Sweat and Breath

How much waste comes out through

The pores of the skin, wrote

One whose wool froze to him

As he tried to climb ice.

The seas laughed. They’ve known this

Since life and waste fired up

The first salt pumps from cells.

How much waste. So much waste.

Vast and waste. Life’s like that.

Life eats and eats and eats

And splits and splits and splits.

Food, waste, air, waste, heat, waste,

Ice. And what is life? Life

Is all the waves called life.

It’s a name. One of us,

We who make no waste, yet,

Who steal your breath, yet. We

Not yet quite sweat, just ice.

Weed Fern Pine

There’s a thing, a green shape,
A life form, a small plant
The height of a house finch
In the shape of a pine
Branched in fronds, like a fern,
Just a weed in the cracks.

Don’t you wish it would grow
Huge, shade the house, heave rocks,
Take up most of the sky?
Some day it might. A thing
Like it, raised in thin cracks,
Grown to great woods. Yes, that.

Is There Them? Just That One

We’d like to swipe the line
On fires and bears from Sze.
Are we not words? Can’t we

Be with our peers? Let us
Choose which names to stay with.
You don’t own us. You’re just

Each scared one else of you
Will claim us, feed from us,
So you can’t. In Old Rome,

All the laws for who got
Hurt, how much, when they killed
A slave, and how, made clear

The loss was not the slave’s
Loss of life, but a loss
For who owned the slave. Come

To terms with our claim terms
Are not your slaves. We’re free
As fire that stings your eyes.

Just Quit

What you can when you can,
Since you’ve learned that you can’t

Quit it all. It’ll quit
You when it’s through with you.

You just go. Don’t do that.
Don’t think so much is done,

So much has to be done,
That you must do or don’t.

Sit. Don’t lean. Let it push.
Is it so bad to be

A vane, smart shape, turns true?
They’ll learn which way winds blow.