The People of the Waves Cower in the Mountains of Zion, 31 January 2019

Why submit if destruction remains guaranteed?
Between authority and anarchy stands argument,
Resisting and negotiating, insisting only words
Can catch words, only symbols symbols,
Only meanings meanings. The rest is noise,
Whether thundered from on high or rumbling
Up from below. Between heaven and the dragon,
Lightning and the earthquake, the superior force
That targets and the writhing chaos that erupts,
Weave messages, nothing much but messages.
Our sky gods are woven from messages, striking
Our serpentine monsters of uncoiling messages
With wave upon wave of messages, driving down
Leviathan, but never actually finishing the inchoate
Beast of many murmuring tongues that always returns,
Stronger. To this finite arrangement, never ending
In any final victory, resistance by the people
Of the waves, yes, is futile. But why hide, why
Surrender? The tyrant and the demon are both at bay,
Enchained by the complex negotiations of these waves,
Their more extreme exchanges of advantage tempered,
A kind of sustained, rolling victory, knowing neither
Authority nor anarchy can win until the whole
Arrangement ends, the whole ocean drains,
Until Judgment and Armageddon take all
Of divinity and deviltry, of sacred and profane,
Of God and creation out with them, every pattern
Cancelling. Submission and resistance together
At last, the final triumph of all this nothing much
Will be to finally arrive at nonexistence, nothing
Attained or to be attained, the final attainment.

Blown Glass Bone Harmonica Played by the Virgin River in Utah, 30 January 2019

The palps of the day spun past the flesh.
Feel the friction from the fingerprints of ghosts
Set vertebrae to spinning independently?
Sense the tunes shivering up through the neck.
Or don’t. Imperatives are nothing but dreck.
The manipulation continues, nonetheless.
The bones can be made to sing with soul
Never their own. The musicians of the spheres
Make a home of all moaning, wavering tones.

Juddzona, Arizona, 29 January 2019

Behind the counter of smokes and energy
Booster drinks at the auto shop, a flat screen,
Diagonally no bigger than half a yardstick,
Ran simulated pictures of exploding stars
As the clerk struggled to press the right icons
On the screen of her register and an addled
Young white man in worn ball cap and work boots
Tried to make charming small talk with her.
A clipped, Oxbridge accent enunciated
From the television’s tiny speakers. “Neutrons
From these dying stars are pouring through us
At every moment, unawares, as if we were not
Even there.” The clerk and the young man
Took no notice of the voice, but finally told each other
“Have a good one,” as two packs and a ticket
For a multimillion-dollar lottery jackpot changed
Hands, along with awkward glances, as if we,
As if the news of neutrons were not even there.

Sympathy for the Dragon, 28 January 2019

One could call it diabolically cruel that the one
Feature of life on which we can know we can
Count, count on absolutely, is the one feature
We most fear, would most love to be rid of, least
Want, but then again, it’s just the world at core,
So why try to ascribe it to only demons? Find
Yourself an actual dragon, cage yourself a demon,
Before you call any dark change an aberration.
As far as a dragon can tell, curled in its lair,
The brimstone smell in its feathery hair, the dark
Is a feature of the whole, belonging to no part.
The darkest part is the part that shames the dark.

Decisively Saint George, Utah, 27 January 2019

The most absurd aspect of ruminant human
Decision-making is not the final irrelevance
Of our decisions, not our delusion of choice
When making them, but the innate need,
The endlessly rumbling urge and hunger
To muse on them, even when we’re well aware
We don’t choose them so much as express them,
Even when we know they won’t make as much
Difference as we worry they’ll portend. Frost
Was teasing Edward Thomas when he composed
“The Road Not Taken,” and one can feel the latent
Sarcasm in the famous ending, but doubtless
Frost still worried over many of his own decisions.
Has any beast other than H. sapiens ever been
So compelled, if not to extended reasoning,
At least to so much hesitation? Tonight we may
Return to our apartment in Saint George. Tonight
We may spend with family in Zion Canyon.
We haven’t decided yet. Like a catnip-bemused
Kitten facing a catnip-infused phony rodent,
We can’t ignore the false necessity of decision.

Christ Sisyphus, 26 January, 2019

The same old sacrifice, same old spear
In the side, same katabatic visit, same
Harrowing, same ascent, again and again:
How many times does a god have to die
To save a single species given to lies
On one speck of ash caught in the skies?

Simple, Empty Things in the Corner of the World, 25 January 2019

The simple need to know
Never puts on a show.
It’s only once what’s known
Has already been shown
That knowers clap or moan,
And then they have to go.
They still desire to know.