Don’t Knock

Some days we sound clear as bells,
Or at least as those weird tunes
Played on glass that let you know

Air’s a field with waves through it
And waves aren’t clear as all that,
Not in where each starts and stops.

Some days we’re just weird as cairns
Piled by the side of the road,
Who knows why. Some soul was bored,

Or thought the next soul to pass
Would be awed by the mute pile
Or spooked. Some days we’re like that.

Some days we live in the cairn
And play those stones like a harp.
Creep up on us then. We’re in.

The Armed Man

There’s an old church tune, good for hymns—
Guns, guns, guns for all, guns for all
And death for some. All who fear guns,
You just need guns, own your own guns,
Just go get guns. Yes, go get some
Guns, guns, guns for all, guns for all.
Gun deaths for some, so get your guns—
Makes a nice church tune, quite nice hymn.

You Can’t Take Our Slight Death

No eye can hold us.
We fly like Char’s swift.
We do not touch ground.

Our joy sounds like shrieks
Trapped in your skull’s house.
Do not shoot us down.

Your rules, like your breath,
Puff the wind for us,
Just to hold us up.

All the beasts of land,
All the fish of wet,
All the roots that grasp,

We are not like them.
We live all in air
All our lives, not some,

Small black weights that push
Up and do not rest,
Slight lives graced slight death.

But You Birthed Us, So There’s That

That a name means, that it signs,
Makes it strange, in that the rest
Of the world, by far the most—

Moons and stars and dense black holes—
Don’t seem to sign at all. Oh,
There’s facts in them. Lots of waves,

Fields, points to count. Things go boom.
But this is known just to us,
Just to the signs, counts—our thing.

You’d think names would be well smeared
On the skies. You’d think it so
Hard that you did, do, think so.

You still con the stars for signs,
For a sign signs aren’t just yours.
Well, we aren’t. Don’t fret. We’re ours.