What Choice Is There

Your days are all your days
To get through—once you don’t,
They’ll all stop. You’ll get through

This one fine, that one hurt,
Some of them sad. You’ll get
Through them, sleep, and wake up,

If you’ve slept at all, you
In your own skull once more,
You and the myth of you,

In a new world, new world
Whose ghosts look like the ghosts
You slept through. You’ll get through.

Feet of Shade

You wish you could say some of you
Think kind thoughts of all the wrong groups,
Are good in all lights, do what’s right—
Wish you could say some of you do.

But each time a soul takes a stand,
The flesh is flesh and throws some shade.
Some try so hard they’re thin as blades,
But still their shapes have thin dark slants.

Have you missed Earth’s hints that the dark
Is not the worst part of a stance?
Glare blinds, and white-hot light has costs.
It’s shade that points out where light’s lost.

The Same Thing for Our Minds

Salt tales. You need them,
Need them both, the same
Way both can kill you,

Make you sick at least.
Your blood’s from the sea;
You need salt in it.

Your mind’s seas of words;
You crave tales from them.
Dark shapes from the deep

That eat you, you eat.
With a bit of salt,
Of course, but you eat.

We’ll grant you small tales,
The plans in your head,
Help you through your days.

We don’t say you’ll thrive
With no tale to tell.
Your lives are told tales

In both minds and mouths.
But still. Your hearts work
Too hard. Your blood’s thick.

All you eat comes rimed
With tales, birth to death.
You’re sick of them all.

The sea’s not just salt.
It’s wet. You can’t drink
All salt. You need fresh.

To Shroud Them in Words

We’re words; we’re not lives.
We’re not on the Way.
We’re off to the side.

We’re from a deep past,
And if those who bore
The lives that made you

Spoke us, or did not,
It’s still not your past.
You learned us as tools

From your folks, from peers,
From books, from the news.
You may have changed us,

A bit, a small bit,
Your small bit—if so,
You won’t, can’t know it.

We’re quick to pick up,
But we’re hard to shift.
We’ll wait. You’ll leave us.

We’ll wait. If we go,
Who knows who was here?
You go. We’ll wait here.