Mythology

You, sun, the center of our system, source
Of heat and sunlight--you were once a god
And now you're just an object. In the course
Of thought, invention, and discovery
We came to realize that it was odd
To make an object subject to fancy.

You, dawn, are not a goddess baring breasts
To dazzle every eye--we rise from bed
By photons shifted red--all rooster's crests
Are raised as they begin to crow by light
That bends across the earth's horizon, fed
From our near yellow star to end the night.

You, earth, are not the goddess who is mother
Of life and gods and humans who have turned
Away from seeing spirit in the other
That's object now, now we object our kith
And kin are random-process products--spurned
Are any explanations from true myth.

You, reader, do not let yourself be turned
Into an object--let your love embrace
The beauty that remains more true--you've spurned
Too long the love that life is offering
And think ourselves reduced to quantum space
When truth is found when we laugh, dance, and sing. 

Name-Amnesia

The names, they come and go--we label men
And women well before we know them--known,
The name forgotten--I would need a pen
To pin it down on paper scraps, then thrown
Down to the ground, up to the wind they're strewn.
Perhaps a scrap will soon return--but when?
My name-amnesia's only ever grown--
I recognize you, don't know where it's been.

Sea turtle names are easy, names of sharks
And orchids spring to mind with awesome ease--
I'll tell you who or what I've read and show
My knowledge--meaning, memory--embarks
On nothing but well-traveled trails--but please
Don't ask me for your name. I do not know.

Becoming of Thought

It's easy to think nothing (not for me)--
It's how most people live (but I am plagued
By never-ending thought--what luxury
To think about nothing). I've often begged
For silence, thought's inaction (it's an act
Performed by neurons using what they're fed
And thus thought has no being) to refract
Us to a state I'll only meet when dead.
When thinkers think to concretize their thought
To become being, being-thought, at last,
They turn to making, poetry, not nought
Embraced by nihilist, iconoclast.
And yet unthinking order guides each mind,
Unthinkers, thinkers both, to all they find.

In the Swamp

I know there's something sitting in the fog
The water droplets densely swirl
I wonder will these waves uncurl
I haven't seen the sun for several weeks
Or is it months here in this bog
Black water ripples from the log
That seems to slowly float beyond my sight
Where is the road my foot now seeks
Is that a nail in wood that creaks
I feel out for a solid form but feel
An unknown witness bringing fright
When was the last I felt delight
I do not know the last time I felt warm
I almost trip I only kneel
I hunger for a warmer meal
I wish I knew which way where I could hurl
My body to escape this swarm
I'd settle for a cleansing storm

Concretes

Our modern concrete crumbles over time--
We must maintain our buildings, monuments
So we don't trip and tumble while we climb
From tower to transcending tower, rents

Within, beneath, which cause a caustic cost
Upon the structures we're depending on--
We cannot factor everything we've lost
By calculating only what is gone.

The Roman concrete only grows more hard
To stand thousands of years as tombs to men
Whose minds remain as monuments to guard
Traditions and the texts of what we've been.

What will the future read out of our tome,
And will our pages last as long as Rome?