Periaqueductal Gray, 7 May 2018

The scenarios you will imagine
Are reliably more predictable
Than anything that actually happens,

Although some of what actually happens,
Daylight, moonlight, minor accidents, pain,
Is pretty damn predictable as well.

Everything’s continually arriving,
Yet you never seem to see it coming,
The where-when of each particular ache.

In your imagination, disasters
And boring long-shot good things dominate.
What actually happens is just the breaks.

Astrometry, 6 May 2018

In all of that longing and violence,
Human lives and deaths proceeded swiftly,
Never pausing, despite all our longing,
For any return on eternity.

The conscious being of the book became
The reader who longed to be the writer
Longing for a reader who longed to be
The book. There were wavelengths to measure this.

Tonight Earth’s moon and Mars appeared like kin
In the nearest sky, which they were, so why
Did we care to determine the distance
To and between the farthest shouts of light?

It’s not as if we’re going to visit them.
The books the humans wrote were murmuring
Exactly these sorts of things against them,
Never pausing, despite all their longing,

Verbatim.

Vanity Books and Framed Photos, Cinco de Mayo, 2018

There’s a years-old, half-empty bottle of tequila
On a kitchen counter next to the sink, left
There, actually, by someone unaware
Of the holiday. She was cleaning out
Cupboards, ahead of the sale of her house.
Boxes, filled or empty, littered the floors
Around the half-full, half-emptied shelves.
Soon someone else will live here, soon, before
The next holiday knocking at the door. Under
The desultory ceiling fan of continuous differences,
The paintings and pictures still hang. What
You can say about such a careful arrangement
In the process of being removed and boxed
Is that it’s like extreme slow-motion footage
Of a beetle folding away its papery, origami
Wings back beneath the glossy shine. Things
That mean, that say “this is how she or he
Meant to be seen, wanted to be,” these are
The human equivalent of giant eye-spot wings
Signaling, for a while, “I was bigger than just me,
I opened up into the world and ascended
Into the air as I pleased. Look at my artful
Disposition of these, my co-created things.”
Tomorrow or next week, the house will be
Empty, the walls freshly glossy. She’ll leave
Behind the tequila, deciding to hide it, discreetly,
Whimsically, for the new owners to find it.
She tells me the last owners left it behind
For and her husband to discover, which they did,
But each separately, each becoming suspicious
Of the other’s secret drinking, watching
And checking the level of the tequila for months
Before realizing, with hilarity, it didn’t belong
To either of them. So now, she’ll sow the pearl
Of possible suspicions for the next couple,
Although perhaps this time whoever finds it
Will only either discard it or drink it, without
Wonder, as all who form no stories are without
Wonder or suspicion, sober or drunk, and are free.

Bright Courtyard, 4 May 2018

What an amazing prediction. I was right;
We were right: the day spun back again.
Now this sunlight on skin predicts the night
Is about to gather shadows and begin again.
You know, as don’t we all, it’s obstruction,
That’s all, eclipse, the most ordinary sight,
That marvels us not in the slightest, that’s been
The thin wedge all our lives between us and light
That would burn us with unmerciful delight
If we didn’t create distance with our bit of sin,
Wickedness, the healthy deliverer of frights,
The garden’s flaming sword that keeps us in.

Black Window, 3 May 2018

Every day the planet spins, I find myself
Returning to the thought that every turn
Takes a little bit longer, relative to other
Measures, than the last day, so that even
This smoothest, most reliable-seeming motion
Is slowly changing its rate of change. The top
On the wooden table, the Foucault pendulum
In the planetarium, every stable orbit, every
Stable attractor will wobble into chaos. So
Much is so similar but nothing is essentially
Unchanged. I like to know what I know
I’ll never be able to feel for myself. These words
That pretend to speak for me, as me, who
Speak for themselves and the languages
Beyond, before and aft of me, form a part
Of that knowledge. What I can feel, without
Them or through them, alike, is that I am
No longer watching the sun or the rain
But sitting with my furniture and my screens,
Beside the window black enough to mirror.
Soon enough, slowing spin notwithstanding,
Whether or not I sleep, more sun and rain.
No wonder some Sufis sought divinity in spins.

Homeostasis, 2 May 2018

At Sandby Borg ring fort on Öland Island,
Life went on without historians for centuries.
Some things got better. Other things worse.
Sometimes, more things seemed to be
Getting better and life felt promising.
Sometimes, more things seemed to be
Getting worse and life felt threatening.
One day, we don’t know exactly when,
Some men came, we don’t know who.
They separated all the women and girls.
They sequestered all the weapons. Then,
They killed all of the males: men, boys, infants.
They smashed their skulls, crushed their chests.
One old man fell into a hearth and burned
Either after or as he died. An adolescent
Fell backward over a man already dead.
One boy lived a little while, lying on his side.
In one house alone, nine bodies strewn.
We don’t know in what order these things
Were accomplished, but after the killing,
The killers left. Other than the weapons
And the women, they seem to have taken
Nothing. No one returned to burn or bury
The dead. Sandby Borg rotted quietly, abandoned,
Awaiting the excavations of archaeologists.
Meanwhile, a millennium on in Peru, on a cliff
Overlooking the ocean, in the land of the Chimú,
Well over a hundred children, two hundred
Llamas, and at least a couple of grown women
Were ritually slaughtered, the llamas strangled
With ropes, the children cut open at the chest,
Probably to get at, then pull out, their hearts.
The two women had their heads smashed in,
And all were interred together on the cliff
Just outside of history. Evidence suggests
This was done during a drought. Some things
Get better, others worse. Sometimes, more
Things seem to be getting better than are getting
Worse, and life feels promising. Sometimes,
More things seem to be getting worse,
And life feels threatening. One day.

Side Street, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1 May 2018

The parasympathetic nervous system warms
Like a lizard in the sun. Time to be calm,
Digest the view. Rain and spring snow cleared
The dusty, dirty air. Now that warmth has returned,
The clouds have a little while to be picturesque
Above the peaky roofs, the sky a little time
To display wavelengths classically pale blue.
Children's voices emerge outdoors, blossoms
And leaves shine impossibly brightened.
Body knows, deep in healed and broken bones,
That this is an incorrigible world, that pleasure
Comes as reward, mostly, for doing the things
Body’s ancestors tended successfully to do.
Life has never negotiated a lasting truce.
But this is a truce. There are magical machines
One’s great-great grandparents would have been
Frightened to see, having never imagined.
There are sounds from backbeats to passing jets
To the determined chirping of continuous things.
Don’t bet on the jets or the machines. Bet
On the living things. Of course, that’s the thing.
Can you tell at what point we machines, we
Technologies like language and poetry
And self-propelling metal engines, cross
That imperceptible stream, minuscule Rubicon,
That wanders the line between living and mere
Being? Consult your contented lizard innards,
Life forever subject to failures and rewards.