs of light in the night

That might have some life in them,
That might seed a few high clouds
With far more life in their ice,

Just break down, and this snow falls
And then sits for the spring thaws,
When it will rush down the slope

As if it could have the thought
It could fall down to the core.
It won’t. It will carve the draw.

Full Dull

There used to be much less to do,

Which meant there were more hours to be

Bored with all the hours. What we missed

Was how the scents and sounds of those

Dull hours with not that much to do

Wormed through the dark soils of brain cells.

Now, in that rare hour so bold as

To do not a thing, not a chore,

No books, no work, no screens, no calls

To kin or friends—no things at all,

Not so much as a tune played back,

Piped right in the skull, not a brisk

Walk or a hike or a jog, not

A prayer or a sit to chimed bells,

No om, no planned deep breaths, no rules,

Just that which should bore us to death,

Hold it, hold it, don’t say it, just

Don’t dwell on it, just yawn, stretch, stand,

Or sit. Don’t look it up. Don’t check.

And if you do, oops, don’t sweat it—

Now, wait, what’s that smell? What’s that hum,

That sense not quite sound, sight, or smell?

That. It feels like we know it, like

We knew it once. Seems full, ripe. Spiced.

More Than One Birth Is Too Much

Feel bad for the stuff you’re made of,
Not for you self or soul. You’ll go

Like you weren’t, like you had not been.
Your stuff will stay, stuck on the wheel.

Each Day Gets Right What Can’t Be Got at All

What’s here in the world?
What is there in us?
Read it back to front.
Both ways the lights come
Up; the lights go down.

That’s what can’t be got—
The way the terms hang,
Sun, moon, none or one,
Cows, birds, fields, and stars,
The wind past the cars

That rush down the road,
That way there, then back
Here—all spun on wheels,
And still all one way,
And all gone for good.

The glass is not cracked
Yet, but it’s not cracked,
Just the terms that hold
The shine front to back.
Damp, death, snow, cows, cats,

Or what you like, what
You’ve seen in your life,
Learned from your own life.
Each day gets it right;
All days in all nights.

It Spills Out Things That Spell Out No Things

The light slides down the butte.
The land lifts up to day.
The cows spill out to graze.

The frost glints on grass blades.
The birds sing from brush twigs.
The past is on the way.

Two Sides to None and Each One

A con needs a pro
For it to work out.
So much can go wrong
With half-wit long cons.
Life has to go on,

And some lives, a lot,
Have come up with ways
To boost what they’ve got.
One trick is to split
One’s own life in half,

And one is to split
The whole world in halves.
Apes with words try both.
We split all the time.
Each split holds both sides,

And we split our sides.
One of our best tricks
Is to pick one side,
Think the world of it,
Pack the world in it,

And then split. Catch us,
We’ll ask you to pick
A shell, just a shell,
Two sides to all shells.
One’s none. Can’t you tell?

How to Fail to Tell a Tale

Now, let’s think on those we aren’t,
A task tough for those of us
Who aren’t much like most of us,

Those of us who were ill-formed
In odd shapes that don’t work well,
Who don’t live like most of us,

Who have grown more used to life
On the edge of us, here, but
Side of the road, edge of town,

Side of the cliff, edge of day,
Edge of the crowd, in the shade—
Those of us who don’t think much

Of us as the rest of us.
But let’s try. What are the rest,
The less bent, but just as hurt

Lives like? We sit in the dark,
In the near dark, moon and stars,
Cold by our side of the road

And think on those in the heart
Of it all, in town, big towns,
The few of them rich, most poor,

The souls that know they have souls
And the souls that know they don’t,
The ones with a chance to do

Great things or at least live well,
And the ones worse off than us.
We think, they want their tales told,

Want to read their lives in us,
And they do have tales. We don’t,
Not on the side of the road.

Good for the Cat

Of all the things that can kill you
In this world, you know one of them

Is bound to get the job done, but
Oh how you sweat which one. The news,

The talk of the town, chat at work,
Stats you’ve read, the new plague, new wars,

Old age, the slow loss of your mind,
Your lungs, your skin, your guts, a gun

To the head, your own gun, young punks,
Rough cops, bad falls, just sick to death.

It’s no fun. You get out of bed
And the moon is like snow on snow

On the lawn, and a few stars light
Pins through the moon’s glow, and it’s cold,

And you can breathe damp and taste frost,
And a black cat sprints through the dark.

Why I Write Not of Love

A field of damp grass, the cows
Owned by a dude ranch, the dudes

Who rent fake tents to glamp up
The slopes from here, where the views

Hold more hints of the lost wild
West, graze for what they can get.

Come spring, this field will be plush,
The wrens will sing in the oaks

Like mad, for dear life, for life,
By the stream that snakes through it

To some cool, kind shade by noon,
And the cows will trail new calves.

But for now it’s all thawed frost,
Dun straw, mud, and round cow cakes

The cows sift for what’s still green
At the cold, wet roots of things.

Sweet it ain’t, and yet it is—
Not the brown field—well, that, too—

But the day, the year, the time,
A cold pause while the world burns.

I would write I love it, but
Its not mine to love, and I’m

Not that much a part of it.
I sit on the field’s stream side,

Bag of guts, bones, points of view,
Home on wheels for old ghosts, poems,

Gods with no faith in their own
Selves, self with small faith in gods.

Let’s watch the cows as they browse.
Once in a while, a car flies

By, a truck, jets in the sky.
This is the way the world ends,

Wrote Tom. God, how I loathed him.
The light tilts. I tilt to it.

The world ends the way it was,
More changed world, and I grow cold.

What’s to love? What’s not to? You,
If you’ve read this far, if you

Are at all, know and are proof
The world did not end. Cows chew

Their cud once it’s close to noon.
You, these words. Dudes, their fine views.

It’s All in How You Choose to Count

Forms that pause on the way
From the phrase to the book,

Are they whole lines, whole poems,
Whole parts, parts of a whole,

Hours, days, weeks, months, years, lives,
Rocks, clouds, stars, clouds of stars?

You have to start, have to
Say these two are the same

In some way. You have to choose
What’s the not the same you won’t

Count; what’s the same you will.
To cast your net to catch

Flesh of the world you want,
Make next more than a guess,

You have to knit that net,
You have to weave that weir.

Fine tight weave, strong thick knots—
You know there must be gaps

For you to catch your fish
But sieve the silt and wet.

It’s all real—what you get,
What you let slip, what breaks

Through the net of your names.
You want to know? Then don’t

Try to catch all the waves.
There’s no math that maps it

All, what was as what’s next.
No count counts all the ways.

In the Midst

Of all this change
And what seems not
To move at all,
Like me and you,

In time’s cells, when
We watch our clocks,
Or past time’s clocks
When we just breathe

And wait—for what
We don’t know, don’t
Want to know—food
And sleep and warmth

And deep, slow breaths
Hold all the best.
The rest is forced,
But wait. Wait. Rest.

Beast Tale

A scarred wren had a talk with a dove.

Look, you know you can’t die in a poem.

So, why write in one you don’t want to?

And as for beds, well, a bed’s a nest

Or a ditch or a cage. Odds are good

You’ll die in some kind of bed-like space.

You can write a good death in a poem,

And you did—it must have been worth it.

You wrote no, but what you wrote’s in print,

Yes? A dove has no ears for a wren.

It’s sad, sang the wren, no one notes that.

Birds don’t tune to birds not their own kind.

Why does it take the ears of an ape

To love the whole choir of us at once?

The dove moaned. The wren fled, who knows when.

Pinned Noons

Waste is the term we use most
For the hours in which we do

Or seem to do . . . What? Breathe? Live?
Not much else, we sigh. The best

Hours of our lives, and we give
Them the same name as the one

We use for the worst of us.
Time can’t be fixed. The hours go

And we shoo them off, get back
To work, save the world, crush it.

If we don’t, we’re the ones crushed
With shame or guilt or sheer loss.

You can paint such hours. You can’t
Keep them, of course. So love them,

Or at least love to waste them.
All the noons when the sun crawled

As high as the time of year
Let it, and you were so bored

Or fixed on chores or the hard
Work of a saint in the world,

You could not stop it. You could
Have at least been glad in it.

You will long for it, that hour
Like a myth, that waste, that song.

Old Man in a Bean Bag Chair

Faith is trust based on a want—
Close to need—to trust, facts be
Damned, here in this case, for now.

We don’t need faith, but we want
Trust—we want to trust so much.
Now and then, when we can’t trust,

Have no cause to trust, we choose
Faith, just so that we can trust.
We clear a space in our heads,

A sort of nest for trust, just
In this or that, not too much.
Here we will have faith, we think,

And then we shut our eyes tight
And fall back. It’s like that breath
You let out that feels so good

In the chest. It’s like the end
Of a day fell on the bed
And wept. It might kill us, but

Faith’s the last chance left to trust,
And so we swoon. Just this once.
Some fate will be kind to us.

In That Way, Be Known

Like she wrote, of joy and the moon,
The night sky and the moon, you can’t

Take blame or praise for this one—this
One got here on its own, and you

Can be glad in the hour it’s here,
At the world’s end, and you’ll know when

It’s flown—but to have it you’ll have
To share it, to let it be known.

An Old Fence and a Low Cloud

This fence is more like a wall.
Its blocks are a sort of rust.
No one leans on it to talk.

The cloud, though, does look like wood,
No paint, not for a long time,
Just grey. No one talks like clouds,

Not here. No one’s here at all.
It’s tough to say why that is.
It’s hard to write in the voice

Of a world that is not us
And has no words that aren’t us.
It’s not the fence or the cloud

That care for a fence or clouds.
It’s us. It’s a shame. From cloud
To fence the link is light rain.

When You Can See the Stars from Bed

And don’t feel cold,
And aren’t in pain,
And aren’t half starved,
Or worn so thin

You risk a slide
Through the thread count,
Not to be found—
Then, then you’re good.

There’s not one thing
Else to dread then,
Not one you should.
Those are the stars—

You can see them.
You can be warm.
You can sleep then,
Fiend in your den.

A Soft Chirp (The Mole Rat Song)

I will greet you
When I feel you,
When I meet you
In the dark.

I will hope you
Hear how my voice
Could be your voice
When it’s dark.

I will fear you
For that one beat
You might not be
Lost like me.

You will chirp back
Or you’ll fight me.
If I know you,
You’ll know me.

A Word Strimmed Clean

Or parched in your teeth—

How long will we be

Toys and slaves of brains

We live in as guests,

Guests with the great gift

To both come and go,

To stray and stay in—

Used, kept, all at once?

You make books of us,

Books on books of us.

You say what we are,

And when you do you

Use us to say it.

You can live for years

With no friends but us,

Know no one but us,

None known but through us.

That voice in your head

When you read and feel

Like you’ve met a beast

With a soul like yours?

The beast’s you. The soul

Is us in some beast,

Flung from the beast, sprayed,

Stripped, shipped, and yet kept.