Sonnet #400

 We pray all wrong, but at least we pray

We love all wrong, but at least we try

Give credit for effort for sometimes we lie

To ourselves about our needs: we say

To god the things we need to say to someone

Instead of him, and to someone we speak for

What we think we are supposed to long for

Instead of what we truly carry, afraid the one

We hope to love will only love us back

If we sound like we are praying and god

Will be the only one to bear what we can’t shake 

We try; listen when they speak and nod

When god tells you what your beloved should

And when your beloved pretends to be as good

Sonnet #399

 I have some secrets that I cannot tell

About the things that happened to us

If you get to know me more than well

Perhaps I’ll tell you who did them to us

We call it intimacy, perhaps, to speak of

All these hidden scars that we don’t want 

To mark us where the world can see, love

Me where i hide from the world, in my haunted

Places; the world asks the same of us: find secrets

Where she does not wish to share and love her anyway

Dig into the caves and dark corners and regrets

Of the creation glorious the lost species and far away

Nebulae, all the pains of history and broken men

Who broke the world, see them all, love them

Sonnet #398

 Life under the bad regime contends

with all the normal things, the bills

the many letters in the post, the still

mornings when everyone sleeps, it ends

in fits and bursts where tiny lizards

chew upon the fabric of the world

a little bite here, a bite there, and girl,

don't you know it's coming, you've heard

the boys may sign their lives away

in wars that only ever made a few dimes

for a few dukes who have plenty, but say

the young men are gone, say hard times

and the lizard men are going to offer girls a deal

Oh, just smell it in the air, that fetid sign, a steal

Sonnet #396

 Not a single tree is free, they’re owned

Because the land is always spoken for

There is no rock or far, lost corner

Where no deed or treaty holds and zones

All that’s left of wilderness is this

The person isn’t ready yet to build

Or they built and want to keep a vista clear

Or the city hasn’t swelled enough to there

Or the flood zones and pollution could kill.

And oceans in their undiscovered places

Their swirling, teeming freedom from our will

The work of man, we still divide the races

Of fish and food and ships come

And paint their lines of rights in empty spaces

Sonnet #397

 I’m supposed to be working but I’m not

I’m waiting for the next work, the jobs

Of life continue, until the closing bell robs

Time’s trailer of time’s cargo, but I’m not

Racing out the door to work, I’m holding still

The echo of the money is in my back

And in that sound my left knee makes, the cracks

Of bones that aren’t intended means I will

Probably eat tomorrow. Tonight, I wait 

Let moon rise and rain fall and all

Gods creatures settle down, and the beggar’s plate

May pass around the pews without me. Let’s call

This off — The sparrows in their splendor mate

Among the reeds and wander south to fall.

Sonnet #395

 If you just hold still enough the time will come

When all gods creatures lay down in the grass

Lion and lamb and lovely you, all in the same

Field of flowers, where peace, at last at last

Until we are all ready to hold very still

We will need to sharpen our will and steel

And build the pyres of our funerary world

Where all the falling species, all the real

Dwindles into parking lots and oil fields

And we will put this world to sleep enough

To lower lambs and lions and us into movie reels

That are all that carry us, how we laughed,

How we trembled and cried and sang and broke everything

Until we hold still just long enough for grass to respring

The thing about AI

1) It’s really hard for me to care about the AI debate when children are being put in concentration camps.

2) enshittification is coming for AI consumers. The product is going to switch the flip to make maximum money and squeeze like all tech bro tech.

3) the AI debate is causing terrible rifts among creatives at a time when children are being put in concentration camps and mothers and ICU nurses are being murdered in the street.

4) again, bad takes don’t need to be amplified with outrage. The best thing a bad take can have is silence. Bad takes turn sour and fade into nothing against the shifts of enshittification of all tech bro tech.

5) the bad takes that actively harm people are the ones I care about, like how children are being put in concentration camps and transgender humans are being threatened and treated like criminals for the crime of existing. ETA: and women’s rights are being rolled back and causing death and suffering. These bad takes cannot be rendered mute by the greed of those who push them, which is sort of what enshittification does to tech products.

Argue in good faith. Debate in good faith. 

Maybe let’s focus on the children in concentration camps and the blood on the streets and then we can talk about the copyright violations and slop profiteers.

Sonnet #394

 For just a bit of fun, the arts are fine

But money can make anything rhyme

Pull enough money together, orangutans will

Rhyme with hippos, for their zygotes merge

Where money sews them up, and says be still

For the pictures for the movie for the sinful urge

Put enough money in a room and all the worst

Of us will storm the gates to do their worst

To grind each other if they must into wurst

To devour each other alive over money, bellies burst

To drink the money, chew and swallow, fatten 

Like a pate goose until the next one comes behind

To cut the money loose, until the money flattens

In the weight of death and becomes a memorial pictorial sign

Sonnet #393

 If He returned back then just after

He ascended, they’d have crucified Him twice

Or thrown Him to the lions while the emperor

Pretended to watch. A little later they’d slice

His belly open slowly and wind His parts

Before they chopped His head and arms

And four horses to the ends of the earth

Or maybe burn the witch, crush Him 

With rocks until He relented His own truth

Inquisitors would rip His teeth out,

Break His legs and back upon the rack

Or chain Him to the keel and cast Him out

Or hang Him, firing squads, lethal injections, 

It’s not time, yet. We’re not ready for inspection.

Sonnet #392

 The universe is vast and lives forever

But I do not. My brief visit in this place

Will be forgotten soon, I’ll leave no trace

And when my meager work mumbles lovers

In the dark, it will not be so different from

The love of animals or kings, just variations

On the same old thing. stories build nations

And people live all their little lives inside them

The endless sky calls endless dreams to play

But every dream we have is not so lost

We can only dream what sounds like what we say

What shapes we see, what hopes we have, we’ve lost

The endless void inside that swirls, the holy sway

Of stories beyond the sound. Our flesh is always lost.

Sonnet #391

 What tools we have are shaped by human hands

And we measure whether tools are working by 

the eye — a master craftsman gazes on the bands

That demarcate all the edges and decides if or why

The measure works. How to measure birds as birds?

To track their songs and languages with their

Unbroken consciousness, their mastery of song

The way the trill warbles just so, and what shared

Memory is evoked among the trees who long

For each other underground, holding root to root

And shoving branch to branch, a way of seeing

Sky without a memory. Let us measure soot

Among the wildfires where the mothers weeping

For all their lost saplings reconsumed, remade, a seed

To build a tool that has no human hands, no human needs

Buying books is good, but…

We are predisposed as authors to ask you to buy our books for others for Xmas, but gifting others books is deciding what you think they should be doing for hours of their time and that is high risk. Gift cards to bookstores are safer. The way to be sure you get the book you want for Channikuh/Xmas is to physically ask for it specifically, or just to buy it yourself.

And as the library is also a place to get lots and lots of books at almost no cost, why not just give them your book buying money and write the librarians to purchase the books you want, and donations to libraries are awesome.

Instead of giving my books to someone else this season, donate a little to your library, and write in a request for one of my books with it.

Thanks!

Sonnet #389

People who dream of kingdoms should not

Have them. Yet, those who dream

Of kingdoms go and get them, it seems

The conundrum of kingdoms, the blot

Against all empires, and eventually 

The doom: to own the world requires

Someone who would gladly unsire

To their own vine, their own fig tree

Otherwise what comes is someone

Who thinks they would own it better

And they desire to save the kingdom

By taking it over, and they want your

Blood to mingle in the soil, their kingdom

Will be better, but by night a thief comes

Sonnet #390

 She shouted that I wasn’t listening but I was

I was just disagreeing and that’s not

The same thing she shouted I was not

Doing it right but she kept changing what was

I made a different way of doing the same thing

She screamed she couldn’t find anything 

But nothing had moved, and she wasn’t 

putting anything away she tried

To tell all my friends I was going to hurt her

But I was only asking her not to hurt me

While lying on the floor outside our child’s bedroom

Begging for a night without getting pushed

Slapped things thrown around screamed at

And they believed her