Pit Stop in Parowan, Utah, 7 February 2018

On the radio, someone’s speaking urgently 

About the consequences of belief. A hawk

Is circling over the field by the gas station.

Daughter stays in the back seat watching

The Lion King on a badly cracked iPad

While I lean at the gas pump, listening. 

Human voices cast as cartoon animals sing 

Inanely, “hakuna matata, no worries!”

In a dozen inflections, again and again.

No worries, eh? A different hawk lies broken

At the edge of the station parking lot. I am

Curious how it could have died at that spot.

Only a human would believe there are real 

Consequences to the convictions humans 

Hold. Only a human would be so daft

As to disagree and risk the consequences.

Watching Shadows Cross the Room, 6 February 2018

Is it surprising for someone so convinced
Of the singular reality of temporality to be
So deeply suspicious of narrative? Perhaps
Not considering how routinely linear stories
Experienced linearly, chop up and resequence
The events as presented, looping, doubling,
Reversing, the more so with the invention
Of writing and in medias res, still more
After the printing press, and vastly more
In recorded narratives, particularly film
And digital where the geometric, Einsteinian
Faith that time has no final direction is bolstered
By the illusionist wizards of scenes and effects.
And yet, deeply suspicious as I am, I admit,
Those are the narratives I love best, lost
In time conundrums, multiple perspectives,
Memories played back to front, front to back,
The loopiest of loops, the defiance of death,
The same day over and over and over again
That is never, not once the same. Similarily,
Still, the stills are never still, the original
Prints so cleverly cut still decay, the data
Become corrupted, and it all, however well spliced,
Fades away. So that’s not it. What the egg
Of an unhatched soul wants only is not release
From lies but from the lie that there is a truth
That does not alter when alteration finds it.
The arc is long but it bends, is ever bending
Toward what I am not certain, but then,
Again, I am certain of nothing.

Inhuman Wisdom, 5 February 2018

Truth is, you don’t want somebody calm,
Somebody who comprehends the larger
Truth. Someone like that lacks motivation.
Stoicism is good. The stoics were made to rule.
Theirs is a ruler’s religion. Just ask Aurelius,
Scourge of those creepy atheist Christians
Who refused to acknowledge Roman gods.
Because the calm of the stoics is deceptive, brutal
When it feels its role requires it to be so,
You can count on a stoic to get things done,
Even if occasional slaughter is involved.
But somebody truly calm, not out to conquer,
Save, or enlighten anyone, is hardly human.
You don’t want that. That won’t help you.
That long perspective sees bland erasure
Blurring every margin of every existence,
An indifference born of sinking gravity,
No hopping off the wheel of rebirth, no
Eternity of hosannas beyond mortality,
No sutras, no scriptures, no prime directive,
No redemption, no necessity. Dispassion is rare
In a ravening species self-domesticated, bred
For striving, for competing to scramble quickly
Up the sliding piles of rubble our ancestors
Raised, just to add a bit to the top of the heap.
Leave an inscription, leave a legend, a song.
Leave descendants, a fortune carved in stone,
A prophecy, a romance, an empire, a notion,
Something immortal, another damned poem.

A Ghost of Information Lectures Me, Black Lake, 4 February 2018

It is only because of the possibility of loss,
Of the irreparable erasure of information,
The permanent vanishing of pattern,
And only as such, not just material exchange,
That anything changes at all, and it is only
As varying rates of change that anything
Exists at all, and it is gravity that is nothing,
That is the ultimate eater of pattern,
That allows the draw-down from a higher
To a lower state of entropy that is
The vanishing of information by which
Time is real and unidirectional, or else
And without which nothing would be,
While thanks to which nothing will be,
Or rather, thanks to the nothing which is,
Everything is. The ghost looked at me
Solemnly as we paused in our drive along
The shoreline road. Thanks for the lift,
He added, I get out here. Here was nothing
But a flat expanse of water, shimmering,
The surface of Black Lake, rumored
To contain a drowned town in its depths,
Rumored to show during droughts just
The bell tower of a church above its surface.
But I let him out of the car and he limped
Cautiously, as if afraid of falling, to the edge
That was rimmed with a thin line of ice,
Then walked straight down into the water
And kept walking until he disappeared.

Everyone’s a Corydon, 3 February 2018

You can’t get any deeper without drowning
Said the wildly pumping heart to the brain,
But the brain wanted to see what was under
The last of the light the eyes could perceive.
How do you split the darkness so you touch
The buildings at the bottom of Black Lake?
(“It's kind of weird,” he says quietly, the man now
Dead for years, “I wish the town was here.”)
You need a mind like a Lidar survey laser,
Not a mind like you got. But it’s down there,
You know it, the drowned town of future,
The sunken answer to your uncertain questioning,
The shape of the end that spells anything,
That would tell you why all the drowning
Of towns to hold water began. You were
A child when you first read of the ghosts
Coming out of the water and wandering
Down the road that ran along the shore. You
Knew then something no one knew anymore.

Divining Black Lake, 2 February 2018

Not exactly ex nihilo nihil fit. Nothing will
Come, and of nothing everything has been.
Speak again. The future is nothing, nothing
In it, the undiscovered country everything
Travels toward and from which everything
Obtains. Again. The future has created
The past, is creating the past. Because
Nothing is in the future, and only because
Nothing is the future is there, has there
Ever been anything. The future is nothing,
And nothing is the only cause, necessary
And sufficient, of everything trailing toward
Nothing, nothing, the only cause there is.
Because of this, therefore before this.
The Black Lake makes us by giving us a way
To change, a chance to erase, the creation
Of space, the plunge into gravity and grace.
The cause is all before us. Black Lake waits.

Creative Nihilism, 1 February 2018

Let the laws themselves be explained,
Demanded the renegade, nothing real or true
Is timeless. I like him, but it’s possible,
Perhaps, that nothing itself is real, true,
And timeless, too, being no thing, being
Outside of change. God, gravity, nothing at all,
These three remain, mystery one and the same,
But the greatest of these is nothing? One
Thinks of how weak numbers went, before zero
Anchored the number line, how the calendar
Handed down from ancient Vaticans began
Already at one, how the modular clock face
Counts to twelve then starts at twelve again.
The progress of civilization perhaps has been
One long drunkard’s walk toward knowing
That we’re missing the missing at the center,
The core where all becoming is vanishing, where
The sum of all variation is nothing, is none.
But if gravity draws possibility from nothing,
Erasure that draws us on, does nothing ever
Change, does nothing itself transform itself,
Can gravity weaken, diminish, and die?
The truth is an empty and voracious sphere
Composed of interlocking waterfalls of lies.