After a star has lived its life
and run out of nuclear spirit,
after its atmosphere thins out
and its heart falls in upon itself,
after it explodes in all colors of the
rainbow and beyond,
diffuse rivers of its flesh pool
and form sunset clouds lightyears across.
Atoms from the star, in its grave,
encounter each other
one by one, maybe with refugees from
another stellar wake
and shake hands, come together, make
rocks and dirt, build houses, and eventually
sunflowers.
I automated cotton milling
then I automated knitting
I automated horses
then automated auto making
I automated chess and checkers
and automatically read the news
I automated chicken and pork
and automatically supersized you
I automated entertainment
before I automated art
I automated music
and I automated poems
I automated learning
I automated conversation
I automated relationships
especially transactions.
I automated life and
I automated love
I automated automation
And what was left?
sleeping and shitting
eating and gristle
horror and the wrath of god –
and cleaning up the messes
the robots keep making
I am a magician.
I can do impossible things.
I can watch for an eternity
without blinking.
I can walk on water,
at great personal cost.
I can tell the truth,
even when friends plug their ears
so that all they hear me shout is
‘wolf, wolf.’
Sometimes I read too many abstractions
and the house fills with thunderheads.
You force me outside into the blue and green
and I remember that bad news needn’t eclipse.
—
Sometimes the street fills with smoke
and we usher friends, strangers in.
We draw the curtains and, maybe quietly,
pour the wine, play a game.
if you have been surprised
or disappointed
by cruelty happening
on purpose
there is nothing wrong with you
it means that you believe
another world is possible
and every time
you tell a friend you love their art
you help mom with the dishes
you wave back at little kids
that world claws itself closer into being.
You can never step in the same river twice.
We cannot go home but that doesn’t mean
we can’t see it, far downstream.
When this fever breaks
we will build a new home,
one of stone and brick and hands.
I walk through these dark woods
with my head in the clouds,
dreaming of home.
On time’s ocean across the universe
he sailed into the fabric of myth,
a deluge, escape across the sea
and the founding of a country.
Pillar of ash and pillar of smoke,
aurochs thundering under yoke,
turn
In another time, the mists parted
and he saw an unfinished pyramid
dismantled, the men walking backwards
and throwing the stones into holes.
Pillar of tar and pillar of steel,
driven backward by the wheel,
turn
He had planned on seeing glory
but when came down from the mountain
his face was wild and pale.
He said to those hollow men –
Turn the wheel of fortune that has
a hand at each wedge.
Grasp your prize and pull.
Van Gogh retired from the world
and painted flowers, not as they were
but as he saw them. In families,
in aching color, whole even when broken.
The world saw something else in those
pictures, and in him. Funny people
paint those funny pictures.
Don’t look too close.
I’m afraid of being seen.
Of becoming a portrait on someone’s wall
that I don’t recognize. Or worst of all,
being shown a mirror.
I plan and analyze and overthink
so that I will never be caught
being human.
And yet when I see van Gogh’s irises,
I don’t see flowers, I see a brain –
raw, disordered, broken, different,
beautiful, powerful.
Tree of death, you guide me
through sharp nostalgia
for a world that has been left
far behind in the east.
Tree of resurrection,
you assure me
that an ending is also always
a beginning.
This fire may burn your bark,
but it will yield staves
hard and sharp.
The labyrinth is burning.
Something or someone set it ablaze.
We who live on its edge watch
with horror and delight.
We always wanted to know
what was hidden within and now we might.
The secret in the darkness
at the labyrinth’s center, if it even has one.
The secret known only to a few priests
and the king himself.
A monster, or monsters, treasure,
secret learning too powerful to share.
The labyrinth is burning. Underground
chambers collapse and crack the streets.
The secret of kings will be revealed
by fire as the palace falls
and the walls fall and the roofs fall
and the sea rages in
and the sun disappears,
we will be granted knowledge
locked away by our ancestors who taught us
to turn away from the wrath of god.
What has filled the labyrinth?
What could power not dare reveal?
Nothing at all.
Nothing.
And as the city turns to sand
and fans of water in the mud,
and some of us play the monsters,
robbing treasure they couldn’t loot,
with that knowledge of the world
as it really is will come freedom,
Luó, freedom through destruction,
freedom from all constraint,
no halls for lack of walls,
no paths for lack of forests.
In that expanse we will be forced
to decide whether to become kinder,
to grow a lattice from entwined fingers,
to build a wall or build four,
whether to rebuild the maze,
what to write down, what to hide.
