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.