Assorted Micro-Poetry
The Second Coming of Pan
When Pan came back
he was born in the earth
hoof and horn knitted together
from filaments of fungus
he sits at a screen
his shadow on the cave wall
typing spells into a keyboard
finding the weak parts of
the systems we built.
and sending us love notes
that pop up as mushrooms
outside our window.
Throwing the Bones
Who is the one
with no opponent
who plays a game with all our games?
.
The mother of us all
threw the bones long before
we invented dice.
Before Coming Out
when i was young
silence taught me how to speak.
my language became labyrinthine
to protect
the multifaceted mirror
at its center
that reflected
the color
of my beloved’s eyes.
when you can’t say “i love you”
you learn to use the whole project of speech
to romance the world.
Turtles All the Way Down
(for Jess)
210 million years ago
on the lake shores of the Late Triassic
a message was set adrift
encrypted on some strands
of DNA
the message
which contained esoteric instructions
on how to beat a disembodied heart
was put inside a carapace
and largely
forgotten about
210 million years ago
Mother Nature
sent a message in a bottle
not fully knowing
that it would reach the shores
of another world
of our world
in the form
of Turtle.
Her Game (apocalyptic ecology)
worms that digest garbage;
mushrooms that break down oil;
lichen that absorbs radiation;
Being aboard this planet
in a time of post-industrial collapse
feels like being inside a sentient puzzle,
a throbbing rubik’s cube of bone and moss
that keeps getting reconfigured
but never tires of solving itself.
Through the wincing eyes of a thousand dying coyotes
our mother winks coyly
reminding her children
that collapse is also decomposition
and as long as there are stars
she will compose again.