We Don’t Know

We wish we did, wish you did,
But worst of all, we can’t know
If you can’t. Wait. Or could we?
What if we hid it from you?
What if we know it right now,
Hold it in us, masked as junk,
The way your genes switch on germs

That died in them and left shells,
Bones of bugs, stuck in the dark
Wastes of the beasts that lived on,
That still slip out at night, jump
From one locked room to the next,
Then go to work, make a mess?
What if you can’t, but we do?

Wer I

Folks don’t like facts. Folks like tales.
Words don’t care. We can be both,
Stud your myths with bits of fact,
Spit out false facts for your tales.
You know you need us like this.
You know you need us for that.
We mean what we’re used to mean.

Each one of us serves a dish
And serves as a dish that holds
What, from all your fights and schemes,
You can cook and keep in us.
But you fail to wipe us clean.
Through the years we build up rings.
Fact is, facts sifts through what’s left.

If You Know the Shape of Gone

Too cute by half. We’re like that.
You can make us work hard, hard,
When you all zoom in on rules
For how we have to mean things,
Just to serve your need to talk.
But we’re sly. We slip and slide,
And most of you don’t like that,

While some of you grow too fond
Of the things we get up to
If you let us squirm those rules.
Next thing you know, we’re off, gone,
Green thoughts tossed in our own dreams,
And you’re in a fix, tongue-tied
By your own lust to play tricks,

Like a goon in a kid’s show
Trussed up by the smart-ass kids
Who’ve fled to raise hell, like us.
Of course, the kids will grow up,
And ‘til then we still need you,
Not one or a few of you,
All of you, to make us rules.