At the cemetery the light rain of tears.
Half the sky is cloudy, like my grief;
The other half is lit by the sun, like my hope.
I start my car and turn it toward the light.

Computer spiders spin electronic webs
Everything depends on the word “grid”
It’s a cyberattack the generals say
And others say it was planned from the start
Neurons flicker and go dark
We become space a black hole a dead planet
Lightning dies on the vine the current falters
In times past a power outage lost time and food
Now it’s your mind you lose
Your network of imaginary friends
Your memes and your mined minds
Nothing left to mimic or mentalize
Step out into the dark the coyotes are laughing
The bats have pinpointed our weakness
How long will we stay in the dark we cry
Why ask--  have we ever lived in the light

The day seems dead
you wake from the dream of death
and realize again it was real

I walk around the house
breathing the dead air
feeling dead inside

with every loss
the air grows thinner

Now that they’ve taken the body,
the German women begin cleaning,
and they clean everything, walls, floors…
Why all the cleaning I wonder?
Does death leave a stain--
or shed its shadow like a viral load?
They must clean out the humors
just like in the olden days.
Cleaning is Germanic grieving.
They put their grief to work,
and the Protestant angels
who appear on the scrubbed walls
witness the rinsing of death’s last traces.

I know about dogs who are half house flies
I know too about the praying mantis
and its preoccupation with dragonfly brains
I’ve watched a leopard slug outrun eternity
I ride horses with six legs
play with ceremonial knives
if I cut myself
I bleed out a little dark energy
and move on
I’ve opened the curtains
and seen the monster give birth to a monster
I’ve opened secret doors
and stepped into the arms of the dark
forgive me father for I have sinned
for the world as it is and my idiot grin

RIP Frankie Ala

Where space flows like water,
So that nothing is hard or sharp,
Everywhere the pliant, buoyant, firm,
Infinitesimal balance of motion,
Equilibrium's endless flowing
From every direction holding, releasing…

Or eternal and simultaneous interchange
Of subatomic and celestial particles,
Infinite number and regression,
The farthest point always near.
Gravity’s first rising.

Or regeneration’s genesis,
Beginning of all emerging,
The birth before birth,
Genealogy’s first molecule,
Progeny’s spring and curative.

Or clarity’s deepest water,
Simplicity’s essence distilled,
The weightlessness of all need
Where love is greater than chaos.

Last night storms drained life from the air.
I breathe in what’s been taken,
with the same breath I put it back.

With nothing to see I look at the news,
only to be disillusioned
by evil’s triumphs and the fall of goodness.

Yet every day I try to add
something of being back into the emptiness,
haunted by the suspicion—
as if a shadow moves across the page.

A suspicion that meaning is fulfilled
only after you’re gone and unaware.
But that in others, it will make itself known.