Ignore

Pretend, if you would so much humor me,

That everything I tell you is a lie.

Imagine nothing that I've said, that I

Have whispered in the dark of night, to be

At all the truth. Declare the fallacy

Of all confessions I have made. Decry

The falsity of man, in me, and sigh

That nothing good is true. Please don't ask why.

I'd hate to lie again. Just let it go;

Believe this much of me, and think me so,

So we can free ourselves of what I've said.

It's better thus, and better you don't know 

The reasons. I won't jerk you to and fro:

Pretend, and let the past become the dead.

Calendar

There is a chicken on the wall

Shaped out of eggs and I believe

Life seeks for order after all

No matter if it wants to leave.

The plastic of a dinosaur

Was once the real thing, when alive,

Returned to what it was before

So life, it seems, will always strive

To find itself, and recreate 

The shapes and sights of what should be;

The eggs and chicken that we ate

Are joined beyond time's unity.

And so I think someday that I

Will be a person when I die.

Oh It Came O'er My Ear Like The Sweet Sound That Breathes Upon A Bank Of Violets

Long, long ago ago I read, from Harpo Marx,

Of how the Christians' music was so great

That, though their worship we don't celebrate,

We ought to listen--as to meadowlarks

Whose music fill the forest and the parks,

With meanings we don't recognize or rate.

I think he's right; once we disaggregate

The million Jesuses and thousand Harks

There still remain some songs (like Silent Night

His favorite) that speak so to the soul 

That in despite of all theology

They satisfy. A music of such might

It almost serves to elevate the whole

And make a truth out of a heresy.

That Strain Again, It Had A Dying Fall

The past accumulates like autumn leaves

Blown into corners, never quite swept up.

The unforgotten loss a mother grieves;

The old friend who once gifted that red cup;

The fingered leaves of books, now bent and creased,

That show the hours reading and rereading;

The wear on steps (most sturdy where used least);

The little bush that grew when missed in weeding:

They do not haunt the present. They live here

As surely as the people on the street.

Their memory is ready to appear

Whenever circumstances may seem meet:

And when they do, the past, like leaves, will fly 

Out of the corner, blanketing the sky.

And So Die

Everything that's born will someday die

Whether from some external force or power

Or simply reaching its own final hour

When life exhausts, and spirit bids goodbye.

This death is sure; though we may reason why,

Rail endless against it, fight, or cower

In sullen fear within some hidden bower

We cannot change it. Yet we also lie

If we pretend that all things die the same.

The surety of death is no excuse

For making life less than it could have been.

Death promises us nothing but the name:

The quality of dying lies in use

And letting death come badly is the sin.

May Sicken

 Another cough, another cough, another;

It seems as if the whole world were a cough.

And hardly anyone bothers to smother

Their cough within an elbow; they go off

As if their illness couldn't pass by air.

Yet we know better, or we should by now;

We have a common duty, common care.

If there's a way--and yes, we all know how--

You shouldn't spread your sickness to the crowd.

And yet how soon we all forget the way;

How quickly what was once proclaimed out loud

Becomes a whisper, hidden from the day:

Concern for others, once a common cause

Is now considered overreach of laws.

The Appetite

Growth provides momentum all its own

For justifying growth; we grow to grow

And do not cease once we are fully grown,

Metastizing ever onwards so

That we can say we grew. No growth can know

A limit: if you simply stay, you cease

To matter. Nor can growing even slow.

There is no space for any kind of peace,

We only know the power of increase.

Economies of scale, we are assured

Are (to our good) the only axle-grease

And there is nothing that cannot be cured

By growing, growing, growing. It's the answer

For everything. Except, of course, for cancer.

That, Surfeiting

You'll win so much, he said, that you will beg

To lose again. You'll be so sick of winning

That you'd give up your arm--maybe your leg--

To try to bring things back to the beginning.

Well, I'm not sure that this is winning, truly:

Unless you move the goalposts off the field.

I find the government acting so cruelly

Is losing; with the power states can wield

Comes expectation of a common good,

A common benefit, a commonwealth

That works towards what it should, not what it could,

In search of joint prosperity and health.

To use that power for a selfish win

Is not a victory. It is a sin.

Excess Of It

What do I do with all my churning senses?

What is the point of feeling all these feels?

The problem with sensation so immense is

That from each feeling my perception reels.

I cannot disentangle my own being

From all that has impinged on me today;

The world that I'm forever hearing, seeing,

Touching, smelling, tasting has a way

Of overtaking, overwhelming me.

I never am myself alone; I'm more

But what I am's not what I want to be.

It's something bigger, and the stretch is sore.

What can I do? I cannot tell. I wear

And fear that as my senses melt, I'll tear.

Alack And Fie For Shame

A Valentine is just a piece of paper

But so are wills, and mortgages, and deeds.

We think of it as insubstantial vapor--

The kind of thing only a child needs--

But what we write, and who we write it to--

The purpose, execution, and design--

Are powerful, and Valentines are too

(At least if you're consenting to be mine).

Too true, there are conventions in the form

That shape the way we can communicate;

But every kind of writing has a norm

And what we choose within that norm has weight.

I choose to write to you; do you to me?

There's meaning in the reciprocity.