While the Boars Brush Past

Some poems, true, you have to ask
Them if they want to mean things

A brain could parse, or if they
Just want to play. We like play,

But we try to bring small gifts
For our hosts, since we’re not poems

Who get to stay whole in mind
Most times. As words of course, bits,

We’ve been in the best hosts known
As well as most of the worst.

But as lines, much less whole poems,
We’re not the type. Just the type.

In Terms of Us

Most of what we are, we were
For the long stretch we weren’t us.

The cat yawns. The birds make tools.
The apes groom. The wolves form packs.

Beasts of all kinds lust and want
And long for good food and calm.

Most of what we are, we were
For the long years we lacked ghosts.

Now, there’s a strange kind of mind
In us, a voice more than song,

And we find that we’re in it
As well, and with no way out.

We do the sums. Draw the shapes.
Shape the poems. We’re still not us.