Mikels Skele
WhoThe morning grew clear toward mid-day,
no clouds, just a west wind to stir your memory. How you thought truth was in you, how you swore allegiance to companionship, how you lived in the night and passed judgment on the light, a light you rejected, a payback, a settling, a comeuppance, how you failed to notice, even then, that you hadn’t the status to be rejected, how you slowly saw, slowly, grudgingly, that rejection was neither of you nor for you, and how little it mattered. Later, you try to start over, still wearing the skin you were born in, all those scars the only evidence. Just before the final extinctionJust before the final extinction
There were strange and wonderful creatures Elusive slabs of silver Darting through the water Among shape-shifting bulbs Trailing fierce limbs And some barely-there whisps Still deadly with near visible Strands of poison And the stone-clasping tendrils Living dually beneath and above The frothing rock wacked about By unseen surrounds Miniscule bits buzzing through the air But strong enough to pierce the Thick outards of others To suck their vital fluids Long bendy tails with no body Slinking among roots and shoots A mouth at one end and nothing at the other Lumbering bellowing lumps With long tusks That dazzled white in the pristine sunlight Oddest of all, a bipartite creature Split nearly symmetrical Nearly similar but cruelly not Moving by alternating stilts Spindly and unbecoming The two halves bound in eternal embrace Clutching each other’s throat Desperate to let go But trapped, trapped by fear of succeeding The Word Fire“The word fire,” says Sensei,
“does not burn your lips.” But say, Sensei, that the word fire Burns your heart, the heat rising Through your neck, and, yes, Singeing your tongue on the way out? What if the word eagle Makes you feel like soaring, All the while tethered to your Earth-born dreams, that seem only to rise Slowly? Or the word dying, though it seems a lie, Still feels dark and wet, not exactly cold, But too thick for that? I think, Sensei, that even your Ancient schemes cannot touch These depths. Your finger points only to a place Where the moon might have been What dogs lack
What dogs lack is perspective.
There are no dog priests. No dog poets barking rhythmically at the hollow moon. No dog inspectors, no dog police. A sniff is just a sniff, a scrap is just a meal. They fill no days pondering the meaning Of the star- rooted sky, Or why a corpse will disappear Slowly, like yesterday’s breakfast. There is nothing sacred or profane, Nothing indelible stamped on the Hide-like souls of dogs. They eat. They shit. They sleep. They’re in heaven or hell, one the same as the other, They see no difference between A special day or no particular day. You can’t sell a dog an insurance policy. They like the warmth of a human body, The sound of deep sleep, The feel of an embrace across the depthless Helix, as distant as love, as close as touch. If there’s food, they will eat all of it. Along About Now
Along about now,
A particular group of photons, Some 200 million light years away, Is heading in our direction. They’re out there. At the same time, A delegation is leaving my face, Bound for cosmic intersection. After all the debates have passed, Long after the poor old Earth Has been wrung free of its Infection of life Two photons, Their memories wiped clean Will pass in the distant night As unaware of our anguish As we are of their fate Away
Voyager 1 is expected to leave all solar influence behind, and slip into interstellar
space soon, very soon. It will be the first man-made object to do so. An inconsequential piece Of jetsam Floats miraculously out From the sun Out, out So long, goodbye We’ve heaved you gone And yet you write back Every day As if you’d found work Out there Beyond the heliopause Where strange bits of nothingness Collide ceaselessly. What do they make of you? Too smooth, too rough? Too many kinds of things patched together To be of any use to entropy? I do hope Things work out for you. |
How Swiftly Came
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