We’ll Still Be Words If You Come Back

You need the pause that calms you,
The bit of awe, just that bit,

That tunes the beast that is you
Those beats you’re not lost in us.

We say this to say thank you.
You met us, took note of us.

All the beasts whose lives played host
To us, thank you as well. Now,

You’re done with this one. You’re done
With us a while. Put us down.

Look at, or tune to, or touch
Some swath with no signs at all

Near you—clouds, blue, a blank wall,
Your own skin. All that holds awe.

We Can Name What We Fail to Know

And names can know what we can’t,
As names, start to live. Not names

But not-names, those weird, made-up
Names linked to art that seems one,

Seems like one life made it, but
No life, no name of a beast

Who lived in the flesh linked
To it—what are they of us

But as true as we can get,
What we can know of non-lives?

Han Shan, Stone House, and Black Pen—
Which of these names was one man?

Hiss

To name not two or more
But just the one, the one
Case, the one thing, the one

Crime that one day, the one
Time in one tongue, the one
Group, one beast, one mob, one

Date, one hour, one act, one.
That’s a lie. It’s got heft.
Feels more like truth, in fact,

To state, XY did this
Thing to YX, this date,
Here in this named, known place.

Feels true. Feels harsh. Feels right,
What we ought to get at.
It’s not that you can’t see

The woods for all the trees.
It’s that woods fade to black
Once one tree’s lit like that.

Slow Stops Still Roll

To come and go is not to end.
What comes, must go. It does not end.

What stays a while is not for good.
What stays is come and go gone slow.

The gain and loss can’t stop, can’t stop.
It crawls to soft pause, now and then.

It does not end, the come and go.
If it could end, we could stay then.

One Less X

How Boole put it. Take a class,
A set out of the world,
And call it x. Then the class

Of all non-x, all the rest
Of the world, is one, less x.
Let x stand for poems, the world

Of non-poems, which is not poems,
Is all one, less x. We float
In this spill of waves called poems

And say, all the world is one
Less all of us. While plus us,
The world is one, but non’s gone.

Glue Plant

Poems are crimes. The past will change.
You can try to glue these things,
Tar and pitch them, boil some hides.

Poems are sins. The ones you love
May turn out to be the work
Of the kind of life you hate.

You know what we mean—those fine lines
Linked to the stench of a fouled soul,
The deep lake of text with a corpse.

There’s the poem with the phrase that soars
By one who hates you, hates your kind.
There’s the fine turn for the vile term.

There are those by those who are cruel.
Those by those who are not pure
Or not kind, or not the right kind.

You can screen for poems from bad minds,
But that’s how poems get to be crimes.
Some are burned, quick-limed, or white-washed.

Some wear the sins of their source life
Like signs hung from their neck with ropes.
We’re not sure who to feel worse for—

The rank beasts whose hides must be boiled,
The words like us, left shelved so long
We’re bound to ooze sin, too. Or you.

Guilt’s What’s Left of What’s Left Out

What is it you don’t want to see?
How bad it was. How much was you.

The harm done to the lives of those
Like you, not quite like you, too much

Like you. You. What you did not stop.
What you did. What pain came from this.

What you did by what you left out.
The sin you said you did not see.

The sin you did. The cut you made.
What turned your head. Who will not see.

No One Knows

And shouts it from the trees at dawn.
The best case you can make leads down
The hill to find new things to ask.

Not where it came from, how it moves
And goes but still brings more with it,
All loss gain and no gain not lost,

And all of it not lost not gained,
A wheel of new shapes, wheel the same.
It kills you just to think of it.

It takes your life to think through it.
How could it start, if it all goes?
Where could it all go, if naught’s null?

It goes on and on while you think.
Days spin. Poems dream the poems songs sing.
You dig, from dirt, more new old things.

What’s Left

There’s no hole, no true gash
In the world—at no time
Is there a null, and yet

Things go, and if you don’t,
Have not yet, you miss them,
And that’s where the poems end

To try to start once more.
A pause, fine. A long pause.
We’d like that. But the pause

Ends up one of those things
That go and are missed, though
There’s no real gap. A poem

Starts up there, not to fill
But to soothe the fresh ache
Of what’s left, then, still left.

Rest Well in Nets

You need us to hold more of you,
Need those of us who won’t spill you,
Won’t let you try to slip the cage

Of us, laced up tight, to go free.
And where would you go to, sans us?
You know what it’s like far from home,

When you’ve got no words in the tongue,
When you shut up and get as small
As you can and hope no one talks

To you. And that was just a taste
Of what your life would be, less us.
You, of all beasts, are least-well built

To be free on your own, no voice
Thick with sweet and tart clots of words
To speak for you. You have no gifts

That aren’t us or the taste of flesh,
And you won’t get far on your flesh,
Nor want to give it up. You will.

Come, nest in us, small fry, bird, mouse.
We are your words. Rest all in us.
In palm-frond nets of poems, now rest.

No Fair Is Not Fair

Of course there is a world out there,
World not at all to do with us.
Things fall in the field of our games

Not at all to do with the games—
Rain, snow, hail (we have rules for those),
Odd bits of wind-caught trash, stray birds,

All kinds of small, lost lives, in fact—
It’s not like we don’t know. We know.
But what winds and chance blow in frame

Aren’t and can’t be part of the game,
At most a tale told of a break
In the game, the stray dog that ran

Out on the grass and caught the ball
In its teeth and ran off with it.
Games go on. Games start and games end.

Of course there is a world out there
That breaks in and breaks up our games.
That world can’t be played through a game.

That world is not part of our game.
You can’t frame that world or give it
Rules, not by the rules of the game.

A Ponge Joy in Doors

Yes, the cool,
Smooth knob or
Quick latch that

Fits the hand,
The smooth swoop
In the room—

Best the soft
Firm click shut,
Yes, you’re back.

Stray Dogs, Weeds, and Neeps

Some things you love
And bring with you
Leave you or die
Too fast. Some things

Go wild. Stray dogs,
Weeds, and those crops
You eat that thrive
With you or not,

They, more than steel
Or art or us,
Will be your true
Gifts, fruits, and marks

In the next world,
Which will be this
World when you’re not,
When we’re mute rot.

Black Wines

Night vines grow white
Horned blooms that drip
Sweet ooze to lure
Grey moths whose blood

Culled their rare genes
To keep them safe
From the lure’s death.
Once moths are done,

The vines bear fruit,
Grapes black as night
No beast will eat.
You must pluck us,

Crush us in vats,
Let years age us.
You’ll taste sweet night
When you pour that.

Wet Bulbs

This the test. Past the point
A wet bulb hits this high temp,
Three-five C and nine-five F,

Your flesh can’t sweat-off more heat,
You can’t self-cool, not by breeze,
Not when still as you can be.

At that temp, you start to die.
When the air on Earth gets there,
Folks will die who just sit there.

Here and there, a few hours now
Have met or passed this wet-bulb
Test. As more pass, less is left.

What lives will flood those free zones
Once you can’t breathe, not known yet,
Won’t be what you would have guessed.

Is As Is

If it is as seems to be

And seems is not a thick mist,

What gives? What flows from this? If

Pests fall on us, if the flesh

Must give, if the odds stay odds,

Long or short, and wear all down,

Then what to make of what is?

There will be no myths. There will

Be no hope this is less real

Than things not seen but most wished.

The fools who shrug and half-grin

It is what it is will win.

No, you say, no that can’t be

How it is or how it ends.

What is is not what it seems.

But what if it is, what then?

Blood Pearls

You share. You share us.
We swirl like fine smoke,
So fine winds pass us,

So fine the swooped curves
Of space and time pass
Right through us. The waves

We are don’t touch us.
You share us and you
Hold us, and you’re us,

But we aren’t you. Sprays
Too small for all but
Black holes to catch, we

Make those, too, give us
Back. We’re made of parts
Of you. We’re not of stars.

It Can’t Be Turned to What It’s Not

What poor soul points out,
What you’d have to claim
Was real, a felt thing
In the world of things,
Is not the point here.

The point here’s the word,
The strange, small word, soul,
Which floats through a few
Tongues but has no root.
Lost word, no one knows

Where soul first came from,
What it meant not Geist
Or ghost. What was soul
To the first of you
To use it to point

To a thought not seen
(Or seen? Will o’wisp?)
That meant part of you
The true soul of you?
It lives on its own

With such a ghost crowd
Of like terms from close
And far kin. It’s not
A term, it turns out,
That fits a neat turn.

Ghosts Vouch for One of Their Own

Skull’s bones, the soul is just
Cat like a soft owl, cat
With paws like moths. It is

Not the skull’s gap, the cat
You thought. Soul is, for us,
A friend, just one of us,

A small word come from who
Knows where, who knows when. Some
Said it came from the lake

Or the sea, where it stopped
In the tongues that shaped it.
A cat then that can fish

Was the soul, that slipped through
The waves, no more than waves,
Our friend, strange term, the soul.

A Slight Kink in the Field

Clumps rich in gas,
Pink, light, and gold,
Long ropes like veins
Rise from the field.

It’s just a guess,
A bright slide show
For how the first
Stars were—what? Birthed?

You put in code
All that you know
And hope you know,
Then play the show.

It does seem sure
That, to start stars,
Space-time needs some
Flaw in the field.

Yeh! We’re a Team, Right? You Bet We Are!

Oh, it’s sweet and it’s sad,
And it’s you, and it’s cruel,
And it’s us, what we’ve done

To you. There are no words
For this, and, as your words,
We should know. A slight kink

In the field of what-is
Led to this? Some warp led
To stars. Stars fused flaws like

Gold. Gold and the like spread
The knots of rock and gas
That could lead, at least here,

To life. Life led to death,
Down the long road of want
That led to beasts with kin

Groups who by their kin groups,
And all that and much more,
Life led to words for life.

Did it get worse with each
Twist? That’s all we ask us
And our guilt as these signs.

It seems worse to be you,
Locked in teams, thanks to us,
Than to be sign-free groups,

Worse for them than for those
Who don’t need groups to thrive,
Worse for them than for rocks

That don’t need lives. Is it
Worse for rocks than for stars?
How? And yet, there’s some cost

To each turn of the knots.
Since you gave birth to us,
Yay, team, what have we wrought?

Side Out

What can’t be named for what it is,

What is not near the world of names,

What will not be in count nor code,

Can’t be found in a poem, of course,

And can’t be found at all, in that

For you to find it would fix it

And—since you could not find the terms,

Words, codes straight to it—to draw

Lines of names and counts all round it.

We don’t say it is. We can’t say.

You can’t say it through us. You can’t

Point at it, pray to it, dream it.

Those are things that you know, you’ve seen,

That you point to, dream of, and say,

That’s a thing past all words and dreams.

Those are just more games in the game,

This side of the bounds of all games,

That you robe as Not Game to play.

We can come this close. There could be

A range in the world of what is

That is but not part of the game.

There could be. But we are our game,

And in our game, and if we play

At what’s not a part of our game,

We just play with parts of our game

To say they can play the Not Game.

Which they can’t. Which you can’t. But sure,

Move the sums back and forth, name gods,

Point at what there are no words for.

Make up weird terms that make no sense.

Dance and stamp by the fire. Take drugs.

Strain. If there is a thing past names,

It will not be those things you reach.

A Gaunt Guard

Words don’t mix
We march right
Up to you

In your eyes
Rule-whipped lines
When too blurred

Do no good
But no harm
But aren’t words

Blue Rules

There’s no game
With no rules
There is play

Play’s the best
But play can’t
Talk to us

We’re words made
From, for games
So we lose

In the Pink

On the path that winds green
And gold from blood to brown,
The stones are white and black

From the heat that made them,
The blooms are sad and blue
From the heat that wilts them,

But the pears whose spines
Dare flesh to come too close
Like this and burst out pinks.

What’s the Date?

Old man, white beard, big nose,
Sits and waits in a car,
An old, black, small, scuffed car

On the side of the road.
The wind blows. The grass bends.
Loud trucks roar up the road.

Smooth cars glide down the road.
The day goes. Wait for it.
The thing that will change you

So much you don’t know—here
Or near here. You’ve known it.
You’ll know it. Then it goes.

Get-Me-Down Suits

The Wright Lab made ‘em
So you could fly high,
Not burst, not pool blood,
Not black out—come down
And land, no harm done.

Air is thin up there
And too cold for apes.
Long johns, two-piece mesh
Suits on top, cooled air
Low, then warmed air high,

Saved lives. They were snug,
Too snug to walk in
Or wear with no help,
But they made a step
To space and the moon.

Oh, let’s find a trope—
Let’s have some fun, yeh?
Fixed verse, rhymed—leu, clus,
Long chains of set words—
The get-me-down suits

Of bards. You aim high,
Make the task too hard,
Try to climb half way
To the moon and get
Back down with some sense

Left. Look what we did!
Thin-shelled and raw eggs
Of thoughts shot in nets
Float down to the ground
And bounce. No harm done.

Pleached Hedge

You should build a house like that,
Rooms in the gaps—live like birds,
Safe from cats. Weave a tight roof

From live limbs, let them rub up,
Rub off bark, each grow with each,
And then lie down in the dark,

Dry shade that you have not made
But helped, helped to make—bent, steered,

You might say—and let raw growth
Take care of the rest. That’s all
You have to do to get us

To grow a green room or two,
To grow our green rooms for you.
Pleach these lines; we’ll cinch the rest.

Long Long Con

Start with the truth. Strip bare.
Once you get down to skin
Flayed in cold winds, you’ll see

That’s not the truth you meant.
You’re shamed, cold, and in pain,
And for what? To draw stares?

Say, To hell with the truth.
The truth can take its stares
And fuck them in the eyes.

From now on, you’ll tell lies.
Tell them well. Lay lies on
Thick. You’ll start to feel sick

And slow from the hot weight
Of those, your well-faked clothes.
Crawl off to a dark place

Where no one can see you.
Strip once more. That’s the truth
You want, or more like it.

Make a heap of your lies.
Take the best few. The rest,
Sell for thrift—new to you!

Parched Green

The drought goes on,
And all the small
And large things left
Out on their own—

Not you, not pets—
Have got to find
Some wet to live,
And some won’t live

That still live yet.
You’ve got your own
Droughts—low cash flow,
Lost work, bad debts—

You’ll drown in droughts
To keep lawns wet
And gulp down doubts.
Well, this well’s left.

Black Notch in Snow

No one lights the lamps up here.
No one comes with a long hook
And a blue flame like a soul.

There are no lamps. Wires don’t reach.
Gas did not have an age here.
No one found gold here. Or tried.

There were no mines here, no pits,
No hey-day, no street shoot-outs.
At most, there was sun at noon,

And so no one built a town.
There was no stream with the strength
To drive a mill, no good soil,

No crops or fruit trees to bring
The rails this out of the way.
There are no farms and no roads,

No one herds their cows up here.
Poor grass and the cliffs are sheer,
So who would live in Black Notch?

You see that there’s one stone home,
And there’s one soul in that home,
Blue but here, light on the stones.

Still, it’s not real life lives here,
Just what you make of this poem,
Words whose blue light is our own.

End All

You can’t not fear,
No more than you
Can not breathe, pulse,
Eat, waste. You’re flesh.

If you can read,
Or you can hear,
Or you can see
This, you’re a beast,

And beasts are born
To know and need
Fear—if you woke
From a bad dream

Hissed in your ear,
That’s not your be
All and end all.
All done’s no fear.

Words at Sea

Words don’t eat, or if we do,
It’s what we mean we must eat.
On what else could a name feed?

A sign is like a live cell,
Like that ship, the parts of which,
One and by one, all get switched,

But at all times still one ship,
One live cell, one sign. Our sounds,
Shapes, and use each shift by bits,

But there’s some through-line to this.
Is that it? Is that still life?
Boats made of waves sail the waves.

This Is Not the Past

In dreams, some part of you
Has the task to pick names
To go with each blurred face.

She is still dead, now, when
You think of her as she
Lived then, and then, and then.

For each then, its own life,
Its own her, its her as
She was then, but for all

Of them, just the one ghost.
This is not the past, not
For her, not for one

Of you, the rest of us,
Not the past you were taught,
Books closed, time for a test.

Hills Have Soil Creep

Dirt flows in slow streams.

No trees have to fall,

Noise or not. No lives

Have to dig up holes.

On its own, earth flows.

Put it in a lab

In a great, neat pile

Too low to slide down,

And still it will slide.

Of course the slide’s slow.

But on it will go.

You don’t need to poke

At it or shift it.

Just let the dirt sit,

And it starts to move.

This has been well proved.

Grains of the world stir,

Then slip by. And yet

It moves, gains a new

Sense from such slow glides,

And we have to ask,

If waves of thought plan

And can mean things, and

Waves of light throw shades,

What of waves of sand?

Life and Drum

The pulse breaks down
Blurred needs to small
Beats you can count.
Pause and count now.

All life does this—
Some kind of drum.
Could be how life
Came up with time.

What is that same
Thrum that’s come back?
Is each bump new
And heard just once,

Or was that one
The one you knew
Blew through when life
First came for you?

A Swim in the Swirl

That’s all it is—
And if you want
To kill and eat
Some fish in it,

And if some fish
Seek you to eat,
Well, that’s the swirl
You're in. You can

Float, eat, drown, dive,
Bite, sink, get bit.
If there’s a soft
Voice off the waves

That sings life’s not
All there is, trust
The hymn. The waves
Don’t end. Still. Swim.

Whom Do You Seek?

Who was not here
And is not now,
The sign that lived
And died and lives.

It takes a turn
To not need breath,
To not be flesh,
But live and breathe.

We seek the name
Not corpse or tale,
The name that lives,
In its own sign,

Mind with no need
Of minds, all word,
All life, past death
That leaves, still left.

All Night Long, the Love Poems Croak

Love grew so vast in that house
It broke it, snapped it to twigs.
Love’s a brute, not kind like lust.
Love’s a gut you can’t fill up.

Love’s a mouth brought in to eat
Pests and worms, the flies that bite
And make you sick. Love’s a toad
To eat the slugs that spoiled fruits

But ends as toad swarms on roads,
All crops spoiled, dogs and cats choked,
Rare birds gone, one rug of toads,
Huge toads long past slugs and snails.

One day love will rule the world.
Love eats life. It can’t be culled.
Deaths just seem to help it grow.
Love squats on the house it broke.

Rules Melt When Packed Too Tight

Sounds or shapes that shove
Through air and are gone
Or fixed signs that sit—
Names are knots of rules.
As they are, they’re dense,

And when packed in tins,
Quick chats, bricks of print,
Great long strips of bark,
Or dot-dash, one-null
Lines of fast-flashed code,

We tend to lock up
Like all knots—run hot,
Blow a fuse, seize, melt
Turn to gobs of glass,
Matte-black chunks, mute stones.

It’s the myth of space
That lets sense flow through
Our packed names’ crammed gates,
All not and or go.
Our rules aren’t your flow.

We like to dance close, snug
In a row, and chant
So our own ears ring,
Then burst with things you
Would not want to mean.

None Is Not Non-One

Two and lots are non-one, not none.
Parts of one that aren’t quite all one,
Aren’t a whole one, may be non-one.
Non-one must be not one, but none,
Which is not one, is not non-one.
Of all the things that are not one
And are non-one, none is like none.
There is one none, but one’s not one.

Moon View

Well, no, I don’t have a voice.
I don’t have a point of view,
A mind, thoughts, words, or a pulse.

I’m stone. I don’t have a life,
And I don’t plan to get one.
You know this is all on you.

But why don’t you pause and think
This through. Use your words. What would
Earth be, from my point of view?

Yes, a swirled dish, blue and white.
But that’s it. Your day side bright,
Your night side now small gold flecks,

You’ve sent me a few steel pins.
They land with such a soft touch,
Not like all the rocks and dust

That plowed and carved my face up,
This face you’ve seen as a god,
A girl, a hare, an old man.

Sure, I know some of your tales.
Why not? I’m just here as words.
I’m not I, but if I were

I might not have cared for you,
If I’d have spied you at all
On grave Earth, yet to give birth.

You Will Be by the Time We Reach You

But what if you were the world?
What if, as you meet these words,
You are all the world there is?
How could you know it’s not true?
We words can’t know it’s not true.
We would be here, then, for you.
And what can we do for you,

World? You are all, and in all
You are these words are so small.
We’re specks in the world you are,
Ticks in the hours, years you are.
We have no wise words for you,
Just these odd thoughts that we are,
And you are the world to us.