The Sun is in my eyes
through slats and spaces,
Dancing off water and reflecting from windows
of buildings far away down the shore.

The Sun is in my mind
as warm tendrils sink through my eyelids
and illuminate my feelings
With a softening glow unbecoming to the season.

The Sun is in my heart
and rises on its heat
into a stream that carries me across
the sand and waves and water, to all horizons.

The Sun is burning the farms
and charring the skins
and drying the blowing earth
and leaving parched salt licks on the surface of my thoughts.

The Sun is exploding in a nova,
small star that it is, absorbing all around it
in a gaseous cloud of chaos
that obliterates me, you, our children.

The Sun has left a pulsing void,
a scar on the universe where
it once held sway over all things we know.
I am harbinger of its demise.

–February 2017

We drew with hands dipped in blood
on walls
in caves
forever ago.
We punched slots into clay.
We inked vegetable dye onto pounded skins.
We moved type in place and pushed it against pieces of paper.
We typed text into machines with keys.
We typed text into machines with digital memories.
We thought in biological whorls and our thoughts were understood.
We projected our thoughts through space and time,

And with one error of thought we will
(if we have ill fortune)
Draw with hands dipped in blood
on walls
in caves
forever more.

SOFTLY
I come
Softly
Like a cloud on the face of the sky.
I walk
Lightly
Like the breeze off the lake at dawn.
I leave
Invisibly
Like my breath disappearing in air.
And I was never, it seems,
Even here….

WRITING IN THE DARK
I awake
And need to write this down,
Suddenly alive in the night,
Mind afire, sleep long gone.
This page
Is a pulse to match my own.
It demands to be filled
With words which are seeking their home.
I hope
To be able to sleep when I’m done
But in truth, even now, cannot know
Where my pen will decide not to flow.

I HAVE A POEM
I do not have a mind,
I have a thought.
I do not have a view,
I have a compulsion.
I do not have a message,
I have a question.
I do not have an ending,
I have a poem.

UPSTAIRS
I hesitate to go upstairs
Where my people and my dog are sleeping.
I enjoy the brightness here
And fear their breathing.
The darkness up above me
Will seduce me
Reduce me
Induce me
To dreams I cannot anticipate.
That black night enwraps
The secret of my fate.

So here I am at the edge of that time-space thing
And it is hard to describe except to say
That the atoms sure are big out here.
And beyond the edge cannot be described except to say
That it isn’t what you think.
It is not a mist or a haze
Or a wall or a blackness
And you do not see up to it or into it
Because the end is the end and it doesn’t fall off into
Another dimension either, which is what I expected at first.
And it feels like where I am is expanding
Really fast
And carrying me with it along with those
Really big atoms.
And I am asked,
“How did you get here anyway, this is my place?”
“Well, I can’t really say,” I say
“But you are the God of all Gods so
You must know…
Don’t you?”
“I’ll ask the questions here,” I was told
By the he/she/it of things.
And I replied
That that was
Okay with me. So we shared the silence of the edge of everything for a long eon or two
While I found I could contemplate everything without even having to
Think about it.
“Say, where am I anyway,” I finally asked.
“Uh uh, you’re doing it again,” I was admonished.
“But then, just this once, I will let you ask me about my business.”
“That sounds familiar,” I thought,
Reassured that the Godfather really had captured all there was to know.
“You have come, you have not risen.
You have arrived on a rope of anomaly
To the ever-moving supreme unction junction.”
“Oh,” I thought.
“No need to shout,” I was again admonished.
“You heard that?” I asked.
“Thou art verily a really slow learner, and
That’s three strikes and you’re out,” It said, I heard, I felt,
I knew.
And that was the end
Of everything for me.
And if you are reading this, indeed, you have not yet gotten there—
But you will.