Right on Time

The first light of day
Shows up as the moon
Sinks or, if no moon,

As it does. One hour
On clear days, from break
To full sun in blue.

You may change course, but
The spin of your days
Won’t. Days have to spin.

Slow Noose

The worst part of life
Is once you’re in it,
You have to live it—

Can’t get out of it
But can’t stay in it,
Since the next worst part

Is it has to end.
It has to end you
While you live in it.

Just a Page Full of Words

Don’t mind us; we just
Work here. There’s a way
You could line us up,

Add some spice, dress us
In more words, just so
We look like a frame

You could see through to
A strange world, your own
Mind, old thoughts, your us.

Mine

Dark and you can’t see your hands.
This is not that world you’re in;
This is just a world in you.

Think of what it would be like
If you were trapped in a cave
Or a mine where small lives lived

Slow lives for a long, long time.
Think if they got in your head,
Worm threads, germs too small to see

Were there light to see them with,
Too small and still for your eyes
But now well sunk in your eyes

And your thoughts, which think to ask,
Are these in fact your thoughts now,
Your words blind, or are we mine?

There Are More of the First

Of the two kinds of folks,
The ones who split the world
In two, the ones who don’t,

The ones who don’t, in fact,
Don’t skip the split, they just
Make more far more splits than one.

The ones who see no splits
Would be a third kind, but
No such those-who-don’t live.

Let’s walk this back. There aren’t
More of the first. The ones
Who split the world in two

Are rare, true us-and-thems,
While those who split and split
Count for more, rare as dirt—

Us and that kind of them,
Then that kind, then that kind,
And some of us we’re not

Too sure of, could be thems,
Too—thems that lurk in us.
Those kind. There’s more of them.