To Make Lines in the Shape

The more you write of your flesh,
The less you are part of it,

The more you have left for death,
Ghosts, these words you used for flesh.

You will not draw close in lines
That spell out your love of you,

Of your meat and bones, your breath,
Your waste, how you want your food,

How you love or loathe your sex.
Don’t let us stop you. We’re words.

That’s what we’re for. If you want
To hug your life to you, stop.

It’s Not a Skill You Can Learn Just a Fact

From time to change,
Like that, you’ll fall.
It’s how it goes.
Time, no. Time is

Sweet—pulse, turn, beat.
It’s kind. It’s time
Told you that change
Can bring things back—

It’s not the end,
Days, nights, years, lives,
The sky on track.
That kind of change,

It wheels a dance.
But you’ll know change
That’s not like that.
You can’t come back.

Well, It Has to Be Now, Then

We are not as gods. We’re ghosts,
And we won’t get good at it.

Oh, but bad ghosts. We have hosts
Of those ghouls, and we’re their hosts.

Earth has launched a new front here,
In us, with us, in the way

Life haunts rocks. Our words and counts
Now dance through genes that made them

Things that could be made, or found,
Or spliced, or crunched. Want to find

Out what the next waves of life
Will want from us? Ghosts, that’s what.

Want to know how soon we’ll go?
This clock was born with no hands.

Cracked Black Bones

What might it be like to live
In some small home you passed by,
A light half-glimpsed through the fog?

You are too dark, down too deep—
Not in your quick red heart—no,
Deep down in your cracked black bones.

You drive on. You park a while.
You think, Well, I’m way too poor
To own a home of my own,

And that house, too—I just caught
A hint of a glow. I saw
What I thought I saw. What was

It like, once at the front door?
What was it like to look out
Or to be trapped in that house?

Not so nice. Just some small rooms.
Why would you want to go there,
When you’re half free in the dark

And chase sun and moon, and think
Of your soul, not as soft flesh,
Not caught on your cracked black bones?