When they try to rule you,
ignore them.
When they threaten you,
laugh at them.
When they shoot at you,
belittle them.
where they kill you,
build a shrine.
When they bulldoze that shrine,
plant grass
and declare
that all grass
everywhere
is now a monument.
Every time anyone anywhere
stamps its blades with their feet
they march with you,
with us.
Breathless
It’s easy enough to take the firmament
for granted. If you thought
you could lose it
you might go crazy.
Leaving home is like that.
You feel freer than a cloud,
surprised at every turn,
and often bitter solitude
in spite of the new colors around you.
Familiarity is constraining,
but is also a scaffold.
Quite contrary, but then again
what might a fish say if
cast into the air?
He might say, I can’t breathe!
He might say, I can fly!
Let the thoughts flow from you.
Let them fill the page,
or rush down the drain.
Whisper to allies or
shout to the starry night.
Empty your vessel.
Spill them like tears
until they cover
the land and wash it.
You will not drown –
you will surge downstream
across the flooded plain,
they will become your river,
and you, its naiad.
Garden path
I carried a great stone up
a mountain for an age.
It would fall and I would
have to fall farther to catch it.
When all your progress can be
erased in an instant there is
no rest, no rest. Recovery
is for after reaching the goal.
I hauled that stone for an age,
filthy and twitching, then one
day halfway up I
realized –
this is not my mountain
this is not my stone
what if I never get to the top?
so what if I never get to the top?
and I turned off the road
and when I could no longer see it
I put that stone down in the moss
I remember the moss but I couldn’t say
where I put the stone,
I can’t picture it even after all that time.
I wandered all the way to the sea
and followed a great river
until it was swallowed by trees.
——————
when you go walking in the black woods,
go barefoot
so that you can better heed
the voices of the folk who live there.
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.
