untitled response poem
tonight, watch the sky at dusk
in the haze of sunset
the infinitesimal horizon line shading
darker than blue
inside your own head, hear the click
of your teeth, grinding enamel
away into fine dust
calcium based, crushed up with the ice
that you shouldn't chew
pardon my french
pardon my english
pardon nihongo, sumimasen
but this is all I know -- small bits, chunks
really, just discrete elements of time on a stopwatch
on/off, on/off
and how none of them together make sense
without necessary principles
that are inevitably false, that inevitably fail
but -- oh the house that appears for a while
alone on the shore
virus alert! virus alert!
your computer has been transformed
and it pounds, cracks, shakes at your head
fills the world with an ache
dismal and obscure, sharp and perverse
from moment to moment
it's a time for meditation about
small, independent parasites
doing a job without conscious awareness
far better than I could
I drift on the paths of their molecular lives
as they search for their purpose
for the keys to their death
glorious no doubt, painless perhaps not
meteorologists should consult
my knees, my back
which are far more accurate
than their fine instruments
and models with numbers no mind could endure
what is thought, after all, but foam
on the tide, washed up and useless
except as a sign, an omen, a token
of things unseen, living brief lives
fighting their wars, building their homes
and their places of work
vanishing without any mourners
or tombs
or monuments
in the desert town, on a deserted street
the ghosts meet
curiously tense, curiously brief
with their ghost dust and ghost wind
and ghost muck
that sticks to the treads of their tanks
or the wheels of their trucks
while inside those structures,
that is where life breeds and escapes,
kills, dies, re-makes
and refashions itself
now red, now pink, now brown, green, slithering white
or clear, thin, diffuse
in the absence of light