EVOLUTIONARY COSMOLOGY

Mostly, we are still just
in shock—
after all this time

how few
have disappeared, turned
thermal-nuclear

gone molten,
become stones.
Alone, and increasingly

more than alone,
but measuring the increase
more and more accurately,

still in shock
at the prospect
of becoming newly shocked,

still hearing in the echo
of the same strings
of numbers repeating

the deepness of externalities,
the richness of
our tilted simplicity,

still respecting
for bygone reasons
the old grandaddy feebleness

of what was long ago so
grandly termed
gravity—each body's

invisible faraway breathing
learning like some miniature
shoulder-blade demon

on the heavenly trajectory
of every makeshift, every
would-be Jesus.

EDGES

What sense
is there in studying
only one insect—
a discrete bee

instead
of a swarm? Even
as a kid, I was taught
to imagine myself

as a jet
instead of a fleet—
instead of a company
that makes jets.

Today, I still look
from a second
floor window

and think of
the physics of flight—

not the frontiers
of the possible, but its
rhetoric—

how there is no way
to measure
the space between units.

Last night there was
so much grown-up talk
of edges and distinctions,

and yet
here I am on the fence.

The vastest extents
of my littlest bits
are anyone's
educated guess.

MYTHOS

Give thanks

with or without

a table

a home

day or night

this coiled morass

this labyrinth

of fear

and delight

you know it

as yours

not alone to

never untangle

UNREASONABLE FACSIMILE

Gazing out
the apartment window—

past water droplets
gradually stiffened

by freezing wind
and glowing

in the light of the unseen
streetlamp below—

to the farther-off
sparrows

nestled on the swaying wires,
pigeons on a wet copper cornice;

all huddled there
of their own volition.

No fear
like mine

of heights
(how very like

a bird) no thought
of this

injustice—being turned
to words.

NO RESPONSIBILITIES

Never mind decent food
for worms, birds,
trees, pretty

flowers—or even
the ghostly
future of human thought

when I die, I'd like best
to be turned
to a brick;

to be
so ubiquitous,
useful, part

and parcel of the growth and
spread of a
brilliant civilization!

And yet
to transcend all of it
after the fact

with my
perfect little soulless ignorance—
this

would be the
most magnificent and
terrible gift.

CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE CHICKEN SOUP LOVER'S SOUL

I swear, if left entirely
to my own devices, most
of the time, I'd be fine

to slaughter
a whole filthy pitch-dark
labyrinthine penitentiary

packed claustrophobically
close to bursting
with the unfortunate

dinosaur mutants—eyeless
and shivering
and covered in dried shit.

I wouldn't sweat; I'd just
spit a little chewing tobacco,
deadpan as I moved

to pull the ostentatious
red lever for the screeching-
loud conveyor belt.

With a detached nose,
I'd boil their bones in vats
the size of Apollo moon rockets,

next calmly strain
and add rice, then bless
and seal each

compressed acre of carnage
inside a uniform
tube of aluminum

designed to stack nice
on a shelf and stamped
with illustrated pictures

of the creatures themselves
roaming a cute barnyard printed
on their labels—all of this

I would piously do,
all in the name of soothing
your latest or littlest

existential boo-boo.
You wouldn't even
have to ask me to.

Then I could come over
and heat a can up for you.
Think nothing of it,

I'd instinctively coo,
just open up, sweetheart—here
comes the spoon.

SECOND HEAVEN

Eternity exists—
but it comes
with a catch.

What you wish
is to be
together again;

what you get
instead—is
never separated.