The Cretan Wreath

Three licks of bronze, clustered
fingers at the crown.
Then four, then five, oh more,
woven, prickling,
leaves from autumns’ floor,
but gold.
               Take them down,
leaves, stems, drop-like berries,
pebbles, circle-bent,
no wider than a hand, and place it
on the blackness of your hair.
There,
it glitters, like soul
fire. A queen, at last,
has her crown.

The Garden of Infinity

The multiverse is an infinite garden

with an infinite number of universes

within it. Each universe is a flower.

Each universe is an infinite garden

with an infinite number of galaxies

within it. Each galaxy is a flower.

Each galaxy is an infinite garden

with an infinite number of stars

within it. Each star is a flower.

Each star is an infinite garden

with an infinite number of worlds

within it. Each world is a flower.

Each world is an infinite garden

with an infinite number of atoms

within it. Each atom is a flower.

Each atom is an infinite garden

with an infinite number of quarks

within it. Each quark is a flower.

Each quark is an infinite garden

with an infinite number of strings

within it. Each string is a flower.

Each mind is an infinite garden

with an infinite number of thoughts

within it. Each thought is a flower.

Each thought is an infinite garden

with an infinite multiverse within it.

Each multiverse is a flower.

As above, so below; as below, so above.

infinite, infinite, infinite,

forever, and forever, and forever.

Great Tubba Ponders What It Is Like to Have Lived for Many Years in the Same City

He looked at me

with a leery eye,

Great Tubba, he

of the wandering eye.

“What used to be a blank slate

is now covered with scars.

Everything once said freedom to me;

it said, sweetly, the future.

Everything now says fate to me

and reminds me of my war

and my defeat.”

What Is Literature?

“What,” said he, as he sagged heavily

back in his chair by the saloon window, “was

literature, is more to the point. Aren’t you

glad I’m here to tell you? Alas for us both—

for I must speak and you, belonging

to the eternal internet generation,

only care to bask in your

hyperlinked ‘comments’ and exchange of

simpering selfies on Instagram. We were

made for each other, as the saying goes.

Maybe it was all rigged,

yet in all its fantasy, it never lied.”

He sighed, raised his glass,

silently toasted the silent room,

took a sip of Wild Turkey, and shrugged.

“In the worlds of matter, energy, chaos,

the permanent slaughterhouse of the marketplace,

the ineluctable, inescapable

Darwinian struggle for what no living

thing in the end can actually achieve—

survival, that mirage in a world of perpetual transformation—

literature was defiance

of that lame squat, mortality,

soul’s defense in the soulless world—

a puff of smoke blown in the face of reality.

Yes, of course, the game was rigged,

but in all its fantasy, it never lied.”

He sighed, raised his glass,

took a sip of Wild Turkey, and shrugged.

“Writer, reader met on a page

in a corner, away from other eyes,

and built between them fantasies

of a world made for humankind

because made by the human,

enough like the inhuman world

to make them believe it, make them believe

that they might live in it.

There’s no escape if the jig is up,

but in all its fantasy, it never lied.”

He sighed, raised his glass,

took a sip of Wild Turkey, and shrugged.

“It seized and carried them off

into the verbal sky

in ventures of forever,

snagged on love and desire,

crushed between wisdom and power;

terrified them with the grandeur

of man when he wrecks his span,

tickled them till they were mad,

laughed till they choked and wept again,

threw them down till they slept, in twain

shot their hearts across the courts of the moon,

then threw them past the blackness of the stars.

It gave them paradise and hell,

empires of greed built on love’s cold ash

in Paris, London and New York,

the deserts of Bardo and San Francisco,

the place where angels and devils meet,

Las Vegas and Shanghai’s shadowless streets.

Whatever could be said it said

in words’ infernal heaven,

the cloud-capped victories of language

even if only in a bucket of dust

in a cellar of rusty swords,

a child’s game between naps and meals and potty training,

an old man dreaming of what could never have been,

an escape for an hour from reality’s prison,

a glimpse from our cell
across the loam

of a world that might have been but was not our home.

And now we have the internet

instead.

The jig is rigged. Oh, if only

in all its fantasy, it never lied!”

He sighed, raised his glass,

silently toasted the silent room,

took a sip of Wild Turkey, and shrugged.

A Tiger in Winter

It moves, black and gold,

parting a curtain of snow. Its

great head turns toward you.

Termite

A small white insect, ant-like,
slowly eats its way through the foundation
of the house,

eats its way through the phylum,
through wood pulp, knots, bark;
through oak, pine, sumac, pressed wood;

eating, eating,
working, sure of its goal.
The work is slow, sometimes it despairs
of reaching its goal.
It rests and listens
to the noise of the wind as it batters the house      
and streaks through the myriad little capillary tunnels
it has eaten determinedly through the walls.
This whistling, whooshing, rushing sound
gives the insect courage
before reminding it how much work
remains to be done.
And it goes back, determined
to bring down the home of the strange creatures
that are intent on destroying the habitable earth.

It will probably fail,

but it is leaving eggs—
today they are called “memes”—
and they will hatch into more little termites,
that will leave eggs that will hatch into more little termites,
on and on, and on,                                        
and together they will continue to eat
until they bring down the house
before the strange creatures who live there
destroy the habitable earth.

This is the sound of the little insect as it eats.