SPRING 2024
Maybe God, Too, Has a Body
(4/3/2024)
Maybe God, too, has a body
That it doesn’t understand,
One who tells it when to hunger,
When to slumber by command,
Who has half a mind for pleasure
And a half avoiding pain,
Who has half a will to love itself
And half who hates in vain.
Maybe God, too, has a body
That will atrophy some day;
Maybe God’s scared of tomorrow,
Of its structure’s sure decay.
Maybe God enjoys its memories,
The pageantry of past
Such that when it opens eyes again,
It prays the eyes will last.
Maybe God, too, has a body
That informs it of itself,
One who faithfully appends it,
Be in sickness or in health.
One whose organs work together
To ensure their host survives
while poor single cells die tethered,
Knowing only their own lives.
Maybe God, too, has a body
That it cannot comprehend,
One who had no say beginning
But who only knows to end.
One who takes its Life for granted
And imagines Death in strain,
Who is half entranced to make rain dance
And half to dance for rain.
Ours is a Love
(4:15:2024)
Mine is a love who supersedes reason;
Mine is a love who is victory / treason;
Mine is a love
who endures every season
while only alive in
today, today.
Yours is a love who looks Life in the eye;
Yours is a love unconcerned with how / why;
Yours is a love
stretching out as the sky
meets
today, today.
Ours is a love without any plot / holes;
Ours is a love
who pays all of debt’s tolls for
today, today, today.
4:25:2024
If enough time passes,
The probability for Anything At All
spikes to 100 percent—
a split second is all fate needs—
the probability of this moment,
for example,
one that Nothing Nowhere has
ever seen and will Never be seen again,
100 percent.
Your architecture is one of
false cognates,
false pretenses,
false alarms:
Do something!
Do something while you're someone!
Death is certain; only death is certain!
No; come back here where certainty
makes no sense,
where confusion is sense;
come back here, where everything
has a shoulder to cry on
and no one can should you away.
Come back here:
when you are,
where you were,
how you're going,
and leave the numbers to their
priming.
4:26:2024
When we say
Don't give up!
We do not mean to say:
“keep wading through the blood,”
We mean:
dissolve into it.
Don't turn away from the horror,
Let it tear you apart.
Don't seal shut your heart,
Trade in old for new pain—
they're both pain anyways!
Consider what “giving up”
Might look like
In a dream which only knows how to
Take, take,
take you down with it.
Don't reason with it—
just give up!
The truth is, this is hopeless.
But please, don't give up.
Give hope up!
In time, you'll come to find
That true hopelessness
Hold space
for something
Much much
Bigger than hope,
something better than luck:
Don't give in!
Give in up!
I-N-G!
(4:29:2024)
Describe my heart?
Beating, I-N-G!
How words trouble me!
Animals of another dimension unseen,
Lustful in their own inventions,
Sparring as gods often do.
Describe my heart?
Heart, describe me, I-N-G!
How flesh speaks to me!
Symptomatic as any disease,
Auto-matic as any machine.
Joy incarnate, recurrent,
Cannibalistic: demanding me.
Describe my heart?
Dead-Alive in good fun, I-N-G!
How time laughs at me!
And I laugh back, re-
Member my loaned misery,
Chain every thing to Freedom
So that everything is free!
Describe my heart?
Heart, take this scribe
away from me!
De-scribe, my heart—
I-N-G!
377
(5:4:2024)
Here is how I know that math is useless,
however beautiful:
one cannot divide by zero
without our equations
breaking down.
Nothing
cannot be
separated from
anything
and yet
anything
can only be
separated from
itself.
Anything cannot divide itself
without itself;
and yet
Nothing can divide itself
without itself.
Why would math even demand
equations at all,
if
“=” truly equated to equivalence,
if
= really = = ?
X = 1:
a variable functions as a number;
that which is unknown functions as the known;
THAT is also THIS—
which might suffice the physicists,
but verbs prefer not nouning nouns—
and what builds up
must break back down!
5:16:2024
First, you must notice me—
which is not necessarily something
one can do by choice, and so
here already, we are introduced
to Fate
before
each other.
So, notice me, anyway, and then—
get curious.
Wonder why, but don't expect
you'll find any answers
unless you'll have what I'm having.
And the moment you decide
to have what I'm having
is the moment during which
curiosity gives way
to another layer of ritual:
the lunacy, transcription—
more literal than translation;
a transformation, no!
A re-creation,
faithfully,
the only means we have to know.
Next, spit the parts of me you don't like
back out
and get curious all over again:
Why is she not (like) me?
Learn to etch Who You Are
out from
Who You Are Not
as a sculptor sheds his own stone
leaving well enough alone.
Lastly, realize
that hatred, too
takes the Love of One from you.
Can you really love what isn't you?
Why, that's all there is to do!
Can I really love what isn't me?
Why, that's all there's left to be!
GPS
(5:19:2024)
I quite like the idea
of birds’ inner topographies:
I imagine my roadmaps
amid tops of trees,
and 3D—
a branch’s sound twirl,
the mark of its lean,
a pitter-pattern of shade
lacing late in the day,
a business’ lettering:
PHARMACY’s curl,
a pickup truck’s sheen
or the river’s sure braid
as it carries out May,
or the wind’s steady whirl—
traffic flowing unseen,
or the asphalt’s hot blade
slitting every which way,
and I think back to me
with my silly speaksay
and my righteous parade
and my things that I mean
and my time I unfurl
and of all of the gaps
in my inner cosmology—
and I can't help but think
that a true bird’s-eye-view
might indeed prove
a stronger theology,
a truer panacea
(Or at least
I quite like the idea).
6:2:2024
I hold the weight of things
in my eyes
with a gaze stronger than gravity’s,
more binding than any borderline—
through sight, they become
more than mine,
they become me. Yet
I wonder so much that I
mistake the illusion for
contradiction, mistake
what things mean
for the things that I cannot weigh, see.
If something doesn't make sense,
those senses must not effect me!
Here,
everything seems to be in order—
and nothing is how it seems,
so Chaos might find just a way to love me
through a mask I recognize,
materialize.
I hold the weight of things
with my loaned ears and eyes,
with this brain, flesh and bones,
and they hold me accountable
for this debt that I owe,
hold these eyes for ransom
until they have seen
all that there is to be shown,
hold my knowing hostage
until there is nothing to do
but weigh in,
but be known.
6:10:2024
Today is one such day
when spring and autumn have swapped places,
prompting me to remember
that a wheel may turn any which way,
that a spiral won't have much to say
of the curve we re-trace,
that a spirit won't grab much; cliches
are the stuff of old prayers, and after
you've wrung them right out of their use,
you must settle for wordings more up-to-date.
Today is one such day
who opens the portal back to mid October,
to the curious way each tender leaf
dares not overstay Life’s welcome,
their shuddering branches, too,
all apart in the play.
And these trees, daring, greening
in spite of Winter’s sure victory scening
mere months away on either side,
facing the cold sky so wide
that the sun owes a balance to pay:
and meanwhile, I remember October,
how time might be anything
(surely not over),
and I thank the hot autumn;
the cold careful spring
for, in spite of it all,
daying anything.
Truthing
6:17:2024
The truth is stupidly simple—
cutting all your crossed wires,
unlearning what knowledge conspires,
herein lies your difficult liars.
Lies are so complicated; truth is
so stupidly simple
it can't even be spoken;
it can't even be broken down into
smaller components;
it is primed
so as not to be dissected or divided,
holy and whole
until geniuses come right along
and contrive it.
What a strange parallel!
What does hell make of heaven;
what have I bought to sell?
Simple— this is stupid!
Stupid! This is simple—
don't use your brain so much;
the truth
will come back out of hiding
once you cease in your strain
of its seeking.
In vain, we all look for truth
as a hunter stalks prey:
in some dead final form
caught red-handed and lying;
Truth is not something paused
to be sought,
but an ongoing finding
that truths stupidly—
and without even trying.