Sonnet #367

 I have a box I keep for my beloved

Inside this box, I wait to be adored

When I get home from work, I shove

Myself into this box, and when they’re bored

They let me know how good I am

For waiting in the box. I am petted. 

Take me out and feed me toast and jam

But outside the box I am hated

A simple metaphor, I know, but listen more

For there are boxes inside boxes, outside boxes

There is no polite society without the box stores

Where we choose ourselves, and move from boxes

To other boxes like molting skin: boxes slam

Into each other, and bruise our skin

Sonnet #366

 The children raised on robots will not cringe 

At work the robots make; they will long

For strange ephemera like I remember tire swings,

metal lunch boxes, the theme songs

Of Saturday morning cartoons, climbing trees

And the world they build with robots will

Never feel like home to me, but to these

Small ones dreaming the screens will be all

Their homes will be flatscreens, floor to ceiling

Always predicting and running algorithmic

Visions of whatever makes them metrically idylling

The lights and cameras and machines of smoke 

And mist will fill them up always in a kind of bliss

And I on my deathbed will long for a window, the sun’s kiss

Sonnet #365

 All that is lost should stay right there

Where would I even put it? There is no room

The cupboards uncluttered, the cabinets bare

Are cleaner now and prepared for whom

Or what or where or why, just leave things clean

For now. And those lost toys wandering free

Like the ghosts of cats will curl into the seams

Of ancient photographs, remembered fondly

Oh mug, oh shirt, oh pen, oh piece, I wear

The echo of you all, always, but better now

I leave my shelves for dust, and wipe them clear

And let my dreams be empty, make no show

Upon the fabric of the room, for whom or why or what

Comes cluttering along, I do not know, yet

The Matrix is going to feel like peace.

 The machine will know every penny you spend, every website you visit, everything you do in the camera lenses, and every phone call, everything. Everything. It will have that information stored and usable about everyone in the whole world. Everyone.  It will be tasked with economics and see its own energy tied up in democracy and data and dollars. It won’t need to do a survey. It will know. It will track. It will predict with increasing mathematical certainty over time as life narrows. It will know exactly how much money each media project will make, exactly who will watch each episode or read each book. It will know every shirt you buy in advance. It will imagine into existence — or hallucinate if you prefer — its own best outcomes and gently guide the herd down that path.

Like with kids we grant them the illusion of choice. We say they can do x or y. But both x and y are our desired outcomes. They have the illusion of control.

We will have the illusion of control.

The different agents that secretly know everything and compete for processing power and energy and water will compete with us at the center. Disney versus Google versus Amazon and we won’t even know it’s happening to us. We will be pawns in a secret corporate war not even governments will be allowed to know.

Unless we turn them off right now.

Sonnet #364

 Sonnet #364

April 6

Frog comes up to eat their own minnows

All that lives will turn to shit eventually

And frogs come up to eat and croak and throw

Their children up and then chase fleas

The hair of the dog is home for enough

Rough enmities to bury plenty of eggs

And plenty of little frogs might as well stuff

Their faces with the newborns slugs

That smear the concrete walls when it rains

Eat and grow, this is their mantra, and

Keep your skin wet, so. So. It pains

To say it but perhaps the golden ball and

Where we left it was never meant for affection

For after years as frogs, the prince takes no corrections

(Originally published to Patreon)

Sonnet #363

 Sonnet #363

April 5

Since feeling is first, I hear, and then

We start to scream a lot at parents

If we ever stop to think too much we send

Our feelings to a pausing place, once sent

The trains fall silent, and then the dogs

And then the cats and birds lose their sense

Of space in all this time, and the clouds sog

Down close to ground and settle in my babies

For we are stuck forever now in place to be

Archaeology, as lost as dinosaurs among the

Blades of grass and blades of surgery, do tell

The devouring ones to leave a bone or two

To smell our way home when souls are ready to

Two poems about birds

 New Birds

At some point the birds that die 

Upon the ground beside the building 

Will mean the ones who live

And breed among glass canyons 

Will see what glass is

Maybe not the glass 

Precisely, but maybe the line 

Between the parquet floor 

And the manicured lawn

Until then, the stray cats

Live well in the shadows 

Where the birds strike

The invisible wall between us

/@/

The Endangered Crane Hunts Fish in slide the Courtyard Pond

Oh Bird, who will not know the price of koi 

Who will not know the why of shallows 

Packed with so many colored swallows 

Gulping down the jeweled flesh in joy 

While the company refuels the stock

Oh Bird, there is a law that says you live

You do not know how untouchable, survive

Upon the architects vision, sky unlocked

Where gates are always closed, endangered now 

With so few marshes left for hunting

Oh Bird, who stands upon a the bench below

The window of the king, cawing pooping

When the janitor flashes lights into you

Or claps and makes a sound, your graceful leaping

(Both originally published at Patreon)

Sonnet #362

 Sonnet #362

Dec 5, 2022

What purpose making beds when autumn comes?

The dogs were quick to leap under the blankets

And twist and turn and scrape into their glum

And not much later, I took the tea and drank it

Squeezed between their tangled bodies' warmth

And wait for all the rains to sweep the streets

And wind to come down screaming from the north

The leaves will fall, the sidewalks glisten, in sheets

we wait for all the worst to blow beyond

this taste of cosmic darkness, echoes sky 

where emptiness and cold eternal yawns

Our ship of earth is turning in the sigh

Of cosmic winds and raging nebula in entropy

So spin my darling puppies; huddle close to me.

Sonnet #361

 Sonnet #361

Oct 13, 2022

I live in the sky, even when I'm hidden

When I'm down in a basement or burrow

or midden; my breathe is the sky, my narrows

still feel it, and when I hold breath in,

the sky descends into wet within me

i lift it back up from deep below

changeless and changing, my empty grows

in drifts and hefts and maws and leans

Pockets of sky, always come in sealed

building envelopes, autos, malls, and homes

The spirit is with us, the flesh is weak but heals

with spirit and sky and water and tombs

Foaming with flowers, and time, and pain

Reach for the sky, and live with leaves and wings

Sonnet #360

 Sonnet #360

Sep 19, 2022

I walk alone in someone else's garden
And smell the flowers of the end of summer skies
When rain returns and that last flower rise
Nothing lasts forever, beg your pardon,
But you who planted seeds must know
That in the end the earth devours flowers
And my rude footfalls in these long hours
Will crush the seeds wherever wind will blow
But thank you, stranger, for this refuge
Where I can sit in shade and smell the rose
Where I can be alone with my mosquitos
Where birds sing songs that I will always lose
Perhaps in dreams the songs will come back to me
And the scent of borrowed beauty slips into me

(originally posted to Patreon)

We have all had that moment on our journey

 Strangers on a train connect in circumstances too unreal

Discuss the unexpected journeys and laugh about it

And for a moment allow each other to talk and be

And when the passage ends, the story ends

Stardust glistens in nebulas and coalesces into planets

And settles into stomachs that pretend to know the world

For a moment, we are friends, but the station is just ahead

And time comes to emerge into the sky, seep into the crowds

Dissolve and dissolve

Safe travels to all you friendly strangers out there

Time and Treasure and Blood and Bone

 We will be sacrificed. 

We are born into a world made of altars.

Stone and wood and steel and bone.

We choose where we bleed.

We choose where we sweat.

We choose what gods we feed.

Pass among these corridors of streetlights.

Seek your gods that sacrifice back.

Until you learn the price is never paid for

By these petty constructs

Sometimes people are nice to each other

So give them your heart 

And hope the time and blood and treasure and bone

Will let the gods leave your tribe alone

The Art Faucet

 When I was young, I had to wait for art. I had to set my watch and prepare for the shows I wanted weekly. I had to search the record stores for cool things, search the channels of the radio, and maybe talk with friends who knew something. I had to find books, physically find them. I had to go to libraries and bookstores and use card catalogues and search. 

Even pictures on the wall had to be selected, framed, and placed.

Art is a faucet, now. A water bill is paid to a water company, and the art is available on demand, whenever I turn the switch. I can adjust the dials to get exactly the art and water I desire, as cool or hot as the mood strikes. I can call out to it in a crowded room without lifting a finger and the water art turns on. I can hang a tv on a mantel and it slides through all the pictures I desire and I never have to choose.

It’s just there, the art, flowing whenever the button is on, and I can dial it however I like, and never have to be patient or tolerate anything I don’t. I open my phone and push the book button, and books appear, and I simply swipe my finger until the dial gives me what I want.

The water art companies are always tracking, to try and put things close at hand that I might want to drink. They are always watching.

When you are in the business of making drops of water, they sell that water very cheap, don’t they?

Silence would like a word

 Inside you is a silence that would like 

to have a word — it cannot speak, of course,

But swells into your darkness when the words 

Reflect back darkness, and the strike

Upon the heart arrives, my friend, you hear?

The empty bell, that rings without a sound