Sonnet #371

 We used to live without conditioned air

In every house and building we would sweat

In summer, and burn the fireplace to eat

Remember winter when the barren stares

Of hungry children forced a reckon ing

Separated from this we gaze upon the past as idylls

Simpler times, and they were simpler. Being

Dead is very simple. Living is harder still

For we keep alive by poisoning the tank we breathe in

The ground is scraped into a thin smear

And we live our complicated survivalism

Where every stone is bent to pillows, all tears

Become an echo of hardship past, and mortalism

When it appears, rends harder where the ground is tender

Sonnet #370

 Reasons not to write a book today

Include the barking dog that needs a walk

The children in the house that want to play

And certainly there’s you who needs to talk

The dishes in their heaps attract the fly

So wash them with your wild and precious life

The windows are dirty, so are toilets, and we try

To hit the gym and live a little more, meet a wife

Perhaps she will become one, and time spent

Interviewing and preliminary hiring all potential

Brides who may or may not help you pay the rent

Seems mission critical, plus the leeks are turning

Didn’t you want to make that recipe you used to love?

Books can wait. No time. Find a box for art. Shove.

Sonnet #380

Follow water to the low places, and swim

Let your sweat and tear drops seek the bottom

Dwell where they pool, caught in the shadow's rim

between the groundwater and the echoing golems

that march beneath the earth, all blind and lurking

and marked by word of god upon the brow

to walk these darkling trails, and with their jerking

footfalls carve the trails where water is low

Follow water into these ancient pathways of gloom

illuminated only by the shimmer of the water

and the glimmer of electricity in the stones

March until the steam begins, the magma shatters

the stones and becomes the water and all golems die

where clay dissolves. In this place diamonds rise.

Sonnet #369

 When I write, a single line and then another

Becomes the sound becomes the word becomes

A picture forms that’s worth a thousand words,

And pictures painted each a single thread runs

In single lines clumped in bunches, makes

The world more beautifully rendered reveals

As much from what is not than what it takes

From pigment fragments, crushed ochres; reels

Of film a frame a frame a frame a single word

Eventually spoken, and we in our cities mowing lines

Into the ground and laying bricks of work

Each one of us our little lifeline bending and entwined

From far enough away and deep enough inside

We are bound together into a single gorgeous line

Sonnet #368

Give me the cosmos in fourteen rhyming lines

And I will tell you all exists for love

For what fair use is all this void and shine

If only one can feel the pull and shove

Better shared and better faced with you

Hide under blankets and whisper in the dark

About the mysteries we are too afraid to view

The black telescope beckons, will we hearken

The trembling darkness of the endless sky

The galaxies upon galaxies made for show

Be told and sung grow old and teach why

Discuss the color of the stars, grow old

In endless chatter where the edifice accumulates

For love, all for love, the cosmic glory we recreate

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