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.