Ah, we say, what a life!
and yet …
We are the heirs of discontent
we carry all colors among us
to their inevitable conclusion
Our eyes are rising swiftly
under an aging sun
What nourished our forebears
we find merely annoying
All those Bible Prophets mute
as sacks of sand
To build dikes against
a flood which never comes
and yet …
here we stand
precisely in their footpads
Here I sit
Just a big lump of protoplasm
Encased in plant fiber and animal hide
No more purpose or meaning
Than a slime mold
No, a slime mold
Is at least interesting
Assembling and disassembling
To suit the moment
Bright yellow
Daring any living thing
To do something about it
Daring me
To be more than that
Or at least
That
I read great poets, great beacons,
Their eyes so keen,
Their voices clear as sunlight
With a winter slant, harsh,
But welcome all the same.
Personally,
I’ve grown used to irrelevance,
Come to prefer it.
My history of judgment
Is spotty, at best
My place in the grand confusion
Of existence
Is in the chorus,
Oblivious,
One small voice
Bleating among many,
One fading light
In the great kaleidoscope,
Whispering, more than declaiming,
Twinkling, more than illuminating.
But it’s me, inaudible at times,
Barely discernable,
Me
…the universe is a big place, where improbable things happen all the time. Look at you.
– John Matson
At its deepest core
Reality is mere chance
A riot of bubbles boiling
And bursting, all unguessed
Unless the ever disappearing
Always borning bodies flung
Into pointless being, seething
In the cosmic whistling teakettle
Unless by the grace of improbability
By statistical nethering whimsy
By the merest intractable stroke
Of lunacy
We come back for the next moment
Again
And
Again
Serenity falls
Into the open morning
Stifling a yawn
Life ain’t what I thought it was
All those years ago
In the end, all the pain and joy
Alike
Fell in a grand heap
And life, stripped bare
More like a humping walrus
Than a lame gazelle
A poet once told me
He’d rather write about
Cabbages
exiles child 