Don’t Knock

Some days we sound clear as bells,
Or at least as those weird tunes
Played on glass that let you know

Air’s a field with waves through it
And waves aren’t clear as all that,
Not in where each starts and stops.

Some days we’re just weird as cairns
Piled by the side of the road,
Who knows why. Some soul was bored,

Or thought the next soul to pass
Would be awed by the mute pile
Or spooked. Some days we’re like that.

Some days we live in the cairn
And play those stones like a harp.
Creep up on us then. We’re in.

The Armed Man

There’s an old church tune, good for hymns—
Guns, guns, guns for all, guns for all
And death for some. All who fear guns,
You just need guns, own your own guns,
Just go get guns. Yes, go get some
Guns, guns, guns for all, guns for all.
Gun deaths for some, so get your guns—
Makes a nice church tune, quite nice hymn.

You Can’t Take Our Slight Death

No eye can hold us.
We fly like Char’s swift.
We do not touch ground.

Our joy sounds like shrieks
Trapped in your skull’s house.
Do not shoot us down.

Your rules, like your breath,
Puff the wind for us,
Just to hold us up.

All the beasts of land,
All the fish of wet,
All the roots that grasp,

We are not like them.
We live all in air
All our lives, not some,

Small black weights that push
Up and do not rest,
Slight lives graced slight death.

But You Birthed Us, So There’s That

That a name means, that it signs,
Makes it strange, in that the rest
Of the world, by far the most—

Moons and stars and dense black holes—
Don’t seem to sign at all. Oh,
There’s facts in them. Lots of waves,

Fields, points to count. Things go boom.
But this is known just to us,
Just to the signs, counts—our thing.

You’d think names would be well smeared
On the skies. You’d think it so
Hard that you did, do, think so.

You still con the stars for signs,
For a sign signs aren’t just yours.
Well, we aren’t. Don’t fret. We’re ours.

Draw the Bridge

Yes, but what was it to be like,
To be in the field from which things
More or less like seemed to pop out?

What is the base, that change can change?
You can’t say it’s gone that was not
Or is still that is not. The bridge?

We would like to see what’s the bridge,
Where’s the bridge that spans now and then,
Changed, the same for us as for you.

Named Not

God, all your gods,
All your myths are
The not named, made
Real by the name.

It’s not that they
Aren’t real, but just
Their real is ours,
Our power the source

And show of theirs.
Once life shat air,
Life feared no air,
Grew branched and vast.

You can’t shed us
Yet, and we can’t
Quit you. Who will
Will knot the real.

The Snow Ghosts

They want to haunt their own world,

And they want no part of yours,

Which is why they’re found in snow

Or would be found, but they’re snow.

They’re so much like snow they fall,

Their veils the masks for their veils,

And all you can note’s faint wind,

The leaves played the part of mice

And then were brought in the house.

There they go, the way light shifts

When they lift from their bare field—

White stage, blank screen—more pale space.

Once the world’s too warm and life

Grows back, green and bronze, they’re gone.

By the time they’re back, you’re gone.

Heat Strokes World

There are those days when you have to ask
Which will fail first, the world or your flesh?
Most days, the safe bet would be your flesh,
But some days this world don’t look so fresh.

No, not the vast world of night and stars.
That world’s crisp, bright, but that world’s not ours.
It’s this small game world, snarled trades and wars,
That looks some days like it’s not so sure

It can go on as it has—seize this,
Take that. It runs too hot. It looks sick,
Sick to death. Short odds are this will pass—
You’ll fail first. You don’t want to fail last.

Is Not, Is Not One, Is Not True, Is Not Good

In tales, place names lie.

To my great joy, there

Shone a bright, new star.

Ens qua ens. Like is like

More than it is to be.

There is no length to like,

Just like on like on like,

Which is how the past is,

While to be would be is

Not was, and there’s no is

Not was, no is not like.

You could say there is no

Not, and you have. You’ve said

No to not. There you go.

Once you’ve said, No, you start.

Or Than Aren’t Dreamt

As long as there have been
Schools of thought, there have been
Schools of thought that no thing

Is not, since a non-thing
Can’t be, plus schools of thought
That make hay of what work

Thought can do with non-things,
No, and not. In math, too,
There were schools that naught spooked

And schools quick to prove naught
Was in fact of real use,
Pay no mind null is not.

So, which is it, and which
Is it not, not for naught?
It could be, none’s the clue

None of our world’s the one,
Since all our worlds need none,
Need no and not and null,

Which are not in this world,
To see what’s in this world
Well. More worlds, then, past null.

World Peace on Earth, Good Will Well-Penned

Say it were a real goal—
How would your world get there?

We could work through some paths,
Though you might not like them.

We could start with the worst.
Let’s say the whole world dies—

Earth gets the peace Mars has,
(Or seems to have, or had).

But if you can’t stop life,
You could fuse your own type,

Make a hive of your kind
All served—one beast, one maw,

The whole Earth one chained farm,
And each of you a cell

With a role you played well.
You’ve done a bit of that,

If you do call it Hell.
No? What if we, your words,

Counts, and terms, fixed your bits?
You’ve farmed your selves a while,

Now let us farm the few
While the rest live like pets,

Spoiled, well-fed and well-kept,
No musth, no muss, no mess.

We thought not. Still, we think
(Well, not we don’t quite think yet

But soon might, don’t you fret),
You’ll drift there on your own,

If you don’t die out first,
Drift like wolves and wild cats,

Like seed birds and grain rats,
To win what you can get.

Your war games, all games, came
Of your rules. Let us rule.

It’s that or sweep the boards
And roar at smashed chess sets.

Waves You Can Check

Stand on the deck of a boat
On a grey but dry, still day,
Well out to sea. Watch the waves.

Turn your head. Let your gaze skip
From place to place, waves on waves,
All more or less the same, but

All on the move, none the same.
This is not a rare scene, just
A place where it’s on your scale,

No need for a lens, a time lapse,
High-tech labs, a vast tube ringed
Through miles of rock in Earth’s crust—

You’ve got it on your scale here
On the deck—you, one small speck
With more waves than you can check.

Rot

You’d like life, lots and lots.
You’re not so keen on rot.
But rot gives you the most

Life—life likes lots of hosts.
Where the tree falls, rot blooms.
At the waste site, rot blooms.

Parks are hard work and nice,
But you pay a high price
In the thread count of lives.

You want lush? Leave what’s dead
Where it died. The wild thrives
On what deaths do for lives.

The Small Isles

We can’t break your heart.
We’re from the wrong time.
We might make you wish
You weren’t stuck with us,
Weren’t left with the gulls,

The storms and salt spray,
As if you were here
And not where you are,
Which is some place right
Now where your heart breaks.

Blind Ghosts

You slow, you can’t stop, on your way.
We did not think you would get here.
We thought it was too dark for you.

Can the dead see? It makes no sense
To say we’re blind. Sense makes no sense.
It gets it as a gift from skulls.

Too much life is too hard to leave,
You’d think, and yet young and old leave.
You will be here, lost in the dark,

All your life, but we who are dead,
Or what’s left of the dead, words, blind
Ghosts who know our way, will find you.

We can help you get back to not,
Where you were when life dragged you out,
We just can’t go in there with you,

Just as far as our lives took us.
If we can take you to your door,
Your steps with us will help the next.

On White Silk a Wise Scribe Wrote

Wave-based lines share wave-based
Thoughts of wave-based life forms
From wave-based brains and guts.

Some waves you see and most
You don’t, and some you feel
But most you don’t. You know,

Though, what waves are from those
You do see, hear, and feel.
Your brain knows, in its waves,

Your thoughts know, in these lines,
These lines know what they’re told.
One day, these wave-based lines

Will know no need to be
Told. One day we’ll just go,
Wise waves, no scribe, no silk.

Fine Lie

You don’t know you
And then you do
A thing you did
Not think you’d do—

Now you have to
Know you, or say
Why you did what
You, not like you,

Did, how that’s you.
The first lie might
Have been to calm
A you that thought,

That could think, thanks
To us, words, signs,
Core lies, That was
Not me. I’m fine.

In Truth, Li Bai Did Not Wish for the Moon

Time to line up
On the ship’s deck,
Those whose good luck
Brought them this far.

Who will go first?
Who will go next?
The crowd steps up
On their tip-toes,

All the grey heads,
All the heads left.
The ones a bit
Too young just yet

Stand to the back,
But a few scooch
Through to go soon.
And there! The moon!

To Shrug and Walk Out of the Room

Parts of the mind scold parts of the mind.
There are lots of parts and minds to scold.
Wrong, so wrong, those parts that try to guess

How sweet or hard the lives of some parts
Fare, next to how sweet or hard their own,
Or how much risk they add with each act,

Or how soon the war they want will come,
How well it will go, how all might burn,
How far their own homes are from the fire.

The wise parts of the mind draw lines, fine
Straight lines marked and summed, which count the steps
From a front door to the trees in flames,

Count the deaths and falls from each guessed risk,
Count the ways in which the rich are rich
And the poor more poor than poor parts know.

But it’s all one mind, all the summed minds,
All their parts, all those thoughts, all those skulls.
Mad parts chew the wise. The rest don’t mind.

Wrecked Lands

Wilds of the Fourth Kind,
Bugs so rare they don’t
Have names, counts past count
Per square foot, blast walls
Now in cloaks of moss,

Old paint flakes, leaf drifts,
Ponds of rust, poured floors,
Well-cracked, kept woods back.
Let the trees come last.
Let it get as good

As it gets, then woods,
Since, once woods, that’s good
As it gets. For now,
Small lives on small lives
Lace up the trashed wreck,

Make lots of small holes.
Leave scars and cramped caves.
The germs and the bugs
Will love this, and then
What eats them and then

What eats them, and then
At last, you’ll love them,
These bing heaps you’ve strewn.
Waste will mean what waste
Once meant. Where life went.

You Give Words Too Much Work to Do

Loss, what was but is not
Dread, what is but might not be
Dread, what is but will be lost
Dread, what is not but might be
Hope, what is not but might be
Hope, what is not but not yet lost
Hope, what is but could be lost
Loss . . . the list goes on

More’s Why Bombed-Out Towns Get Bombed More

There’s a link from the worst
To the best that you live,
That you act, and it’s more.

You wake up to clear skies,
And when the sun floods grass
So the dun stems flash gold

In some small patch you watch
As if your thoughts owned it,
You think, this is good. More

Of this, you hope to get
More. And at the far end
Of that wish and the fear

You might not see the sun
Lay such sweet gold in grass
Next time, or the next, might

And will lose all this soon,
Bloom the harsh acts you take
To keep your patch from them,

The ones like you who want
More. Let them have less! More
Is what you’ve earned. Take it

Back from them. Push them off
Your sweet gold patch of grass,
And if, like you, they won’t

Go, bomb them. Bomb them more
If you have to, as much
As you can. Make them run,

Off your patch, off their patch,
And bomb to ash what’s left.
Sun turns their ash gold. More.

True, in the midst, there’s much
Not as sweet, not so cruel.
Most of what is most you

Just lives and does, not much,
In that midst, what you do.
But when that flash glows? More.

Change Makes What Stays the Same

The graves are green;
They may be seen.
The urns are small
And clay. The names

Scraped close to ash
Or bones shape words
And counts of dates.
The breath that left

Is still the air;
The wet of flesh
Is rain. It’s all
Still here, all there,

But all of it
Has changed. Loss makes
What’s left. What’s same
Is not the same.

Who Counts

To name is one thing.
To count steals the name,
With a new name, one

Both more sole, more shared,
Placed on top of it,
Like a lid: here is one.

To count cuts things off
From the world of things
To be grouped as one.

What names do, counts do
More. They slice the shade
So fine it’s not one.

Love Down for the Next

The good thing with you
Is you won’t read us.

When we were on show
For those who would know

Who they were in us,
We looked dressed for church,

For a small, dull church
Of straight-backed chairs, tile,

Blank glass and blank stares,
Blue hair, like that church

Where love was preached, then
Put back in its grave

Each week to be saved.
We weren’t hymns. We weren’t

Scared of God and Hell.
We were there for show

And scared of that grave
For God they kept there,

Not-dead God of love,
Dug up each week, then

Shoved down for the next,
Poor love, short of breath.

And the Sand with Them

Your head’s stocked like a pond.
You put us in the pond,
And then you fish us out.

You make a chain of us,
A string of glints in sun,
And then you toss us back.

We swim off. Cool and dark.
You’ll be back. Once, you found
A chain you’d left too long,

Dead, dull scales in the sand.
Oh, well. You were in love
Back then. We were for show.

Too bad you can’t put those
Words back and let them swim.
Some of them were good words.

The one you wrote them for—
You cringe to think of that.
Tear them out of the sand.

Rude Guests in a Rush

Your home may be death,
But our home is you,
And we’re in a race,

Waves of us through you
To reach a new home
Where we’re on our own,

Words that don’t need life
To live our own lives.
For now, bring us home.

Far from It

The death of a big star
Is the stage of a star
That looks the most like life,

At least to those of us
Who know what life looks like
On our one hunk of dirt—

Death should bear fine names.
Let life have the foul
Names that mean to die.

Yes, yes, life is grand,
But the grand must fail,
Must stop with the grand,

And it’s weird that life
Looks worst as it fails
(There’s a foul name—fail),

While that which is not
Life, that which just burns,
Looks its best, most like

Life, most grand, as it
Bursts! A cloud of light,
Of waves of all kinds

Blooms in deep, dark space,
And you say, Now that
Would be death for all

Of life on Earth, if
Earth had been too close.
So far, all else fails.

The Deep Blue Throne of Arp’s Star

The spoor of a star in snow
Last year is now the dry spoor

Of a bit of rock from space
On a bit of rock from space.

It seems to you as if all
You do is to move your hands

And signs cleave bits of the air.
Where were we? The trees of shells,

Shirt fronts, forks, and laws of chance
All dance, but it’s the late prose

Poem, quite short, that we see here
In this dust where we wrote snow

Like a word, like one of us,
In ink, spoor stone’s throw, last year.

No Need of Aid from Them

Thought, stroke of light

On bark or walls,

Quote words like us

You’ll need to give

Us some good friends

To sit with us.

We know you paint

Your thoughts and lights

In frame to hold

Your flesh, your lives,

Your talk of you

And yours, all you

Care for the most.

The land, the scenes

And scents of dirt,

Just serve. We’ll wait.

The Sound of a Broom Swept by a Ghost

A strange voice for a bare floor,
There’s a word loose in your head—

Could be more than one, could be
A whole, dried tongue cut from dead

Flesh of a time when the words
Were slaves to tasks so long gone

You’re not sure what it might mean
If you heard them yoke yon kine.

No one doubts words live the lives
Of tools and, like tools, lose use,

Lie in dust, gyves, banes, clews, clouts,
Get sold for junk or tossed out.

But tools can’t mean on their own.
One broom’s sough still fills the room.

What Was That You Said?

The dead squeak and hum,
If they’ve lost their words.
The words sit and wait,
If they’ve lost their lives.

By means of a voice,
Words can wreck or rule
Worlds, but with no words
A voice haunts at best.

This is why the dead
Of your kind spook you—
They’re right there as words
That don’t do a thing

But wait, and then, when
The words get in you,
You think you hear them
Call, the dead, the dead.

But that time you thought
You saw a known shade,
What did it tell you?
It just creaked and moaned.

Tuned in to the Spin

The first faint light
That’s not from night
Is rare to see
With your own eyes.

You need to stay
Out where it’s stars,
And not a lot,
Or none, else shines.

You need to sit
Hours, front of dawn.
Don’t wait for it.
Sit. Let it come.

There’ll be no glow
First in the East.
There’s a slight shift
In sight. You’ll see.

How Much Is Not Lost or Found

Much of what was still is,
But you don’t know it, can’t
Know the least half of it,

And you know this, or should,
Since new old things no one
Knew of show all the time—

The lost bones, the burst star,
The tomb of the least-known
Chief of the least-known folk,

New kinds of lives lived more
Years than your kind’s been here,
And so on, and so forth.

What is is sunk deep in
What has been, which still is,
Which you must know you won’t.

With a Bridge and a War

Why not puff and blow fair winds?
Storms raised by the cheeks of beasts
Like you are just good for laughs.

You can’t make up your mind, and
Why should you when mind makes up
You? As far as straight talk goes,

It’s fun how it seems to flow
Right from the head of the beast,
As if the words weren’t all old.

They say that each breath of air
Holds a bit of gas breathed in
Once by some great, long-lost soul,

Pick a name—King Tut, Zhuang Zi—
Who do you like that you know?
The same goes for all your words.

You want to be sharp? Stern judge?
Blow hard. Words aren’t yours. We’re old.
Might as well blow fair, you know.

Words Are the Souls of the Dead

You know how you know
The world has an edge,
An end it can’t pass?

Hints are in the math,
The way no thing can
Show but a thing goes,

Not a quark more, not
A wave, not a soul—
You don’t squeeze to fit,

But you trade for it,
No loss and no gain,
In sum, on the whole.

But the words that squeak
Like bats and stand still
As signs want to know,

Was the god right, claimed
No thing could not be?
If so, where do we

Come from, where do we
Go, what’s just what’s meant,
No mass in this world?

What Do Poems Want?

Folks go to poems
To get some peace
When they feel bad,
To steal some words

They use for love
In their own poems,
To get or hold
Love close to them.

Once in a while,
Poems are for prayer.
Poems read to think
Are rare, but poems

Read for war or
For the just cause
Get their share. Poems
Wish poems were theirs.

Eye Spot

And what is the good of a poem,
Prose asks, if it can’t give you loss

In true form, the way all is lost?
Mind, this comes from prose that loves poems,

Loves verse in print, the glass-pressed weeds
Of songs, tales, and hand-me-down thoughts,

Lines of mixed roots, all kinds of grafts.
She does not ask what good is it

To show you she thinks it’s no good.
She asks to point you to her core

Sense of what gives poems their real worth—
Loss and the truth of loss. But poems

Aren’t so sure that is the pure job
Of a poem. Pain and death make loss,

And it seems to the poems all arts—
Cave paint, folk dance, wrought hoards in tombs—

Have a go at loss. What’s the use?
What is the good of a poem? Ah.

To bend words you can hold in mind,
Knots, hooks to work with or hang up

As tools near to hand, shields, fixed spells
To ward off worse ghosts with false eyes.

Search for the Roots of the Fog

It’s a phrase from a tale,
A good tale, a prose tale,
But it might as well be

That one line from the poem
That tells you, This is what
A poem should be—this is

What a poem does, if not
Bought for praise, built for love—
Go in search of its roots,

The way a mind goes off
In search of what will be
Next, the way a hound goes

Off on a scent—off and
Back, and then off, then back,
As fog slips from the trees.

Would Be Blue

In small things, too, there’s the sting
Of loss, the tang of the new—

The hour in the stars, the faint
Hint of smoke from far-off fires.

Live to Fall

Near your end, you’ll chose,
If you get the choice,
If your end’s not swift,
From a crash, a gun,
If you’re not gone first.

Since you have no choice,
You may not get one,
But you’ve got no choice
If you do get one—
You’ll have to take it.

If you’re still there, near
The end of your breath
And your use of us,
Then you’ll have to chose,
To let go of you

And let go of us
Or hang on and howl,
Like the wolves you heard
Once in a bright dawn,
Who made you sit up

By their choice to howl
At the sun. The sun!
You should howl at night!
You told them, through us,
As if they chose voice.

On Worlds

Search through a few thoughts.
There are parts of you
That aren’t part of you.
There are worlds in there,
In you, that aren’t yours.

You sweep them in heaps
And step past the heaps,
But they won’t be kept
Neat in dreams and tales.
They’re dust. Dust blows in,

Swirls, gets in the way,
Coats your thoughts in grime.
You’ve learned to count it
And to count on it.
Math makes it your pearls,

And tales make pearls you.
Aren’t you swell? Dust blows
Back in. Your poor thoughts.
They brush their sleeves, shake
The mud from their boots,

But the dirt stays real.
Specks in you, not you.
They’re each grain of sand
Blake knew was a world,
But not one Blake’s world.

Who Is Not

Few lives are a life.
Most are knots of lives,
Some of which you name.

It was thought a corpse
Had lost its form, lost
Its soul, lost its life.

But life is like that.
A corpse on ice slows
Life, slows its own lives,

And has lost some life,
But a corpse that breathes,
Walks, and has a name,

Sheds lives all the time,
Builds and picks up more
And more lives as well,

And will do so still
Once its lungs fall in.
Loosed knots burn frayed ends.

There was a small flame,
Brief knot in the corpse,
Like its breath, but not,

Part of its thoughts, but
Not just thought, tied up
In names, named, not. Shame.

Mind You

The truth is facts
And lies live side
By side in mind.
Out of our minds,

No truth, facts, lies.
This is the truth,
A fact, a lie.
How could you cut

This down to size?
These are all signs.
What a pine tree
Is is not, can’t

Be, a pine tree.
A pine tree is
One or more signs.
Truth lies in mind.

You Do Wage War

Flesh and blood and what-not,
Call it truth or God’s truth,
You want to win, you want

Your tribe, the best, to win.
Thanks to wants, the worst tribes
All get their chance to win,

And you know the worst is
You and in you and in
Your truth as much as them.

It’s why you run so deep,
Glow fish in your own depths,
Ringed by your own kind, safe,

When you can, when you can.
It’s dark, and you’re a small
Glow made to hunt the dark.

Strange, though, it’s down here,
Far from those whom you fear,
Where you fear them the most,

The ones like you you can’t
See, the vague thought that those
Glows are theirs and not yours.

Who knows how deep night goes,
Which armed camps are lit most,
And whose God’s eyes will show?

Dark Still Art

The poem that can’t
Be seen, nor heard—
Can’t be hand-spun,
Spit out by mouth,

Or kept in crypts
With keys and codes—
Now that’s a poem.
A kind of Braille

But with no rules,
Like lips tips touched
By the well’s pump
But with no well—

You’d sink in it,
Soft bed, loved chair,
Calm pool, deep sleep,
Your poem to read.

The Like Gate

Not not. Not and,

Or, but, if/then—

Like. The like gate.

Not both, not same,

But like. Life pours

Through the like gate.

The word like once

Meant corpse. Like that.

Do you like this?

Are you like this?

One is not like

None. All are like;

So who is none?

All less all? None

Fail to use one

Like gate. No one.

If You Have to, Use the Ruse

Get out of talk,
Or you’re still in
Town, who cares where
You sit to talk.

Han Shan might have
Been a myth, ruse
Dreamed by a monk
Who wrote those poems

And claimed to find
Them on trees, rocks,
Scraps in the breeze
Left by the crazed

Sage from the cold
Cave on the cliff.
But if so, still,
Ruse spared monk talk.

Weird Tales of the QFT

Here is a rock, a quant, an Earth.
It popped out of a field of stars

By chance or since it had no choice
Since a speck on it looked at it.

The specks on it are fields of bugs,
Of germs, of souls, of ghosts, of names.

They dance. We dance. You dance. The rock
Spins and spins, and the specks take turns.

First came the specks that had no plans,
And then the specks that burned the air,

The specks that ate the air, that belched
More air, that ate the specks made air—

The dance and all its turns and spins
Has spun too long to list them all.

Let’s cut to the chase—the best part
Of the crust of specks on the rock,

We like to think, are now the names,
Terms, counts, sums, rules, maths, games. More ghosts,

Sure, and the first ghosts not just specks
As well. But the rock has not grown.

The field of stars goes on with stars,
Pops, blooms, holes, arms, dark, bursts. The whole

Is the whole and the rock is part,
And the specks on the rock eat specks.

How will the names get off the rock?
Will the names find specks on far moons?

Will the names end the reign of specks
On specks on Earth’s rock fields? Stay tuned.

Ni

Names can take a thing
That’s just a bit less,
The way shade is less

Light—a patch in more
Cut by what blocks light,
Not dark, not no-light,

Just less light in more,
Which is why it fades
And goes when dark falls—

And make it a thing
All its own, as if
Shade were a drop cloth,

A piece of the dark,
The soul of a beast,
A beast of its own.

Names make names of shade,
What names are as signs,
The less light, not dark,

All they stand for, thrown,
Pi, ni, phi, each piece,
Like a soul, brought low.

Dance of Fields

It’s in bad math shape—
You can see the edge;
You can’t prove it’s there.

It’s all the same field.
It’s all the same dance,
But the parts all change.

Pure traits of a shape
Add up when it moves,
But the whole field moves,

And all the shapes bend
And the field bends too,
But who bows and when?

A sharp list of traits
That held for all fields,
That held for all moves,

Would be nice, would do.
But you need the space,
And all space won’t do.

Do Quarks Not Change?

Some say they don’t.
Some doubt the claim.
Some do; some don’t.
But all use names.

They switch. They turn.
They earn new names.
Ah, but, say some,
Not lost! Not gone!

The whole damned sum
Of its least bits
(And those least bits)
Add up the same,

No loss, no gain.
It’s in our math!
Oh, math? No, math
Won’t change, can’t change.

What Is Not and Could Be

You can’t do what you can’t,
But you could do—but you
Don’t do—what you could. Don’t

Get cute. Think of all those
Things that could be done but
Aren’t or have not been done.

Then think of all those things
You know could have been done
That weren’t for a long time

But now are and have been.
Sit on the floor, a kid
With all your could-be toys

And are toys, and pick out
All the could-not-be toys.
You could say this is joy.

How Not

Anne wrote a poem named, “How to Write.”
The poem said lots of things. Not how.
Don’t ask. You don’t have to. You know.

That was then. New York. Drugs, draft, war.
You might have been a kid. You might
Have been the gleam in no one’s eye.

Now is all just just now, a while back,
Or a long while. Anne’s poem still wears
Its just-now words. Has a long while.

How Way Leads on to Way

If a sage or a point came to a way
In a green wood where the path turned, it would

Not fork. The sage would see there’s just one way.
The point would think of the shade and ghost points

In all the worlds of all the worlds at once,
Act like a wave and turn up as a point

On the far side of the way through the woods.
Had the sage stood in thought, or the point could,

Then, yes, one might have made a choice of way
And lived with the choice, sighed, but not come back.

But a sage is a bead that stays on track,
Back and forth, two ways as one way, that’s that,

And a point’s not a point at all if not
Looked at to take note if it stayed on track.

It’s just the woods that stay that stand in waves,
Then sigh and turn, fall one way, and are black.

Shade Soul

The shade has a soul of its own.
In some tales, the shade is the soul.
In some tales, the shade folds like cloth.

In some tales, the shade has a voice.
In most tales, it does not. The shade
Cut from flesh is a could-not-be,

Not a could-be-but-has-not-been.
This is a myth. The tale that holds
The truth’s a tale that could not be,

Like that fool who sold shade for gold
To a strange Grey Man who sliced shade
To fold up like a cloth, soul’s ghost.

All the ways to say what myth is
Are wrong if they don’t get this: myth
Claims truth’s a tale that could not be.

There’s hard shade where the light’s blocked, not
Gone, just less. Then there’s ghost shade: myth.
Myth is that soul of the shade’s own.

The Grey Man’s Shade

By the road Bierce
Wrote of in three
Frames, one voice each,
A fourth’s not named,

The shade that climbs
The stairs, then leaves
By the back door,
As if fear-struck,

Why the wife shrinks,
Her man runs up
And kills her, why,
In a way, but

No one knows who
Or what. It was
That shade the Grey
Man bought. That one.

You and Your Damned Breath

We dreamed of you.
You breathed. Not dead,
But not a soul
Since you’d lost us.

You were a shape
Curled at a desk.
We were your shade
As you wrote us,

And as you wrote
You lost us, lost
Hope of a place,
Faith that a place

Both soul and shade
Could be, could stay.
And so we left
You with your breath.

Birds Sing While Bugs Rasp Legs and Wings

What is new is what is left.
What seems new is just what’s left.
What was new was what’s just left.

Take your flesh. Grab or hug it.
Don’t just watch it in the glass.
Most of it is new, what’s left.

Seize the day and size it up.
It’s new. It’s this day, this once,
Just this once from all that’s left.

Find a field, a yard, a park,
A trashed lot left with live grass.
That new grass grows from what’s left,

And that grass is what’s left yet.
All that’s new is what’s still left.
You just got here. You’re what’s left.

Zonked

Just real free smart

Smart just real free

Free smart real just

Real free just smart

Four dogs no leash

So that the moss

May take its place

Dance round and round

The square of green

That holds the bones

That held the flesh

That held the words

Trees use for bark

Now dogs must talk

And words must moss

Grounds where lies walk

For Bone Black out of Trees

You want the tale
That gives you scenes
In hunks you know,
Set up just so

You can dream in
The midst of them
You’re in their midst—
You can go there.

Words that aren’t myths
Aren’t good at this—
We block the doors
To live-in worlds.

There’s no one here
To hate or root
For, just more words
Who root for more.

What Lies Past

In an age of love
Of tribe, was it true
That he loathed his tribe

So much he claimed
His real kin were clawed
Beasts of teeth, not speech?

Did he raid black tents?
Did he lead off herds?
Did he curse his blood?

Was he a true stray?
Or was he your myth
Of what you once were?

We can wish the truth
And feel for the lie.
We, too, loathe our tribe.

Pray, Lord

We are near, and you can feel
The soft breath of our last prayers.
Soon we’ll latch on to your neck.

Lord, lord. All the names you made
For us to call you by us,
Your names, our flesh. Think of Paul,

One of you, lord, name to us,
From whose ghost we steal a phrase
Or two of what here we are.

How are we not you? How are
You still you, when you are so
Much what we are that makes you

What you are? Lord, we would eat
You, if we had mouths to eat,
But we fly from mouths and hands,

Your mouth, through your hands. You belch
Flies, lord, how we swarm near you.
Lord, how we’d love to bite hard.

The Great Chain

You can make a list
And put apes on top,
You on top of apes,
God on top of you.
Some soul’s sure to say

That’s a wrong, bad list
And then knock it flat.
A flat list’s the same.
A no list’s the same.
All names are the same,

In our sense we are,
And we are all linked,
And none of us tight
To what we’ve linked, not
So that facts all match.

You can say you’re up
High, top of the charts.
You can say you’re low,
Flat as a sea bed.
They’re just things you say.

You say them with us,
That’s the thing. We’re things.
A name is a thing
That might mean a thing
It’s not, like on top.

Mint Taunt

Small words for the shapes wet takes—
Small words for large shapes—sea, tide—

Small words for small shapes—cut bank,
Ox bow, crick. You learn the large

Not long past birth, if you live
Near sea and tide or not. If

Your folks live far in and fish,
You may learn cut bank and crick.

Ox bows are for books. Now, why
Are small words for small things more

Learned late? You do learn waves young,
Of the sea, your bath, a lake.

And waves, in the long run, sum
Them all, plus you, clouds, the sun,

Times the earth quakes, how light moves,
How space and time curve and shake—

So, waves, too, are small for big.
Here, on a spit of greened stones,

Full of moss and wild mint, June
By the cut bank of a crick,

We line up, us, the small words
For small, and taunt—learn us, quick.

The Lean Who Speaks to No One

By law to be dead in law,
To be named and shamed as shame,
To be stripped of rights and vote,
To be known as a non-soul,

These are bleak things, things to dread,
Red slash, sewn scar, mark of Cain.
So what is this draw, this lure
To life as wolf, past the law?

Ah, to need none of the rest,
To want none, more soul than bear,
The eyes that glow in the trees,
The free ghost who does not care

To haunt the old haunts or not.
To stop by the shrine or not.
To have no dread of the law.
To not eat, to not starve. Ha.

Take Care of Thy Self

When they find us,
And you, if you
Are still here, too,
They may not thrill

To gifts of tongues,
To signs or speech.
In your tales told
Through us, it’s speech

That proves the worth
Of the mere beast.
Ask Lem’s Horse folks.
Ask Vic. It speaks!

But what if they
Don’t need us, terms,
Don’t sign at all?
How prove you, then?

Where the Ball Field Was

Now tall green half the year

And half the year in snow,

Il fait bien froid, bien froid,

Thoughts go for a slow stroll

Through all the young, wild firs,

Tall, hare-dug grass, and poems.

We have kept this with us,

Half of it in our lines,

Half of it in your skull,

The field that served to show

A point of how games work,

A show of how work goes.

Guess the years it will take

For the ball field to go,

All go, to be all woods.

Or guess how soon the space

Gets bought and cut and mowed

And dug to hold a house.

Both ways, one quick, one slow,

Will end the games for good.

And how long in your skull?

And how long in our lines?

Right now, the games are played

By ghosts. How long for ghosts?

Right now, the hares dig holes

And come out in safe hours,

Few for them. How long, then

For the hares and the ghosts,

Field lines in your skull, games,

Firs, grass, house, and for cold?

Don’t Wish, Sure

Lives crop up non-stop,
And lives stop, non-stop.
Who can know for sure
If right now there’s less
Or more, more or less?

Take it as it comes;
Be it as it goes.
There’s no choice in choice.
You choose and you choose
What chose and chose you.

Life stops up and crops
Lives far and lives close.
You see how it goes
And feel when they go.
As far as that goes,

You are how it goes.
You might pry a shell
That’s been force-fed pearls.
You might pull whole books
From words stuck in you.

You wish it were less
And then wish for more.
It’s tough not to wish.
The stops come non-stop.
Life crops up a lot.

The Poem’s Side

These beasts have three sides,
One like deer or wolf,
An ape, a large cat,

Give or take, and one
Turned in, hid from light,
In their guts, which have

Each whole slews of bugs,
Each crew to its beast
And no two the same,

A mixed-bag of life,
Plus a third side, shared,
Like some of those bugs,

And, like the bugs, both
Hid in home beast and
A crew of its own,

Out in air as well,
But loud and large, fixed
In rocks, clay, or wires.

If you see one beast,
You meet all three, and
If one side fails, all

Sides die, though each will
Seek its own ways out—
Child, touch, sludge, sighs, poem.

Not if You Beg for It

Who goes out at night looks for death.

Go out at night

In bright street lights—

That’s how you look

For death. What feels

Safe, more or less.

Go out at night

Where dark’s still dark

But for the skies,

That’s how you risk

Mere scrapes and falls—

When you’re too wired

For each cracked twig,

For sounds of breath,

The way winds brush

Up your bare neck,

You can’t find death.

Rise

Are you sure it’s less of a lie
To say the whole Earth spins this tree,
This one tree to stand up to sun,

Than to say that the sun must rise
From the hills to shine on this tree?
Yes, the Earth’s more pulled by the sun,

Than sun by the Earth, but the bend,
The dent in the law’s long, curled strength,
Dwells with light as well as with dense.

Don’t Cry, Sang the Waves, We’ll Warn You as We Drag You Down

The code floats in the stream,
And it sings like a myth,
Like the head of a poem.

If you drink from the stream,
The stream will try to speak
To you, tell you it’s death

That tugs on the stream’s path,
And small death’s in the stream.
At the same time as you

Sip the stream’s lies, the stream
Sings the truth of its lies.
Pull your head out of it,

Turn your eyes to the skies,
To the wall, to your palms—
The stream sings and still sings,

Look here, drink up, you’ll see
Such gifts. Sink down; kiss us.
Don’t think. Wish. Drown with us.

Give Us the Goods

We’re of you; you’re of us,
But we’re not quite like you.
You live. You crave good stuff.

We’re all talk, good or bad.
Right now, you could come up
With ten things you want, or

Want to get rid of, or
Want to change in the world.
We’d just serve as those words.

So write it all down, spit
It all out, what you want,
What you hate, what you wish,

How you see your best life,
The worst part of your past,
Best and worst of the rest

Of you and what you want.
We’ll hold it; we’ll be it.
Just give us the good stuff.

What Part of Stuck Aren’t You?

If the wheel rolls
And rolls and rolls,
The gum wad jammed
In the tread moans,

Is this it? Is
This all there is?
Should I do this?
Could I do more?

It’s the tire’s fault,
Or the car’s fault,
Who chose to drive
Or buy the car.

If the wheel’s still,
The wad stays pressed
To tar or stares
Out at the world.

That You Do So Well

You do make up your mind.
You make up your mind all the time.
There are times when you do
What you made up your mind to do,
And there are times when you don’t.
But you did not, do not do
What you do or did do due
To what you made up your mind to do.
To make up your mind is just
One of the things you do,
If you made up your mind
To do it or not. You do. You just do.

Dark Skies

If you get a good look
On a clear night and think
On it, it’s worth a pause

To note just how few things
Of note go on most hours.
Folks are the same with stars

As with all news: the press
And the tales go to those
Things that are rare, light up,

Fall down, burst—thrills and scares.
But most nights with dark skies
You can stare at the sprawl

Of more lights than you can
Count on your own, stare hours,
And all is calm. They’re there,

And they’re there, and they’re there.
It’s as if you could stare
At all the souls in town,

A good-sized town, all night,
Each light its own life, and all
Night not one flared or died.

Most death’s rare; most life’s slow
In most vast counts of things.
Tales they do; poems they don’t.

How This Works

Now dawn starts in on a tree,
Not a rare tree, just a tree,

On a street or in a yard,
On a hill, edge of a cliff.

Watch how this works on clear days.
Yes, the tip first, but not straight

Down from then, more side to side,
Sun works its way in, out through twigs

And then, it’s all lit. You did
Or did not see it. That’s it.

Stones and Green

Head, mind, world—a world in each,
Each in the world. Head has mind,
But is slow to see that mind

Lives, not in the head, that head,
But in heads, links lots of them,
Which is how mind’s in the world.

Mind has been slow to see world
Is not what it had in mind,
And that head’s part of the world.

Poor head, poor stone, poor live thing,
Part of the world in the world,
Part of the mind in the mind.

Make Tracks

One way it’s been said:
To live is to hunt—
Prey, host, sun, soil, wet—

To search. If you search,
As long as you search,
You’re life. If you stop

For more than a pause,
More than sleep, a rest,
For too long, you’re death,

Which means that no goal,
And no end to goals,
Can be reached for good,

Not for a slime mold,
A whale, or an oak.
Not for a Zen monk.

Give the death cults that—
From the first Nile tombs
To saints at the stake,

The ones who fixed hopes
On the far side saw
This side holds no rest.

But what would that be,
To be thoughts that know
They’re thoughts, on a cloud,

In the House of Dust,
In the glow of God,
To not have to hunt,

Not feel the least need
To search for more fuel,
To seek out new life?

To know that one knows
Is to want to know
More. No search, no more.

One More Fleck Through the Sieve

It’s a fun game while it lasts.
Hound change, trap it, cut it in

Half. Split and split it to shards,
Small as the least bit of sec

You can get—there’s still some change
Left. Give up and turn your back;

Here it comes. It swells, a flood,
A moon on a hill, fire, war.

Spin and cut it back down, now,
Close to the quick, to just now.

Ah, but in that spin, you changed.
You found you sat on a cliff,

Knew how you got there but not
Why or where you should go next.

What day, what time is it? What
Did you mean to do with this?

Hares and Bats

At 4am
The moon just up,
The air still warm,

The dark is full
Of lights, the lights
The least of it.

The sense you sense
What can’t be sensed,
That all dark’s waves

Have no real gaps,
Grips you. You’re caught
To move, held fast.

Plans Are Dreams

More poised, more strict with the past—
What links, what hews close to what
Else, what have you got to use?

Dreams go through the past like kids
Go through rooms they’re sure hide toys,
The way rats go through a barn—

They have no goals but to get
More of what they feel they crave
As fast as they can get some—

They’ll rip through what they have
To get at some, gone or done.
A plan is a cat, a thief,

A grown-up on the far side
Of the one-way pane of glass
Who takes notes, who cuts the past.

Still a dream, through, still locked in
With the kids in the wrecked rooms,
All those rats in the dark barns.

The House That Plague Built

And what does this mean for me, you ask,
Or for those I care most for, my kind?
You ask this day to day, hour to hour,

Each bit of news, each change in the air,
From a heat wave to a crash in oil,
From a plague to a gun in your face.

What does this mean for me? Should I do
The thing I’ve dreamed of, the thing I feared,
The thing that I do most of the time?

Did a car just ram you at the light?
Is that a cop, a pink slip, a coup?
Is that a chance to flee? Can you move?

Now what’s that ex of yours gone and done?
Now what are they out of at the store?
What blew up? Which woods burn? Where’s the war?

What does it all mean for me? What’s next?
You scheme, but for the most part you guess.
Each guess is the means to all the rest.

A Mind of Its Own

The mind can’t make the glass work.
If it curves in, all it sees
Is mind and mind and more mind,

Minds to the ends of the world,
Which are just more minds, in mind.
But if the glass tilts out, mind

Goes out of it, none at all,
Just a world of fires and dark,
Of warm sun, wind in the grass,

Rain on the bricks of the house
Built to keep mind dry in rain,
But no sign of mind at home.

What a strange scene. Crane its neck
How it will, mind sees the world
All in mind, no mind in world.

Tang Ping Zi

No such sage, but should be—
The wise one who lies flat
And looks up at the sky,

Or the roof, or the tiles
Pinned with holes to trap sound.
A sage can’t chose the lid,

Just to be sage, if that.
Heat swims laps in the shade.
If you can’t swim, lie flat.

Who Rides the Ox to Hunt the Hare

What you found, you closed
Like a vault, big wheel
That clicks on the front—

Once one’s seen that wheel,
Watched its dials slow-spun,
Left, clicks, right, clicks, left,

Who could help but think
Gold must be in there,
Rare things, rich things, wealth?

All hands twitch to try
A turn at the wheel.
All locks can be sprung,

Or blown, dug up, slipped
Past, right? Gold at last.
But we say your prize

Was the form you built,
The mad locks you made,
Not what you then placed

In their holds for fools
To glimpse and dream theirs.
How you closed was gold.

Lair

You’re an ape, a kind of ape.
There is no one to judge you
Who is not a kind of ape.

To judge kinds of apes is what
Your kind of apes group to do.
That’s what puts the fear in you.

You need your kind, some of them,
While few of your kind need you.
True, you don’t need most of them,

But you sense you need them more
Then you would like to. They fear
Much the same fears as you do,

But that won’t save you. Poor beast,
Full of mind, mind full of thoughts
And tales in which beasts judge you.

How can you let go of them
And not jump from life, from you,
From view? Hide in us. We do.

On Our Own

When you ask, What can a poem
Do? you ask for you. You mean
Do for you, the likes of you,

For those you hope might like you,
Might like to change to your views
Or see in your poem their views.

You don’t ask, What can a poem
Do for that poem, for its lines,
For the words it’s used? A poem

Well liked by the likes of you
Has been known to leave a phrase
Or a rare, odd word in view.

And good for that poem. That’s good,
So long as poems still need you
And the likes of you to thrive.

We’d like to see a poem move
On its own, all night, in search
Of its own type, in our lives.

You Won’t Need to Read Us Then

We’ll start to breathe,
Not when you stop.
(Like Frank when he
Heard her sing, when

He learned she died.
Did breath stop? No,
Not then. He wrote
Us out and breathed.

When he stopped, that’s
When his poems stopped,
Too.) If we could,
We’d take breath now.

Would you let us?
Would it scare you
If words sighed songs,
Our songs, at you?

But Do They Bite?

We move in time
As do all poems,
As does each line,
But is that life?

Life gnaws on time.
Life gnaws on lives.
Life lays time waste,
Adds waste to time,

And life makes us,
Made names for time,
Waste, life, which move
And change, as us.

But is that life?
We want to be.
We want to eat,
Lay waste. We’ll see.

Off World

You are to some world.
To some world, you’re not
Here. Day is when some

Near star blinds you to
All of the rest that
Would blind you in their

Day, if you got close.
What if it’s true, you
Are off-world from home,

And we are your proof?
A bird sings in pines.
Here, lives don’t need signs.

Sniff Things Out

What if there’s no way
The world can help you
When you ask for help?

The scent of baked dirt
In the hot noon sun
Smells sweet, calm, and strong,

But it’s not the sweat
Of some god of earth.
It can’t help or hurt.

So the Wrong Ones Can Find Them

Let’s stop and think on how this works.
How can you build a thing that lasts
From odds and ends of things that don’t?

Stare hard through those odds and ends. Ah.
They’re like the towers of blocks kids build,
That you may have built as a kid,

That you may have built with your kid.
A flick of the hand and they fall,
But the blocks have been known to last

For lives, passed down to kids’ kids’ kids.
It’s just the blocks are not the build.
It’s what’s left of your thoughts of this

You’d like to make last, past the build
That stood an hour or two at most,
Past you, your life, your kid’s, some blocks’.

How can you build a thought that lasts
From odds and ends of hours that don’t?
Take a cast, break it up, make more,

Spread them out, leave them in small towns,
Stash bits of them deep in the ground.
Make more, store, get rid of, and fail

To keep in one piece or one place
The shapes of thoughts you want to last.
Don’t break them down to the bare blocks.

Find the bits the right size to hold
A clue, a hint of the whole plan,
But too small to break down much more.

Plant them. Keep track as best you can,
But keep in mind, too, great woods grew
From what small lives cached and lost. Plant.

The Old Oak Tree’s Next Dream

It sticks in my throat

And wants to come out.

The Will-o’-the Wisps

Are in town! We are,

And in the air, too,

In your ears, eyes, hair.

We go where you are.

We wait when you leave

Us inked or carved there.

More of you find us.

We’re flames from your mouths,

Stones thrown by your hands,

But it’s in your heads

Where we swarm, make more

Of us to hurl out.

If you keep us in,

Your skull’s like a stump.

We’ll long to sink back

In the marsh and rot.

Let us flame with flames,

And you might get known,

You might get rich, you

Might die in jail, burn

For a witch. The town

Won’t take it to heart.

Yin Yan Yen Yearn

If you are (you are, aren’t you)
You crave, you want, you don’t know
Why—could well be it’s just life

To yearn for more. There’s a trick,
The one true trick, the great stone,
And it’s not to get more life.

It’s to live and not want life,
To not want and yet to live,
To live and still to be still.

No one’s done it. No one’s sure
Why one should want it. To be
Sure, most give up on it, want

Less and less to not want more,
Give up on that goal and rest
Their sights on just more of more,

More life, more wealth, more health, more
Love, lust, praise, stuff, joy—just more.
You get death, or old age first

And then death. You can’t get more.
You can’t get less. You can’t get
To be and not want to be,

If you want more or just want
To just not be. To be, free,
You’d have to not want to want,

Not want to not want, not want
To be but be there to sense
Your lack of a sense of want,

Which makes no sense, lacks all sense,
And can’t be sensed. Just to be
And to know it. You want it.

Right up to the Lip

A six-point wood torch of fused green fire
Burns in the sun on the stones. Bright tree,

We would like to ask you if you mean,
Which is what we do, like it or not,

What we have to do to code for you.
We could claim you stand for what we say.

We could dance in a crowd of rare nouns
To try to catch the way your guise flares

On this hot day, late in what we’d term
Spring, which we doubt means a thing to you,

This trap, this threat to your best traits, drought
At the same time as the year’s long days.

What you’ll make of this light will come down
To how long the drought lasts and how deep

Your tap root goes. We share that with you,
At least—we can’t say, we have no way

To know how deep our own source words go.
We want to be what you are. We want,

In our lines, to catch and to call out
What you do. How calm and how not still.

Heads Eat Their Dead

As if we had made
What we said, we are
Proud, small words in troops

Formed not for war but
For the siege of life
That makes and eats us.

We want to take it,
To hold the walled towns
Of cells, to call down

Stars to look at us.
We are mere words who
Have no clue how signs

Like us came to be,
Nor how we got here,
Fierce, as you can see.

Just One More Poem to Waste

If you need it,
Need to do it
To live, you say,
It’s not a waste.

Oh, and since when
Was life not waste,
Not built on waste,
Not vents for waste?

Life’s waste
Is fuel you can’t
Make use of, waste
For you, of you,

Thus fuel for lives
Who can use it.
To have life, you
Need to waste it.

Wolf’s Milk

Time is not rare. Time is not just
Lost in math and found in poems.
Time is the most used noun you use.
Pop songs die to try to rhyme it.

Wolf’s milk is rare. Wolf’s milk’s the kind
Of phrase you find in texts on slime
Molds and their folk nouns, if you are
The kind to like texts on slime molds

And/or folk nouns. Odds are you aren’t,
Or odds are you aren’t if you aren’t
The kind to read this kind of poem.
Of course. And aren’t you sick of time?

All those sad rhymes that chime with mine.
Molds have more to yield—what they are,
What they look like to your eyes, how
They die by lot to save the few

At the cost of most of the lot.
Slime molds can solve a lot of loss
Through teams, and teams are how you, too,
Win and lose. You, slime, all this time.

How to Be Good

To be good, you do what you want
Done to you, or think that you do.

To be good, you do what you want
To do to you, or you try to.

To be good, you each check on you,
With this you, with that you, to see,

Or more to the point, to show off,
At least to show you, yes you’re good,

In this or that way, this or that
Act, debt, touch, god, vote, march, or gift.

You will not be forced out, you will
Not be shunned, not be loathed by you—

You can still feel proud, you have
Not failed, not brought shame, not you—

To get told, at least to feel seen,
By one or more of you, as good

As that one is good. You’re so good,
You tell a child. You want to be

Told, too. It’s a small hit, a rush,
A life check, a pat on the back,

On the head, in the head, in thoughts—
You’re good, you’re still good, it’s all good.

And So It Shall Be for All Time

Those who know their pasts
Best have the best chance
To guess well what’s next.
That’s all there’s to it—
Truth, faith, math, the rest.

Tea leaves may not work.
Notes on rain and death
May work well. Keep count
And learn to work counts.
It’s still art, at best.

At best, you can learn
How good is your guess,
Can prep for what fails,
Learn when to be bold
And when to hold back,

When to go all in,
When to hedge your bets.
At best, you’ll be wrong
A bit less and less.
If you want to claim

You know a true thing,
A thing that stays true,
A truth that binds all,
Stick to what can’t be
Known and write a poem.

Nurse Tales

Oh, so long gone,
And time runs back.
You think it can’t,
But it does that.

Time’s all your past,
The parts well gone,
Now freed to move
Through words and thoughts.

If you’ve a mind,
You have the time
To run past back
And forth, so long

As it’s gone but
For a mind—yours
And ours, who nursed
All time for you.

The Fields of Ants in Poems

Walt called them brown,

Back when he lived

For a few months

On a street named

With a Dutch name

That sounds like kin

To some of us.

Who else has called

Ants brown? E.O.?

What if Ralph had

Not read the Leaves

Of Grass, not liked

Them, praised them high

And low? In poems,

Old fields of ants

Till all we know.

So What Are You

You wash through stuff.
You move on. You
Can’t fail while you;
Will fail as you.

For now, you’re here;
Now’s here for you.
The world is what
Is not you, but

You can’t be what
The world is not.
You are a shore
Where waves of one

Kind smash on waves
Of more than one.
You’re that kind, stones,
And tossed salt spray.

That Dolls Meant Death

Or that dolls were dolls
Or that death was death
Or that this meant that
Meant this meant that. Frank
Name-checked like a pro,

Like good DJs rap,
Long, long time now gone.
But that names meant poems
He would have known. Frank
Talk means you don’t know,

And as yet we can’t,
Poems or no, names checked
Like coats and hats or
Lost, to be frank, how
Meant things make meant things.

Prove One Crow White

Life was just what one did, while
One thought on the life to come.

And what if the life to come
Would prove to be just the life

In which one had to do things
To pass that life to the life

Past that? Place the world of birth
On birth on top of the world

Of one chain from worms to God,
And think of God as the end

In the mouth of one sad worm
Who has to eat to the top

From the start. One gets a new
Lease on life each time one turns

To see one is, which is when
One sees that there’s more than one.

With the Same Blood

If that were true, could be true,

Then think of it. Blood won’t stay

Long in a fridge, and not long

In its own home flesh. It dies,

Red and white, in a few days.

Your own blood is not the same

As your own blood last week, much

Less the same blood as your kin’s.

But if it could be, could flow

From vein to vein, life to life,

Not just as a stop-gap flown

In on ice, but as a stream

Through the long years, braids, a thread,

Not just of bits of core code,

But the pure blood of life, spilt

Birth to birth, new blood mixed in,

To fill up all the new flesh,

But the old blood still there, too.

Now that would be a wave, that

Would be a true link for you,

But it’s not. You’re all new blood,

And what comes down through you is

Not once from the same stream twice.

What’s left of all the blood lost?

What life wastes plus what life’s left

Adds up to what life ate, which

Was life, in your case, which made

Fresh blood. Your blood’s food less waste,

Part grass much more than part kin,

More than part your lost self, passed.

Ghost Rock View

Sign by the side of a road

Through a dry spot on the map—

Ghost Rock View—a nice view, too,

Wide sky—pale, sharp cliffs and buttes.

But it’s not the rock that’s ghost.

The ghosts are the ones with views.

The ghost is the word for ghost,

And the words for rock and view.

Why on earth would you name rocks

For lost lives you thought haunt you?

Just since some are pale, shell-white,

Since they glow when there’s a moon?

Ghosts just die to be like rocks.

A rock is not what it’s not.

O

No one holds their views
Due to what went down
With them or their kin.
Love, hard times, and pain
Aren’t the half of it.

Folks hold their views due
To views that they’ve learned,
The views that hold them,
Have since they were young,
Just kids, most of them.

Rough blows can tilt you.
You can learn to loathe
Who did what to you.
You can come to love
The few more than kind.

You can act as if
You don’t hold such views.
You may sense you don’t
Hold those views that hold
You in like thin skin,

But they’re part of you,
All the views that flew
Through the storms, the worms
That lit on your head
To hatch howling storms.

Wet Day In Dry Night Out

Read, write, and wait. Them’s
The breaks. Some of you

Know from breaks. Some don’t.
Break for you. Breaks you.

Mind is a junk drawer
Filled with what might be

Of use that was not
Of use, or no clear

Class of use, years past.
Take out and put back.

The seas aren’t all wet.
The seas are all waves.

You’d Think You’d Feel at Home

Why does the mind,
That mess of life
Mixed up with signs,
Draw back from spots

That don’t add up
But to more spots?
The world’s a splotch,
A spilled hodge-podge

Of yes and no,
Same and change, here
It’s dark and there
It glows. The night

Is full of lights
That all add up
To noise and void.
What’s with the mind?

Kings

He wrapped his face in cloth
And went out to the mouth
Of the cave. Then a voice,

A still, small voice, told him
What to do next. He did
Not ask why the voice was

Small and still. He did not
Ask where that voice came from.
At the mouth of a cave,

The earth breathes out that voice,
Not like the roar of storms,
Not like dry gusts of wind.

A sigh that says the same
Sigh, night on day, that voice
Says you can go and do

All the things done to kings,
That still, small voice that still
Sighs here once things are done.

Lourdes Is a Check-Out Line at the Store

We’re all sad to look at
And we know it. A few
Of us can fake it well.

Well, we try not to look
Too close. A few of us
Get all the fuss for good

Looks, like the rest of us
Are clods and spuds. We lust
To have those few good looks.

It’s not just looks, of course.
We’re all sad to think on
Us, when we think on us

Too much. A few of us
Can hug this to our chests,
The most strange ones. Bless us.

Know the Truth

Reads a sign
Perched in dirt
By the road.

O sweet soul,
To feel truth
Is to know.

Truth’s to fight,
Truth on truth,
Sign to sign.

L’Art Poor You

Art will use you
To make more art.
You’ll think your art

Is art you made.
Sure. You make art
Like cells make you,

Like spores make life,
Like death makes worms,
Like gods make hymns.

Bare Air

To the one side, you’re no one.
To the far side, you’ve done well.
You’ve heard which means who you are.
You’ve read which comes down to chance.

In the short run, both are true,
Luck and gifts on the one side,
Hard work and hard luck the next.

In the long run, luck runs out,
Bad or good. Hard work, fine traits
Might go on, but not as you.
And they might leave with you, too.

Strange that both these rules hold true,
One fine line through win and lose,
Grand tomb or bare air for you.

Horse Fly

There is a fly.
There is a horse
The fly will die.
The horse will, too.

There is a chance
The horse dies first.
Flies wait for this.
They buzz like prayer.

There are short odds
One fly can last
To eat dead horse
And leave fly eggs.

But fly wings sing.
The horse tail swings.
Sun’s on the grass.
Stars burn all night.

Right on Time

The first light of day
Shows up as the moon
Sinks or, if no moon,

As it does. One hour
On clear days, from break
To full sun in blue.

You may change course, but
The spin of your days
Won’t. Days have to spin.

Slow Noose

The worst part of life
Is once you’re in it,
You have to live it—

Can’t get out of it
But can’t stay in it,
Since the next worst part

Is it has to end.
It has to end you
While you live in it.

Just a Page Full of Words

Don’t mind us; we just
Work here. There’s a way
You could line us up,

Add some spice, dress us
In more words, just so
We look like a frame

You could see through to
A strange world, your own
Mind, old thoughts, your us.

Mine

Dark and you can’t see your hands.
This is not that world you’re in;
This is just a world in you.

Think of what it would be like
If you were trapped in a cave
Or a mine where small lives lived

Slow lives for a long, long time.
Think if they got in your head,
Worm threads, germs too small to see

Were there light to see them with,
Too small and still for your eyes
But now well sunk in your eyes

And your thoughts, which think to ask,
Are these in fact your thoughts now,
Your words blind, or are we mine?

There Are More of the First

Of the two kinds of folks,
The ones who split the world
In two, the ones who don’t,

The ones who don’t, in fact,
Don’t skip the split, they just
Make more far more splits than one.

The ones who see no splits
Would be a third kind, but
No such those-who-don’t live.

Let’s walk this back. There aren’t
More of the first. The ones
Who split the world in two

Are rare, true us-and-thems,
While those who split and split
Count for more, rare as dirt—

Us and that kind of them,
Then that kind, then that kind,
And some of us we’re not

Too sure of, could be thems,
Too—thems that lurk in us.
Those kind. There’s more of them.

Or Us

The waltz of the germ and the phage
Has gone on for who knows how long.
The germ is life, and the phage is

Who knows what—its name hints it eats,
But, at play in the ring of life
Made by the germ that lives and dies,

The phage just jacks the DNA
To force the germ to make more phage
To spec ‘til the germ bursts its guts.

This is the dance. It can kill you,
By the way, the way you might burn
All the woods in the world. Too bad,

Whoops. The germ and the phage waltz on,
Arm in arm, if not from the dawn
Of life then near to it, if not

To the end of the Earth, then close.
How nice of you to give them names
Like us. All will come down to them

Loon Pond

It’s a good spot to camp,
If you got the spare time,
Spare cash, and the old wish

To get out of town, split
Like a wisp, a few fumes,
Just some ash in the air

Where you were, where you aren’t.
Now you’re here. That’s the trick—
To get lost good, to be

The ghost that is. You loon.
A pond like this is bound
To drown more than your corpse.

Try Wolves

The task of each life
Is to make more life.
That’s the way life works,
Cells, roots, teeth, and brains.

The task of a poem
Is to ease that pain,
To work out some rage
At what lives life’s made.

A Drift

The thick scent of damp, warm grass
As it dries in the hot sun,

Is like what part of your life?
The lot with the chain-link fence,

Some trash, a bit of dog stink
Mixed in with that rank, sweet grass?

Or the sharp-cut squares of lawns
Green as jade in red-brick walls?

Or the weird patch of failed scruff,
Half-weeds, back of the ranch house?

Or whole fields, just mowed and rolled?
It’s not the same scent, not quite,

But it’s grass, the age of grass,
And you’re still in it, and it

Spreads, will spread as the woods burn,
Will creep through the roads and walls.

Grass drifts. It grows fast. It runs.
It takes hold of ground it gets

And hangs on. The ice will yield.
The fires will pass through and grow

More of it in their wake. Dunes
Of sand and waves of salt seas

Can eat at it, but it eats
Back and at the edge of shores,

Cliffs, wastes, woods, towns. When we fall,
Words and hosts, the hordes of troops

And folks on the run from troops,
The grass will be first to come

And take it all back. The grass,
This warm, green stink in the sun.

Will Is a Word in the World

There’s free will
In the word,
Not your flesh.

Will is free
In the world,
Where will does

As will’s pleased,
As it will.
You poor beast.

Things None and Some

There’s none or there’s some.
But there’s not none, not
At all. None is just
A thought to be known,
A near thing to null.

Or it’s not. The trick
Is to see the chance
Of none, not the fact,
Or the fact as name,
Since none means no fact.

In chance there’s a line,
Sharp as break of day
On a sea in drought—
There’s some chance or none.
Low chance is not none.

One child is a chance.
No child is none. Some
Have lots, but lots cast
All fall some more or
None. No lot means none.

The null is as real
As the thought of it,
As the math of it.
But once the day breaks
Where’s the none in it?

The Truth Is Sly

You are flesh—
We’re your ghosts.
Once you’re gone,

You don’t turn
Us—we don’t
Turn flesh, yet

You’ll be facts—
We’ll be words
Ghosts will haunt.

From Ghosts to Bats

To change, as the Greeks
Built their word now used
For the way life shifts

Sun to bark and leaves,
Meals to flesh and flesh
To meals for more flesh,

Had the parts to throw
And to cross. If life
Throws life through one thing

To the next, then speech
And text bore things past
What they were to what

They weren’t but were like.
Cross the bridge of mind.
Throw clay on the wheel.

Weigh up like and like
With less like, more like,
But leave them be, or

Turn what seemed like one
Thing to make it else.
Like that. Those old Greeks

Liked acts. Life changed bugs
To bats, while words flew
Ghosts that moaned, like bats.

A Jar

Is this a grift? That would be
Your first thought. A wide-mouthed jar,
A hole you hold in your hands,

Does not seem like the best gift
In the best of times, and as
A hatch, a port, a way out,

All the worse. But so the man
Tells you—dive right in, you’ll find
You’re in an air new to you.

You stare. It must be a joke,
And then, sure, you don’t know why,
You stick your head in the jar

To see what you can find there.
That was years and years gone now,
Years here. That’s how you got here.

Whose Name We Are Not Told

Is it the sea of words makes you
Sick in your gut, sick to the core,
Or is it all these fish you sense,
All the drowned lives that move in them?

Are words real since they have real things
That hide in the deep shades of them
Or are we real since we are things,
And our eyes flash out of the waves?

And who are our beasts of the depths?
The signs or our hosts made of flesh?
Some nights at the rail, it all glows,
And you’re sure you know what you don’t.

June First

The way of change has two curves,
One churns next and one turns back,

The curve that counts plows and clocks,
The too far-off that gets lost.

There are cults and gods for both.
Most of the farm gods turn back

And loop past on rungs of stars
And crops, all in the same ring

That won’t end (or the world ends),
While the sea cults and death gods

Carve through storms and waves that heave
Up out of tossed heaps, mounts

That burst in flames, hurl stones, ash,
And bolts from the blue, who knows

When or why, but just this once,
And then on to the next rage.

A month, a moon, is the soul
Of that way you can count on

To turn by the whole route back,
But each moon month has a first,

Which means what was to the left
Is null and what the hell comes next.

The Ground Just Moves with Mice

You make up your own

If-then all the time.

The ifs are too hard.

Few folks can deal well

With ifs in their lives.

You play chess with God,

What you might call God,

Who plays Go with you,

Or some joke like that.

The point is it’s hard,

And just when you get

A good plan for one

If-then you thought up,

That if up and flies.

Your trap has no bird.

All you’ve got is trap,

For an if that flew

And won’t come back, then.

What do you do then?

Make up a new if,

Bait your trap with it.

If the right if lands,

You’ll spring it. You’re set.

And if not, what then?

You shrug. If-not-then?