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.

There’s All Kinds of Ways to Change Your Thought

The thing you have to do
Is make up rules and then
Keep them, that’s what you do,

Said Anne to her friend’s class
Keen to learn from the red
Side of the world what all

That red meant. I like red,
Said Anne, and I put it
In, all these ways. I guess

We got to the next town.
You just make up your rules,
Like a game. That’s the thing,

It’s like a game that you
Make up. You keep your rules.
You can hear in your head

How the thought should sound like.
The voice comes with the thought.
Live half lives. Half in your

Life and half in your head.
How do we make it work?
Like when I went, we walked

And it took us six cheeks—
Weeks—to go to the end.
So it sort of seems fake.