What Is

old I’ve had mornings

single my vibrant life cat in lap

I don’t yearn zeniths I watch

to live nadirs the waterfall

a long time angst black rock

more devotions gravity

ZeeWhyEx

zero fossil fuel use fails to happen

yes, the earth yawns, judders, melts, burns

xenophobia guarantees we exile neighbors

wield wealth, warehouse weapons, wage wars

vanity values vamping, undervalues victims

underprivileges, undercapitalizes

toppled towers trap tenants in tents

swamped cities short circuit

rhetoric breeds resentment, reaps riots

quibble to quarrel to quell

pretentious pols pander

opportunists oppose regulation

nuclear, not natural gas, might have spared us

meant more models & time & money to reverse them

luck runs out, loss levels

kangaroo courts kiss deep pockets

justice jilts the scales

indigenous tribes dig deeper & thrive

high rollers have to hump it

guns give way to global lack of ammunition

farmers fall back on feeding themselves

earth evolves exponentially

doles out dying, death

converts us to cover crops

banished, barred, bled

ants & armadillos may survive

To Sleep with Cats

I have made myself other

by leaving home & by leaving

every home I ever made.

My brother luxuriates in home

though it embodies strife.

I luxuriate in climbing into a bed

& sleeping, wherever the bed is.

I’ve learned to sleep alone

to sleep with cats. They want

little more than ear scratching

body heat. I lean into bed

they lean into me, dead weight

in dead of night. When death

grows too heavy, I move away.

Hebrew Math

Start at the beginning, day one,

keep going, two three four five six,

& on the seventh day she rests.

How many years, how many generations,

wives, cubits? Animals in pairs.

Forty days. A single dove.

Bris on the eighth day. Mitzvah

at twelve or thirteen, sex dependent.

Gender fluid get to choose.

Job’s three friends, Job’s seven days

& seven nights. Jonas, three days &

three nights inside the whale.

Four apostles. One Paul.

Five loaves & two fishes. Or

seven loaves & a few little fishes.

One man, one rib, one snake.

Mary Magdalene’s seven demons.

One Jesus, two thieves.

The mathematics of Jewish scripture,

the man said. Sixes & sevens, I thought.

Scholarship its own reward.

As If Zero Were an Ellipse

as if winter turned to spring

as if red-winged blackbird

as if age ran backward

as if hunger abated

as if sleep brought relief

as if the power pole across the street

were an obelisk carved with hieroglyphs

as if I could read what I need to know

as if Queen Victoria knew

the damage done in her name

as if she didn’t know about

her minions’ minions

as if spices, as if tea, as if opium

as if East had never known West

dominance by any other name

as if the meek were to remain meek

& inherit all the same

as if the two cedars were the same height

one crown not toppled by storm

as if the twice-as-tall cedar were not

to be felled this year

as if humans knew

as if a tree hadn’t the right

to suffer & die in its own time

Better Than

we have learned how to

keep ticks out of houses

also flies, rats, possums, bears

we believe ourselves to be kind

to beings not like ourselves

e.g., labradoodles & siamese

we hardly think of refugees

housed in wriggly-tin shacks

with ants, scorpions, centipedes, & roaches

working hand-to-mouth, knowing weather

will soon destroy all they have

they are not we & never will be

& though we might wish they lived

like us, they won’t

Pentimento

creep around the moon

to see the far side

creep around death

to find where it goes

a place to look out from

prow of a boat called land

rimmed by silence

dark distant humans

drowning

Mechanical Tao

mechanical tao is grown from silicon

powered by rare earth

it’s missing hope & fear, love & hate

bit-flipping needs no self

mechanical tao sorts the unsortable

long from short, good from bad

being here, non-being there

a turning world dissected

mechanical tao is a hydroelectric plant

our devices consume its continuous power

conductance, not resistance

else the river burns

data-driven, mechanical tao blunders

through the realm of everything

of nothing, instructions loop

& fork, if x then y, while z

mechanical tao is Brownian motion

stirring electrons to keep the pot empty

the house empty, mindless

of people who need to live

mechanical tao’s absent heart knows

no peace, no serenity, no confusion

no rage, no joy

death ensues when power fails