Used to Wend

I lost where I was
Or lost when I was.
Was it who I was?
What was it I lost?
Or did I gain sense

That all that I knew
Had gone strange or was
Strange to its core, just
The same as it was
But not as it was

To me. In just three
Lines I lost all sense
Of self and of times,
Could make no more lines.
I lost the clock, too,

Had to count each word,
Each breath, and check each
Thing that could keep count
For me. At each glance,
Some new thing was strange.

The day had grown late.
The date had grown strange.
What I saw I’d seen,
And the seen was strange,
New old old new dreams.

Much Too Much

We do not
So much share
The same plane

With the weird
And the strange—
Our bland days

And bright nights
Spent with dread
Bloom long grass

Plains where ghosts
Of horned beasts
We know well

Race or browse—
We dozed off.
We wake up.

We don’t know
Which was which.
We share this.

Stood the One Sad

At the foot of her cross,
Not a tear in her eye,

Set to climb up. A one
Who’d had no child at all,

Not a man, not a god,
Not a babe, not a son,

Had grown old and was fine,
She said. Just a bit sad,

Not for that lack of roles,
Just not to get to stay.

She grinned at me, glanced back
At her cross, shook her head,

And laughed. I’d like to stay,
But now it’s time for bed.

Wait for Me

Wait at the mouth of the cave.
If you have no cave, then wait

At the side of the creek. No?
Well, wait and watch the oak twig

On which one of those green leaves
Looks too fat and eats the rest.

It could start to spin, that leaf.
It could melt in its own silk

And fly off once days have passed.
Don’t have whole days to watch pass?

Wait in a chair by smudged glass
And watch just this one day end.

Like the mouth of a cave, dusk
The sun slips in. It’s gone then.

The First Poem

It will eat us
And all our time
In our own night.
We’ll leave small trace

Or none at all.
It will eat us,
And we know it,
And we say so,

And still we fight
And make up lies
To pass our time
And make up gods

And pray to stay,
To shine as bright
As stars that die
In their own night.

What Does a Book Feel Like?

“Post-sex, pre-corpse,” as Dan wrote
Of Cole’s poems, I’m good to go

On as a mass of cells, spayed
As my cat, in my own way,

Prone to thoughts of death. I like
Life, curse that it is on rocks,

Since I like what it gives us,
Which is more than what it is.

I like where life and death touch,
Pre-sex, post-corpse, in the form

Of words, raw ghosts, trite souls, fools,
Wills left by wisps who are gone

But for their lines that dance on
And let me be and see life

For what it is, not a god,
Right now, as I breathe and live.

We Can Wait for You

If we don’t burn.
If we’re not lost.
If we’re not dirt
Or worms or mold.

We’re words. We’re spores
Packed tight in lines.
We’re built to store
And set to go.

We know the deal.
We’ve seen the marks
Cut in clay bricks.
What we hold lasts,

Past the scribes’ lives,
Past the gods’ faiths,
Past all known tongues
That spoke us, once.