THE GOOD LIFE

When some people talk about money                

They speak as if it were a mysterious lover

Who went out to buy milk and never

Came back, and it makes me nostalgic

For the years I lived on coffee and bread,

Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday

Like a woman journeying for water

From a village without a well, then living

One or two nights like everyone else

On roast chicken and red wine.

THE UNIVERSE: ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUND TRACK

The first track still almost swings. High hat and snare, even

A few bars of sax the stratosphere will singe-out soon enough.

Synthesized strings. Then something like cellophane

Breaking in as if snagged to a shoe. Crinkle and drag. White noise,

Black noise. What must be voices bob up, then drop, like metal shavings

In molasses. So much for us. So much for the flags we bored

Into planets dry as chalk, for the tin cans we filled with fire

And rode like cowboys into all we tried to tame. Listen:

The dark we've only ever imagined now audible, thrumming,

Marbled with static like gristly meat. A chorus of engines churns.

Silence taunts: a dare. Everything that disappears

Disappears as if returning somewhere.

IT & CO.

We are a part of It. Not guests. 
Is It us, or what contains us? 
How can It be anything but an idea, 
Something teetering on the spine
Of the number i? It is elegant
But coy. It avoids the blunt ends
Of our fingers as we point. We
Have gone looking for It everywhere: 
In Bibles and bandwidth, blooming
Like a wound from the ocean floor. 
Still, It resists the matter of false vs. real. 
Unconvinced by our zeal, It is un- 
Appeasable. It is like some novels: 
Vast and unreadable.