In the beginning there was darkness,
then a bunch of other stuff—and lots of people.
Some things were said and loosely interpreted,

or maybe things were not communicated clearly.
Regardless—there has always been an index.
That thing about the meek—how we

shall inherit the earth; that was a promise
made in a treaty at the dawn of time
agreed upon in primordial darkness                

and documented in the spiritual record.
The nature of the agreement was thus:
The world will seemingly be pushed past capacity.

A new planet will be “discovered” 31 light-years away.   
Space travel will advance rapidly,
making the journey feasible. The ice sheets will melt.

Things will get ugly. The only way to leave
will be to buy a ticket. Tickets will be priced at exactly
the amount that can be accrued

by abandoning basic humanity.
The index will show how you came by your fortune:            
If you murdered, trafficked or exploited the vulnerable,

stole, embezzled, poisoned, cheated, swindled,
or otherwise subdued nature to come by wealth
great enough to afford passage to the new earth;

if your ancestors did these things and you’ve done nothing
to benefit from their crimes yet do nothing to atone
through returning inherited wealth to the greater good

you shall be granted passage. It was agreed.
The meek shall stay, the powerful shall leave.
And it all shall start again.

The meek shall inherit the earth,
and what shall we do with it,
but set about putting aside our meekness?

Google says God
then says holes
long words
heights

being alone
fear as fear of dark figures
dark spaces
dark forests
dark hallways
dark deep water

nightmares
fear of night time
night sky
night fear of not night

and dark is
weak against
dark is not evil
dark iron sword
dark inner thighs
dark is not black
dark is useless
fear of darkness

dark isn’t a word
dark isn’t the same
does not exist

         *

Tonight I sat alone on a wooden bench,
thinking small facts. I had been there since
the sun first stressed to pink strips across the
sky. I believe we suffer between the void and
compulsion. I believe we tribal extraordinary
lives. The sun turned to vibrations and faster
ancestors. The mind was clearing.

         *

This summer I alongside I
saw desire for its lessening face. I could give over to it,
let that vision be large as creation.

I thinned the seeds already sprouting
in the bamboo garden
the radish beet carrot and bean

pulled each birth
out of the earth
and laid it on my tongue
crushed it with my teeth

and did you know these tiny sprouts
these little leaves and baby greens
already hold the heavy flavors of their final selves?

if only we tasted our own essence from birth
knew the transformations to come
were all part of the becoming—

that we had the imprint all along.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

On the first morning of the moon, in land
under the birds of Ur, before the flood
dirties the memory of a couple banned
from apples and the fatal fire of blood,
Adam and Eve walk in the ghetto park,
circling a tree. They do not know the way
to make their bodies shiver in the spark
of fusion, cannot read or talk, and they
know night and noon, but not the enduring night 
of nights that has no noon. Adam and Eve,
good beasts, living the morning of the globe,
are blind, like us, to apocalypse. They probe
the sun, deathray, on the red tree. Its light
rages, illiterate, until they leave. 

Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide,
Like all created things, secrets from me,
And stand a barrier to eternity.
And I, how can I praise thee well and wide

From where I dwell—upon the hither side?
Thou little veil for so great mystery,
When shall I penetrate all things and thee,
And then look back? For this I must abide,

Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled
Literally between me and the world.
Then shall I drink from in beneath a spring,

And from a poet’s side shall read his book.
O daisy mine, what will it be to look
From God’s side even of such a simple thing?