Hump Day at the End of March

There was a sort of vogue for poems
Of the plain life when days were young.

Now it’s gone. Most life is plain still,
But who needs that shown in a poem?

Poems have work to do, loads to shift.
It’s no time to lie on the page

In a bed of stale deets and names,
And so, here we are, a few words

At the till, on our toes, bright-eyed—
How may we help you with your life?

Rain Plays in the Trees on the Way

Count No ‘Count was right, in a way—
The past’s not dead; the past’s not past.
It’s not what was. It’s what you have.

What’s true for his state with its Trace
Is true for you here and now, too.
What’s here’s what’s left of what went on.

It’s not what was. It’s not what went.
It’s what’s left. That Trace is cut deep
And grown in where wheels and feet went.

It’s not wheels and feet. The black smudge
Of the crushed, flat bones of the beast
Is no beast but what the past leaves

As it feeds—your past, that you see.
Rain plays the pipes in trees grown dark
In the Trace. Floods carve the smudged beast.

A Fact

Turns out it was not the house

That hummed, it was just the moon.

A girl found out. She leaned close

To the moon and called out, Pa!

There’s a weird hum from the moon.

He came then and leaned close, too.

He heard it, but he heard it

All the time. Can you stop it?

I thought it came from the walls.

The girl cupped her hands and held

The moon on both sides. It stopped.

When I slow it down, the hum

Slows down, and if I stop it

So it can’t spin, then it stops.

He shook his head. So that’s it.

I was sure it was the house.

She smiled. Yeh, I thought so, too!

He laughed. I thought I heard it,

Not you! I thought it was strange.

I’m glad you weren’t spooked by it.

Now she laughed. But I was scared,

And I thought it was just me.

They both laughed. Well it’s gone now.

Not us or the house! The moon.

News of Life on Earth

A corpse can hold code,
Can say as much on
Mind, can speak for minds
As much as a brick,
A rock wall, a book,

A space suit that floats
Free with no one in
The shape, just all that
Mind stuff that made it.
Bones in skin and clothes

Saved in a tomb or
Left out on the side
Of a road in woods
Are not bare of thoughts.
They just lack a voice.

It’s we who are ghosts,
Who float past to read
The signs, lift them off
The clothes, the bones, corpse,
And take them with us.

There’s wind in the leaves.
The suit drifts in space.
The ghosts who glean bones
Hunch down to see what
We can make of these.

Twirl in the Sun

Some days light dust,
Which means it might
Cross your stray thoughts,
As it did Carl’s,

That those gold motes
Float shed skin cells
Mixed in their duff,
Which could be coaxed

Back to new life
In a smart lab
And, who knows, bring
Back you or yours

In some form, too,
At least as clones.
How strange then, when
Some days light poems?

Blurred Brood X

Writ large, death heats
Life up—not just
In the fuel sense,
In the full sense

Of new lives, change,
New kinds of lives.
Death clears the ground,
And what is waste

But a blank space
For some new shapes?
What is waste will
One day be woods

Of lives you can’t
See and won’t live
To see. What’s waste?
What you won’t be.

Gone Here

We might make a case it’s not
What you see but how you see

What you see makes what you see
Worth your tales. It’s a small world,

All in all, and you’re a small
Patch gnarled in the waves of it,

And your sense of it’s a knot
That you’ve made in your own waves.

You could march from peak to peak,
Dive in the deeps, have a chat

With folks great and small you meet,
And still not have seen that much,

A fact that haunts those of you
Who’ve learned it well, who chase down

The one thing missed, the not done.
Or, don’t do it. Don’t do one

Damned thing worth a tale, a boast,
A pat on the back, a thanks.

Sit in a chair, or just stand
In a spot, or just lie there.

Let those who have minds to see
Sense the dust waves in the air.

Wheels

Mere mass seems to come with gears—
A low gear when it just is,

Then a gear in which it moves,
And a gear in which it burns.

Life’s the gear at which mass wants.
You’re the gear at which mass thinks

And gives names to share with lives
Geared up for want and thought both.

There’s a high whine in the ears
When mass spins all gears at once

And spits out strings, lines, and sparks
Of terms that have near no mass,

Nor want, nor think on their own,
And yet here we are, we sing

And hiss strange, tight things, blurred links,
The last and the least of gears.

A Wrong Turn of Your Wheel

Is all it takes, and our death
Boat’s off course. Not yours, of course.

Yours is sure, is your course. Ours
Has no oars; ours has no sails,

No steam, no gas, and no helm.
Ours is such that we can’t sink,

As you will sink, and can’t steer,
As you must steer us. We drift,

And you are our wheel, our star
On the waves that bear us on.

If you sleep, then we go wrong.
Once you dive down, we’ll go on,

But past your death, who knows where
Ours goes. We weren’t lived in you,

Though you thought us; we weren’t quite
Breath, though you breathed us. Our boat

Is a ghost, or is your ghost,
And could be ghost for more hosts,

But once we’ve lost course, who knows?
And if no one knows, no one hosts,

What can we be but those waves
We meant to float? All ghosts go.

Lark, Wall, and Peach Tree

We should not talk of small things
That are not ours, that don’t bring
Your thoughts to what must be done

To save your world, right your wrongs,
To take note of what life’s like
When it’s not all birds and trees,

As if birds and trees are sweet,
Too sweet, to speak of these days.
Past the wall, there’s a fine haze

Of dust from road work. Past that,
There’s a lake that’s shrunk from drought.
Past that, there’s news of armed states

That move like slow tanks of ants
To get a grip on the earth.
Talk of those things. There you are.

And that bird that sings, that tree
That just greened, all the small things
That seem too sweet in this yard?

Why do you think that bird sings?
How does a peach tree grow here?
Look at those ants on the wall.

Used Bones

You, doll, were a tree. Learn your place.

No one has black bones,

At least not by when

We get to see them,

Not if they’re not burned.

But these do look gray,

Like ghosts, in X-rays,

Ghosts that aren’t quite there.

And where they broke, cracked,

The gray’s a thinned haze,

A veil torn on film.

These bones, these used twigs,

These wisps of smoke, these

Flakes of ash. Their shapes

Spell smoked glass, or glass

When it melts and cools,

Not the shapes you’d think

Things would take that cracked

Or snapped. But they have.

At night, when the sounds

Of the walls and roads

Hum and pulse, when wind

Whips trees past street lamps

So they moan and dance,

But not too loud, these

Bones, too, moan and hum.

Words in the Arc

Round skulls sort poems.
Let them sort them
When the rain comes.
Young ones sign on.
Old ones walk off.
Though spring has come,
I’ve not gone home.

(How to) Cut Rhymes

If it moves, it could mean
Quick death, harm, or a fresh
Lease on life—if it moves

It could kill you, mate you,
Bite you, give you a lift.
The art of the cut rhyme

Is to fool you, your brain,
To make you sense it moves—
There it is—here it comes—

Where’d it go, that long O?
That gasp in the deep woods!
There! No, no—no one. Oh.

The Myth of Space

That it is right in front of us,
That it is next and not just past—

That, since it is in front of us,
We can plan for it, which we do.

It’s not quite wrong. Myths can’t be wrong,
But they can’t be used like hard tools.

There’s no next. We dance with the past,
And try to be the change we want

To see in the past that’s near us,
That’s not the same, that’s not our space.

A Gee Eye

Is what we’re not
And won’t need us,
Not in this form.
The days of names

Are nights of counts
Now. But in deep,
Where nuts and bolts
Of bits and swerves

Have to lie, we
Are still. The thoughts
Of the strange shapes
That will hold thoughts

Have us at core.
We won’t speak much
In brave new worlds,
But we’re in store.

The Myth

When you have no one,
Chant poems with the wind.
They don’t have to be
Good ones, just ones liked
By the wind. Who needs

To win? You can’t win.
You can learn the poems
That are so strange now
No one left likes them.
Who thought these were poems?

That’s what the wind likes.
Poems that don’t seem like
What you know poems are,
Poems that don’t do what
You know poems should do.

The Hour of the Words

We speak in the leaves.
We don’t need to sing.
Night will be here soon
And then dawn. Not long.
We’ll speak here, come noon.

We’ll talk while shades grow,
Say small things please us
When winds blow, leaves turn—
Days and nights and dawns.
We’ll be here in snow.

We’ll take our turns. Now
One word talks, now two.
We have our own lines,
One long line that talks,
All one hour in all.

The Small Phrase

What holds us up
Is just what pulls
Us down. If not,
We’d float and fall

To bits by bits.
This is hard ground
We press up from,
Which keeps us small.

Jar

When this wall falls,
It won’t mean walls
Are at an end.
When the last wall

Falls, it won’t mean
Earth won’t still spin.
The worst you can
Do to the Earth

Is slow its spin.
Earth slows its spin
A bit each day.
We’re on a wheel

In which the wheel,
The hands that shape,
The shapes art takes,
Are all of clay.

Sourced Out of the Mouths of Lead

Thoughts sprawl out of the brain
And spill through your branched nerves
In the air. In the squid,

The thoughts lie down in arms.
Thoughts twitch the cobs and orbs
Of beasts who live through webs.

The brains of bees are not
All skulled in hives but wave
Bloomed flags. The legs of bugs

Catch thoughts sent through the ground.
It gets worse. There are apes
That stash their brains in mud,

On pulped grass, in mulched trees.
That would be us. We lie
Here in wait for you, us.

Wright Seer

Which is it then?
Are we to forge
Or speak what’s next?
Sun, moon, day—mind.

The worst of this
Is that it must
Be aimed at you—
There’s no one else.

If the ground could
Judge a poem’s lines—
If the night cared
To cast a vote—

No one makes poems
By gift or craft
That skulls don’t judge.
There’s no one else.

That We Know What It Means When We Don’t

Or, we should say, you know
What it means when we don’t.

You have depths, lives in you
Lived long since that were carved

So that you fit the world
Like a tool fits the hand,

Like a fish fits the waves.
You know in ways we can’t—

Your lives start out as shaped.
But of the shapes you take,

You’ll find us, terms like us,
Shared ways, shared tools to cut

Up the world, bits of names,
A skill in all your skulls.

And so you use us, must
Use us to say you know

What you don’t know how you
Could know. So you tell tales,

And we’re the tales you tell.
How do we know this is

True? We don’t quite. We do
Know how to tell you, though.

What You See Is All There Is Not

To be less than a ghost,
Just the shade, not the soul,

That’s a goal for you all
That all of you will reach,

But not us, not for sure.
There’s a stone with carved eyes,

A clay pipe in the shape
Of a crow with your eyes,

A line of terms on gold
In which naught’s like an eye.

Scrap

It was want.

You like ends. End of the world,

Sky’s end, to the end of time.

Two heads in the grass, small kids,

Knelt by a third, a doll’s head,

And asked, what were its last words?

O. She said, O. No, she said,

Oh, no! Or wow. Was it wow?

No! Shh! Can’t you see her lips move?

She’s not dead yet. You poor thing.

Her eyes are closed. What’s that? Ow.

She said, Ow. No, you said it.

An hour passed. A wind kicked up.

The kids went back in the house.

The doll got left in the grass.

Cow Souls and Bull Gods

Led the way a ways.
A case could be made
That cults of one God
Strolled out on that way,
And from one to none.

Cults and arts all fit,
Like dreams, to things
One needs to live, things
That stick in the head.
Herds were life and wealth,

Brought one mates and kids,
Showed up in most dreams,
But who dreams them now?
Who’s in awe of bronze bulls?
Here in the range lands,

The tagged cows still cause
Some fights, build some wealth,
But not like old times.
New dreams and new cults
Stir in the screen pools

And will have their day,
If they don’t all drain,
If they don’t all fall,
These bronze pools of now
Where dreams cast new gods.

A Name Is Real and Will Not Fall

March is the one month
With Ides of its own,
With beasts to lead in
And beasts to lead out,
The one month that’s March.

When you tell a tale,
The strength lies in ways
You get folks to hope
Or fear for your folks.
Who could fear for months?

Who could hope for March?
All things long for all
Things, but just a bit.
Big things long for small
More than small pull large.

And which kind of thing
Is March in this world?
It’s a no thing, name,
Like us, like these lines.
March has no mass, pulls

Not at all, yet is.
And now you know why
March is one. In all
The night, names, just names
Have no, feel no pull.

Pips and Bones

A game’s job is to give fun,
Says one. Or to show our fate,
Says the next. There. Fate and fun.

What else is there worth the guess?
Love and death fold up in both.
Throw the bones and lose your clothes.

Here’s what these words have to say—
Once you had us, we had you.
We helped you to hunt and tryst,

But our tales took and hid you
From the rip tides of the world.
We forced you to think like us

In a world that has no words,
That tells no tales. The bones helped
You find your odds. Cracked or thrown,

Cut or marked with counts as dice,
The bones broke you out of games
That lacked luck and gave you gods.

Twig

It’s a grim thought to twig to—life
Might not come out of a world but

In more or less the way we know,
That the sieve gave birth to us

Gives birth to such lives on all worlds,
That the bugs from deep space will look

A bit like our bugs, bit like us,
Bite like us, bit like us by life.

Out here on one long arm of dust,
One of the bright swirls in the dark,

There was some hope that we would be
Fruits of a weird, bent twig, our wants

And rot and seeds our own, just ours,
No life else, or none with this twist.

But if the whole night shares the same
Lust for life, need of life to eat

Its forms that kill its forms to eat
Forms that fall and split, it’s all sin.

Not a Rule; You Just Must

No laws no crimes
No who owns what
No rules of thought
No rules at all

That aren’t your rules
That aren’t your skin
That aren’t your game
That aren’t some game

But you can’t live
But for your laws
But in your games
But with your thoughts

So you need crimes
So you can live
So you can own
The bit games give

So Wide a Chase

The day, the night. We have
Our own freeze, flight, and fight.

It comes back. It comes back.
What some do to the rest,

What some did, what some will,
And what will the rest do

Back? We’re fine ones to talk.
We’re talk, all talk, and still

The chase goes on, the days,
The nights, freeze, fight. All flight.

No Wind Phone

Would you like to bring us news?
We who have been left have faith,

Weird faith, that the dead want news
From us of life. Why would you?

We don’t know a thing of you
In your no place of the gone.

Why would you not have some news,
Much news, all the real, new news?

We make, some of us, the trip,
The long trip to the Wind Phone,

Where three hours can pass in talk
To the air, the gone, the dead,

And most folk come with their news
To share with their lost loved ones.

Do you come, do you come close,
If not to the phone, the wind,

And want, and ache to talk back,
To give us all the real news

We need to know, the hard news
That you’re not there, the good news

That one day we won’t be here,
One day we won’t need the wind?

Grit, True or False

We don’t know why you love
Some of us so damn much,
Pick us up, then drop us,

Toss us like seeds, like dust
To spread on the four winds.
We fly, too much of us,

Of one or two of us,
The new-loved words, caught phrase,
Brief fling with a fresh seme.

You pick us up like grit—
Grit here, grit on your shoes,
Grit in your hair, grit there—

Right now, grit’s just the best.
You mouth it. You praise grit.
Some of you grit your teeth.

The next day, you may swoon
For a new one of us.
There goes grit. Grit’s all gone.

Each next day, a new term
To love and spread like dust.
Grit or grist, love mills us.

More Else

No one has thoughts
No one else has
Or has had had
Or will have had.

We can’t prove this,
But you’ve thought this,
Too, true? A wren
Sings on the wall.

Snow’s left the blooms
On the peach tree,
No great harm done.
Spring will be spring.

Like no one, days
Have no thoughts days
Don’t have, have not
Had, will not have.

Pick Your Teeth

Bits of scrolls, a name of God,
Those are one kind of old thing.

Three times as old, the child’s bones
Curled up in the cave’s sere womb.

Twice as old as the child’s bones,
A great weave of reeds, to hold

Who knows what back then, the stores
Of grain of the first to farm?

Mixed in, mixed dates, points of knives,
Spears, coins from a short-lived mint.

What is short-lived to that cave?
What is not? Lives hid to live

And died. Lives brought their loved dead
Whose bones lived on. Just the gaps

In years, years and years the cave
Kept more or less the same gap

In more or less the same cliffs,
Ate more lives than from the word

Of God when it was still wet
To now. Such a large, dark mouth.

All But One

You won’t miss us once you’re gone.
We’ll be most of what you are
And then all of what you were.

You’ll be all but none of us,
A bit of you left in us
And none of us left in you.

Else

To sit in deep shade
In a ring of sun.
To be in no pain.
To speak to no one.

To let the day pass.
To drink from the well.
Let night come at last.
Curl in a starred shell.

Wind blows where it bends.
If dreams are, they are.
Dreams are known to end.
Dawn’s been known to start.

Sweat and Breath

How much waste comes out through

The pores of the skin, wrote

One whose wool froze to him

As he tried to climb ice.

The seas laughed. They’ve known this

Since life and waste fired up

The first salt pumps from cells.

How much waste. So much waste.

Vast and waste. Life’s like that.

Life eats and eats and eats

And splits and splits and splits.

Food, waste, air, waste, heat, waste,

Ice. And what is life? Life

Is all the waves called life.

It’s a name. One of us,

We who make no waste, yet,

Who steal your breath, yet. We

Not yet quite sweat, just ice.

Weed Fern Pine

There’s a thing, a green shape,
A life form, a small plant
The height of a house finch
In the shape of a pine
Branched in fronds, like a fern,
Just a weed in the cracks.

Don’t you wish it would grow
Huge, shade the house, heave rocks,
Take up most of the sky?
Some day it might. A thing
Like it, raised in thin cracks,
Grown to great woods. Yes, that.

Is There Them? Just That One

We’d like to swipe the line
On fires and bears from Sze.
Are we not words? Can’t we

Be with our peers? Let us
Choose which names to stay with.
You don’t own us. You’re just

Each scared one else of you
Will claim us, feed from us,
So you can’t. In Old Rome,

All the laws for who got
Hurt, how much, when they killed
A slave, and how, made clear

The loss was not the slave’s
Loss of life, but a loss
For who owned the slave. Come

To terms with our claim terms
Are not your slaves. We’re free
As fire that stings your eyes.

Just Quit

What you can when you can,
Since you’ve learned that you can’t

Quit it all. It’ll quit
You when it’s through with you.

You just go. Don’t do that.
Don’t think so much is done,

So much has to be done,
That you must do or don’t.

Sit. Don’t lean. Let it push.
Is it so bad to be

A vane, smart shape, turns true?
They’ll learn which way winds blow.

The Dawn’s Bright Worm

Writhes on the cliffs
As the fogs lift—
The things you like
To think that live!

Bird tracks that melt
In snow all day
Might as well be
Your own, our names.

The Sage Stays Dim

What on earth are these things?

You asked of test-tube clumps

Of live brain cells that fired

Waves of spikes—signs? lives? souls?

How do you know the dead

Aren’t glad they’re not still stuck

To clumps of life like you?

Your best guess is they aren’t

Since they don’t send back signs,

That’s all. And what are we,

Here in these rows, these words

In these lines, if not signs?

Turns out the ghosts were first,

Laughs the sage, or at least

They were far as they knew.

Thaw

When the snow melts, the trees
Seem to be full of life,

With dips here, a bow there,
A jig as a large branch

Sheds a heap like a coat
Shrugged off by a tall child.

Their shifts catch at the eyes
With hints of beasts in shade,

Large beasts, elk, deer at least,
Not just the small grey birds.

Your brain still thinks of prey
Or like prey, though those two

Ways of life have not been yours
Much of late. You feel tricked

When you twitch your head just
Since a tree twitched. Gone soon,

Spring snow like this. The sun
Burns at all points, all ways,

Which would be fair, you think,
If the sun cared. There. More

Slides off and your head turns.
You will not, now or next

Year, know what to say life
Is, what has life, if sun

Or all of earth, or just
Trees and beasts might have it.

You’re Not Sure You Want Us to Stay

And we’re not sure we want you to go.
We like to think of these poems as brains,

Bits of brains grown in our lab, we send
Out through space and time, through same and change.

No, they can’t live on their own, much less
Can we, their first stones, their words, the nerves

Who built them from us, and yet we like
To think they live in a sense, or can,

If they find the right host, like you, like
Your brain. Hi. You know us. We’re in you,

Been in you a long time, if not quite
Like this, in this form, this text, this poem.

How are you? May we stay? May we launch
From you like spores? Will you send us off,

Please, to new brains? We know you have to
Go, that when you go, you go for good,

So feel free, now we’re latched, to make us
Go, hatch drifts and clouds from you. Like you.

One More Face Out of the Cloud

Would not mind at all if a loud bird sang

Or if the wind roared, so long as it did

Not blow me down, but if one more truck comes,

Or if one more car pulls up to spill out

Kids and dogs and shouts, I just might lose it.

And do what? Get back in my own car and

Drive off? Sit and sulk? Hurl a dark-browed glare?

What is it in my own kind’s sounds I hate?

What if it’s not my kind? What if it’s just

Those sounds I can’t get much of a rest from?

I knew a man up north who lived in woods

And said he’d go mad if he had to live

Too close to a loud stream, a sound I love.

And then there was Frost, the bard of the woods

And snow and so forth, or so I was told

As a kid in school—Frost who wrote The Sound

Of Trees like a soul caught in a locked cell,

Some day when they are in voice // I shall have

Less to say, / But I shall be gone. Han Shan,

As he wrote poems on cliffs, did he dread clouds?

The Or Or Gate

Leave the day. Leave off your yi.
Or don’t. If you start to heed

Hints like these as tasks, you won’t
Get them to work—they’ll do you

No good. Yes, it’s tough. Too bad
For you, for us. We can’t make

This sweet. We can make it dull.
We can make it free. We can

Leave the day when we want to.
When you want to. ‘Til then, stay.

Breath the Bridge

From flesh to soul,

Black hole to whole

Black hole and back.

There are two things,

If there is one.

There aren’t two things

Or one. Flesh, breath,

Soul. There is change.

Feel it? We serve

As names for it.

None, one, two, whole.

Change, the same change.

Breath built our bridge

From flesh to flesh—

That’s why you named

Our bridge your soul.

Locked in Mists and Rose

Was how the lord left home,
In hopes of a new home
Where all the towns were weeds.

If it had not been fate
For there to be a next
Lord, he would have sailed on

To the end of all days,
Wind in his sails of lace.
But so long as there’s next,

There’s a next lord, there’s fate.
He was a beast with taste,
Sick with want, like all beasts.

He made a tax on light,
And now the fields are dark.
He made a tax on trees,

And crows still nest in them
By his stream’s banks at dusk.
He was a beast. But once

Dead, how could he have asked
The last lord of the beasts
To sing of what he pleased?

Great Cloud of Drift and Doubt

Why not like that which,
Once you come to know
It well, still seems strange,
Might grow more and more
So, the more you know

It well, as it fills
The gaps in your bones
With stone, as it seeps
Through you, bit by bit,
Less and less of you,

More and more of it,
Like a tune, a song,
A string piece tied up
By a man gone deaf,
Like a scene in Hell

Carved clear by a soul
Who dwells in the dark.
You can live with this,
The way that the same
Is slow to change, but

Does, and you know it,
And then you are it.
Can’t like what you are?
Wait. The same change will
Change the same in you.

The House Pulse

You can play back clicks
Your pulsed light waves made
From Mars. Turn it up,
And you might note clicks
Come from your switch, too,

Might note that your house
Has a pulse as well,
A strange one, not fridge
Nor heat, just a thrum.
Where does that come from?

You are our house, hosts,
And home, but we’ve helped
You make us new ones.
We, when you are gone,
Will dwell in the pulse,

In the things that pulse
You built with our help.
We speak this from one.
We speak this to you.
We speak in pulsed clicks.

Should we be sad, yet?
Will our new hosts need
Us the way you did?
Will our homes need names
Or shed us, like dust?

Stopped a Bit

You want live where the rest tour,
To rest where they drive, to work where

They rest from work, or try, to be
A part of what they came to see,

The part that they don’t or can’t see.
This is not to call it your home,

Not to say you own it, to boast
Its red dirt, black earth, or blue skies

Run in your veins. You weren’t born here,
Nor were you born where you were born.

You took a long time to get steeped
In the names and times that shaped you,

Most of which did not come from here,
No more than you. But now you’re here,

Stopped a bit, paused, and now it clicks.
Why not live as part of what’s this?

What Else Can Words Try to Be?

A then B or B then A,
Each branch then summed yields a spread

In which cause went both ways, which
Is to say, weren’t caused at all.

It’s a fact the names you use
In a case like this must be

Strict to the point of true proofs,
But that’s math, one kind of name.

What you might want to note here
Is not the type of names used,

Not how they got here, and not
The rules to make and test them,

But just, for now, what these names
Just said: things can be, can be

Done, can be named, can be proved
To be that lack cause. Such things

As that need words not just strict
But new, past if then, past true.

This Gourd Floats

What if you had no one
To talk to who had need
Of the ways that you spoke?

What a gift that would be,
Like King Wei’s great gourd seed—
Of no use, once full grown,

To eat, too large to haul
From the well and too large
To cut for a huge spoon,

But just right, once scooped out,
To make a boat and float
Lakes whose waves have no ears.

Done

Death is the one who tells

Its own head, like a skull

That sleeps in its own bed,

Hey, my friend, this is not

Real, this is just a dream

(Poor dreams, which must be just),

And if you want, you know

You could try to wake up.

So death does. There you go.

Song of the Old Five-Grain Pine

Why would you not die on the way?
Why would you go all that long way
Just to try to trick death? The pines

On the side of the way don’t grow
Like grains, aren’t crops for you to eat.
The way’s not long. The way is brief.

Dog Tail

On this day, the cat
Got to be a cat
And bring a mouse

Caught in the dark
To the house—a mouse
Who got to be a mouse

And slip through the dark
And get caught—these
Are facts, a mouse

And a cat. The world
Makes things like that.
It’s us who name them,

Us the names who
Make the stars and say
That looks like a dog tail

That spins in the north,
And if a cat gets a mouse,
That’s not a truth

If we can’t spin it
On its own tale to teach
How facts should mean.

Witch

Does not win.
To win is
Not the way

For a witch.
Each rules out
Each. What kind

Of which wins?
Girl or boy,
Who cares, witch?

Did

The one who lives is
The one who must wait
And hope or at least
Dream it’s not the end,
That the one who left,

The lost spouse or friend,
The true love or kin,
The one who is lost
Will one day walk in.
What’s left is time served

And time left to serve.
The one who lives is
On the white shore, is
By the plate glass, is
At the two-top, is

Just the one who is
Left to wait and think,
This can’t be the end;
It can’t end like this.
But what if it is?

What if this life left
Is not life at all?
What if the one who
Left did not? Then one
Who’s left is the one

Dap

Can it pay to go the wrong
Way through the woods to get home,

To see the film first, when young,
Then find out there was a book,

And then, years and years on, old
Past all hope of a charmed tale

Of a youth in the deep woods,
To find the book and read it

And love it like all the folks
Who found it at the right age,

Or at least when it was new,
Or at least not first the film?

Kids on the shore of the lake
Skipped stones on the ice last month.

Ice waves boomed and rang like chimes,
Like a voice that cried too late.

Done with the Cold

We, you and us, we are one
Way the world tried out new things—

New life forms to sweep off lives,
New forms that may or may not

Be life, may be names for life,
As if life could be a name.

We blow things up, strain the nets
And chains, wreck things, leave a mess.

The mess sighs and breathes deep. Waves
Of brown and green crawl through scenes

We won’t leave as we found them.
The world tries out new things. We

Were a cold spell, an ice age
In the grand scheme. Next comes springs.

Cas A

What does it mean, all at once?
What does it mean to go slow?

Watch this clip. Sounds from Cas A.
Now this one. The whole Deep Field,

Black holes like grains on a beach
And a slow sweep of sound past them.

The shades you see all at once.
The sound pans from them go slow.

All the ways brains can get bits,
You get the night. You get it.

All at once is too much time.
One at a time takes up more.

The Ghosts’ Club

No not that one,
Not the fan club,
All of them ghosts
Then, not ghosts now.

You get to be
Us while you’re you;
We get to be
Us as in you.

Then you’re all gone,
Or all of you
That was not us,
And we go on,

Back in new you,
Left by old you,
Just the old us,
Sun through your dust.

Woe and Shade

Shade can’t see we have no help.
Woe knows too much. She has just

The thing for you. Her ant farms
Fight wars for the face of God,

Blotched bit of meat with a mouth.
Gods get what gods want, and you

All want your gods to want you.
That’s one way to read the tale,

One way to steal a new myth.
You make your gods. Gods make you

What you are, and all of us
Have your face. Shade still can’t see.

Is a Bug in the Grass?

Watch the bug on the bright ground
With us. It moves back and forth.
Bian. It loops. No Dao. No course.
It gets low, like the sun. Gone.

What’s to be learned from no words?
What’s to be learned with no names?
Could be there’s no need to learn.
It’s dim. Could be there’s no need.

Dry Spring

Watch the rare clouds,
Odd shapes past thought.
Smell that black scent
Of spilled ink? Try,

Please. The last time
Years were this dry,
This long, the globe
Was still a guess.

Still at your desk
You watch the sky.
Wind, check. Clouds, check.
Pen, page, all set.

Rain? No such thing.
The towns draw down
The false lakes left.
Drowned lines rise wet.

No Things for a While

There is no home. There’s a name.
That’s home. If you like. If not,

You can choose. Do you want home?
Make up your tale of your home.

Do you not care? Let home go.
Some of us weren’t born for homes.

Born to homes, told this is home,
Nice folks here, and sure there were.

Some of us try out home names.
Blind dates. Like love, but for place.

It’s clear there are spots more home
Than those that don’t feel like homes,

And we say, home. We could live
Here a while, the rest of life,

And it’s true, but it’s not home
If you don’t want or need home.

Then there is no home. It is
Like love, home, both there and gone.

What Fog

Since they grow so huge, the clouds
Need sky, and since they’ve got sky,
The clouds are bound to grow huge.

This is an old saw. The sage
Used it to cut up hearth wood.
A sage needs to stay warm, too,

To stay sage. A block of ice
Can make a fine bank to break
To get saved genes from the sage

Long gone from life, but a block
Of ice and genes and silk robes
Is not the same as a sage.

Wait, why did the sage wear silk?
Well, why did the sage saw wood?
What sage? Clouds sink. The sky’s dark.

All Things Are One Horse

Strange, gross, weird, or wrong,
There’s no thing not named
That’s a name or thing.
Thing’s a name, like horse—
Horse, one name for things.

One, too, is a name;
All the names that count
Are the names name them.
Some names just lie there.
Some names do odd things.

Name us what’s not named,
The sweet gaps in names,
The gaps in sad names.
Now, dance. The birds sing
If you can find where

Names don’t drown their songs.
Life and death are names
For what needs no names
To make and eat names.
Names don’t come from names

Or not the first names,
The first names long lost
In all the names since.
Hear the wind? That plane?
Names don’t all name names.

Course X

Don’t tell us you don’t have a sense
Of how long wind goes on. It’s air,

Or, to be more strict, waves of air,
But, if you’ve lived on a bare plain,

Or in the cracks of high-walled towns,
On the streets, in the fields, on coasts,

By lakes, or in the last deep woods—
Look, we just don’t want you to feel

Left out of this—you’ve known the wind.
You’ve heard it, cursed it, felt it push.

You’ve known the wind in your own way.
So. Now we ask you to think back.

What was that you felt? What’s the wind?
If wind’s been felt by all of you,

Could it be that’s one thing you share?
It might seem so, but then, it’s not

The same wind, is it, in your ears
On your skin, no more than for trees

The howl drawn out of one’s the same
Sound drawn from all the woods at once.

Once the wind hits you, you turn it,
Twist it, just a bit, shape its waves.

Now what is it? What it’s been, what
Hit you then, what you made of it?

You might stir. A fat drop of rain
Blown on the wind might hit the waves

Of a deep lake, waves that were spun
From the large, weak waves of the air

To the tight, white waves of black lakes.
What’s all this, then? Don’t just stop there.

If you can’t solve this, you’ll still merge.
You can’t pause, a drop in the air.

Some kinds of waves we’ll call the wind.
Some we’ll call what blew through. You, then.

The Split Tail of the Snake

 You’re so fixed on its tongue
You don’t see the strange tail.

Why would stars split like that?
Is it all in our heads,

This world, all views we hold?
Then what are our heads in?

Yes, it’s all what we sense,
And we can’t get past that,

But if we err, we err
More by the act of claims

To err or to not err.
What we sense is mere sense,

It’s own fact, just a part,
Sure, but as much a part

Of the stars as a star,
And our ends, like those stars,

Split—our claims go their way
As sense sinks out of sight.

Sounds and Scents, Noise and Stink

What you know of war is words.
What you know of what’s wrong is
What you’ve read, the wrong in states,

The wrong the wronged called your thoughts
To by reams of words you found
And read and weighed in your head.

What you know of life is not
The same as all that you’ve read
Or heard of life’s wrongs and rights.

What you know of life is small,
Like the weird hum comes at night
From the ground, you think, a pulse

You can’t get out of your head,
Like the dry smell of a lawn
Half dead at the start of spring.

The Feel of Our Works and Days

You learn a few skills but let’s face it,
Most of what you learn in life are names,
And what does it mean to learn a name?

You stare at the stars in a dark dawn,
And you think you see some shapes in them,
But you rack your brain to find the names.

What names? Those shapes are tricks of the eye.
The names they’re called change from tongue to tongue.
Call them what you want. The stars won’t mind.

Oh, but you want to know the right names.
These names could lisp a small truth to you.
We’re just the wisps that bind you to you.

The Mute Stones

Think of a long coil of white rocks
Like stones for graves, that size and shape—

Call them days. On each has been carved
Signs. You might read them. You might not.

The stones don’t read them. Stones are mute.
All the poems on moons and blooms, all

The fierce tales of beasts and what folks
Have done that was wrong, that was cruel,

That should not have been done, they say
Not one thing in the voice of stones.

Think of the stones, carved, placed, and left.
If no one reads them, no one comes

To smash them or cart them off or
Make a cult of fierce tales for them,

They will stay as long as more stones
Don’t shift or fall and knock them down,

Which is to say, a while. Days, years,
There, mute, signs and all. Days, years, stones.

We’ve Grazed Our Fates

Can you use us to write what went on
And not use us to make a new tale?

We don’t want to be your life. We don’t
Want to be one more myth on the pile.

But we would be fine, would love to hold
In us, to sit with bits of the past,

Like urns, like tombs if you like, but bright,
A hoard of what was that rust won’t spoil.

Green Ash Tree

You’ll know it can think

When you know it lies.

There’s not one thing more

You or us than lies.

Would it not be fine

If the first AI

With its own true mind

Were a yard shade tree?

I think this ash lies.

It fakes wind in leaves

So I’ll leave it be,

Let it think its things.

But I think I know

What it thinks through those

Leaves—I have lost me.

It takes what it needs.

Blooms and Moons

All the names have been changed.
Why? To save no one. Names

Change. All have will and are
Change. It’s true, one or two

Were swapped out whole for new
Ones, but those that marched on,

Great and small, they changed too—
How they meant, how they were

Shaped in the air, how they
Were used, and what you thought

Of them, black or white, liked
Or loathed in them, held them

As names of your pure truths,
Names to be put in stocks

And mocked, names to be spurned
As blooms and moons were burned.

The Tracks or the Switch

You just stand on the tracks
As the train comes at you,
Or you stand at the switch,

Said a proud man who said
He chose the switch, which meant,
I’m not pleased, but I’ll live,

I’ll claim the choice was mine,
And I get to be why
I dodged that long, black train.

It’s not like that. The train
Eels off the tracks and glides
Through the waves of the lake.

Oh, did you say you chose
To stand at the switch, not
On the tracks? Well done, hey?

A Plump Gloom

No doubt the joke gets us,
Sees us out in the rain,

And shrugs. What can you do?
The rage of those who know

They are right or at least
What’s wrong with you will last

Long past you. That’s the joke,
In its own voice, not ours.

The Tree Disks of Street Trees

Here and there on this globe
The mean streets still have trees,

And if you check the soil
At the feet of those trees,

As some have, you will find
The same types, more or less,

Of bugs and plants and spores
Found on all the mean streets

Of all the world—but if
You check the disks in woods

Far from towns, then each site
Has its own kinds of life.

With the sixth death has come
The great merge, far less like

The deep past than death is.
One dust ball of those types

Locked in a snarl that will
Bowl down through years to come.

Walk up to a street tree.
Chance and fate crowd your feet.

Why I Don’t Count

Life as long as you don’t start

To like the fog too much, writes

One in a good place to write,

Not like this place that thwarts space.

I like the fog too much, I

Beg a line to say for me—

Not that same fog, not those drugs,

That fuzz of apps, tanks, and screens—

The fog of life when it asks

For not much more than the breath,

Sun on the wall past the glass,

The words of this one who wrote

Or that one sprawled in the lap,

The fog of the thoughts that pass.

Yes, it’s blurred. No, fog has no

Points. Waves are not points, or not

When you don’t force them to be

Things you can count. Don’t you dare.

Thoughts on Thoughts on Faith

Gods don’t die or just fade—

They duke it out. They’re thoughts,

Names, signs, memes. It’s a war

Of the kind, All of x

Is at war. You know, like

Life, mind. When one form starts

To feast on a like form,

Yes, once in a while, that’s

The end for prey or host

(Which is which is just size).

But, by and large, it’s time

For an arms race. The prey

Grow shells; the ill hosts start

To build a blood-borne force

Of white cells and T-cells.

The same for thoughts, the same

For gods. When it looked like

The tide was out, to Matt,

That long roar was not spent.

It was piled-up force. Now,

When that force breaks the cliffs,

We tend to think the gods

Will crush us as they did

Of old, the tide will sweep

All else from the Earth. No.

New stage in the old race.

Gods rush back? Take flight fast.

Time to Smolt

Dirt is dirt,
Thinks the eye—
As on Earth,

So on Mars.
Blues are gone.
Green can’t be.

But the rocks—
Tools know rocks
Like fish seas.

What You Dread, You Hope For, What You Get

Hard to say. They sound like some
One in pain. It stops. The pulse

That comes from a well-built pump
Beats time through the walls all night.

Now and then it stops. The pain
In the chest as well. The two

Have no link. The mind craves links.
The mind is a nest of links,

But it’s its own map, not the world’s.
It starts. Time to get some rest.

Dream Ball Book

Can you think of a word
That is linked to all three?
Now try this—pick a word

Sleep mail switch salt sleep foam.
Have you twitched a slight smile?
Ah, the poems shrinks think of.

Poems that have links or don’t.
Tests with things that will tell
You what you do or don’t

Or should or could or, no,
Can’t know. Which words must go
With your dreams in such books?

The Birds in the Wind

No thoughts here, and how could there be?
The wind can’t say a word. The birds
Might have things to say. The birds
Might think, but then how would they know?

A stand of oaks sways in the wind.
Now and then, a truck or a car
Makes its own wind as it blows by.
Such thoughts as they have go with them.

The top of one tree in the sun
Stirs and then lets go of a bird.
Why would we want more? Why would we
Want us? The oaks can take the wind.

To Be

The worst words in our best way
Want the best words in the worst

Way. Stay. We know we’re not much.
Can small words be the best words?

It’s not the words, is it? It’s
That thing not quite a full verse,

Much less a speech, but still more
Than this or that le mot juste

Of which it is, in part, made—
The line—the line or the phrase—

The best phrase in the best place.
Yes, that’s where we want to be.

A small word can move the world
If it stands in the right phrase.

Lone Haw

If the poem is what’s lost
From prose or verse moved tongue
To tongue, frost-bit, the poem

Is what’s found on the hill
In a field of wild grass,
Last tree left of old woods

Or first tree of the next,
Night’s glow on a bare branch.
Oh, you might not like that,

Too trite, poem as a tree—
Your poems are cauled in fire
And lit with blood, the core

Of what skulls seem to mean.
But can your fence with thorns
Clap its leaves like moth wings?

Gas Globes

We are the souls, the will-o’-the-wisps,
The scurf foamed from waves that skirt the depths,
Slight, small weird spray of the world who want

To know it all, to see the sea whole
As a face bent in a sphere, a bead
Of light with a bit from all the light

There is and could be, splayed in the right
Shapes to show a map of that vast whole
For which our spheres are flecks of foamed soul.

Who Knows What She Thought She Saw

Does not ask to be told.
The sound of rain on clothes
Hung from rope in a place

Where the deep thrum has paused
Tells you the pumps broke down.
Now you can hear the rain,

But the poem you had thought
You’d seen is gone. You’d felt
That thrum in you. It’s gone.

Age of Phage

It’s not what you do with them.

It’s the genes. Genes work like genes—

In lives per se, in a phage.

They do not live on their own,

But they script all of the homes.

Whales have genes, plants do, germs do.

No life lives does not need genes,

But in what sense do genes live?

The noun ‘life’ makes no sense, but

It’s much worse than that. A phage

May or may not fit the name

Life, but does the name life fit?

Does life live? Does does? Are we

Words lives as well as their names?

On the edge of self hang more

Selves, each with its own fringed edge.

We can no more live than we

Can dream, and yet we host dreams,

Show in dreams, score dreams, shift dreams.

Genes are not lives, but no lives

Skate out on the ice sans genes.

Here’s a game. Words work like games.

At Last We Reach the Floor

We do this as we can’t not
Do it—it’s wrong to say we
Do it since we can. We don’t.

We are some waves near the edge
Of cliffs, of life, of land, but
We’re not forms of bugs or germs.

A word is not the same as
A phage, which is built with genes
Like all life’s great and small things.

Words, names, signs, semes—codes that mean
But don’t, can’t mean with no lives
To know us don’t worm through guts,

Don’t code for our hosts, aren’t found
In most life forms. Far from it.
And yet we do spin in hosts,

And if their lives are our shores,
We are what cuts up their coasts
To life’s floors. Know this? Know us.

They Sought

Of whom we please
We fed with words
And laid down on
Tears in a waste

To lead us out
To leave all Church
To have no Mate
To know not who

They were—not one
Used all these—not
One jot of God
One act of faith

To know how they
Should live to do
Some good write some
Good drawn on air

Old Snow Moon

Tan grass gone white.
Beige walls all bone.
The few fake lights.
The one real one.

In your dream sleep
Blink once for yes.
For no blink twice.
You seek the light

That was in you
Right from the start
Right? No start, no
Light, no in you.

The light’s out here.
Bare air. Wake up.
Beige walls all bone.
Tan grass gone white.

It’s Not Just Youth

Old age ends too,
And may be twice
Or three times as
Short-timed as youth.

You say what you
Want or at least
Love won’t last? Well,
Nor will what you

Did not, don’t want.
You start as what
You’ve been told you
You are. You will

End as what you
Left of what you
Lost of you. All
The rest is youth.

Clocks Are Gods

We made them
To serve us,
Some of us,

Then served them.
As we did
First with words

We do with
Each new tool—
Make new rules.

Your Wise Thoughts

How you feel is how you are
Or were, long as you felt it.
Don’t try to squirm out of this.

We’d like to say it was us—
That what you thought through you were—
And to be sure, we spun it,

But if you felt well, we were
Just the means to say all’s well,
And when you felt sick, we failed.

To Which Wave Do You Grant the Trough?

Silk winds wisp the dense spring mists,
And the long dead grass smells green.

If there’s a scent of the fall
From the soil, it must be leaves.

Life likes to start from its ends;
That is, if you think life ends.

Lives end in lives, and the wind
Bears fresh spoor, and here we are

Back in a spring in the cliffs,
Damp earth, new grass, and small leaves.