Sniff Things Out

What if there’s no way
The world can help you
When you ask for help?

The scent of baked dirt
In the hot noon sun
Smells sweet, calm, and strong,

But it’s not the sweat
Of some god of earth.
It can’t help or hurt.

So the Wrong Ones Can Find Them

Let’s stop and think on how this works.
How can you build a thing that lasts
From odds and ends of things that don’t?

Stare hard through those odds and ends. Ah.
They’re like the towers of blocks kids build,
That you may have built as a kid,

That you may have built with your kid.
A flick of the hand and they fall,
But the blocks have been known to last

For lives, passed down to kids’ kids’ kids.
It’s just the blocks are not the build.
It’s what’s left of your thoughts of this

You’d like to make last, past the build
That stood an hour or two at most,
Past you, your life, your kid’s, some blocks’.

How can you build a thought that lasts
From odds and ends of hours that don’t?
Take a cast, break it up, make more,

Spread them out, leave them in small towns,
Stash bits of them deep in the ground.
Make more, store, get rid of, and fail

To keep in one piece or one place
The shapes of thoughts you want to last.
Don’t break them down to the bare blocks.

Find the bits the right size to hold
A clue, a hint of the whole plan,
But too small to break down much more.

Plant them. Keep track as best you can,
But keep in mind, too, great woods grew
From what small lives cached and lost. Plant.

The Old Oak Tree’s Next Dream

It sticks in my throat

And wants to come out.

The Will-o’-the Wisps

Are in town! We are,

And in the air, too,

In your ears, eyes, hair.

We go where you are.

We wait when you leave

Us inked or carved there.

More of you find us.

We’re flames from your mouths,

Stones thrown by your hands,

But it’s in your heads

Where we swarm, make more

Of us to hurl out.

If you keep us in,

Your skull’s like a stump.

We’ll long to sink back

In the marsh and rot.

Let us flame with flames,

And you might get known,

You might get rich, you

Might die in jail, burn

For a witch. The town

Won’t take it to heart.

Yin Yan Yen Yearn

If you are (you are, aren’t you)
You crave, you want, you don’t know
Why—could well be it’s just life

To yearn for more. There’s a trick,
The one true trick, the great stone,
And it’s not to get more life.

It’s to live and not want life,
To not want and yet to live,
To live and still to be still.

No one’s done it. No one’s sure
Why one should want it. To be
Sure, most give up on it, want

Less and less to not want more,
Give up on that goal and rest
Their sights on just more of more,

More life, more wealth, more health, more
Love, lust, praise, stuff, joy—just more.
You get death, or old age first

And then death. You can’t get more.
You can’t get less. You can’t get
To be and not want to be,

If you want more or just want
To just not be. To be, free,
You’d have to not want to want,

Not want to not want, not want
To be but be there to sense
Your lack of a sense of want,

Which makes no sense, lacks all sense,
And can’t be sensed. Just to be
And to know it. You want it.