I was six years old when Star Trek: The Next Generation first aired one of its most beloved episodes, “The Inner Light.” In it, Captain Jean-Luc Picard wakes to a life not his own. He lives in a small village, where he works as an iron weaver, and everyone explains that he is recovering from […]
Poetry
Poetry with a secular perspective.
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Eve
You probably know of me But you don’t know me I’m the lion waiting in the den The mystical life force that beckons forth, A line of salamanders and amphibians All morphed together to form me Your queen Truth is I existed only as plot, An evil necessary, If females were not needed for reproduction, […]
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Heartbroken
How can I teach when I am heartbroken? When my throat clenches,when my words flee, when my eyes blur,how am I to softly composethoughts into images,dreams into documents? My fingers knit over one another:nails picked to shards,skin wan, hands trembling,a rasp of calluses and dry patches,a susurration of nerves. You wouldn’t knowthat my hands bleed in […]
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What if
What if One day it just wasn’t working anymore. What if You needed to step out from behind the murky mask and go your own way. What if Your heart stopped beating to the familiar drum of clatter and chaos. What if You slipped into your comfortable shoes, your bed clothes, a shiny lake And […]
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We’ve got everything here
We’ve got meds for your head when the going gets tough We’ve got taurine in cans when caffeine’s not enough. We’ve got porno and politics, cartoons and stuff So you don’t have to think when you’re down in the dumps Now this little pill, you can take when you’re ill And it makes you feel better like that And we’ve got plenty more for when you […]
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Winter
Each year winter takes my hands:I imagine them, bundled off to becomeA wreath to adorn the season’s front door.My hands, red and crackled with eczema,Nestle against a stranger’s hands,Curled tight with tendonitis.Raynaud’s colors the next pair over(blue and purple, due to the cold)While arthritis coils the next pairPainfully inward, inward.No shoveling snow for me,Nor washing […]
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The last animists
They say we have woken From a long night of magic, Of cravings, Fire for fire, earth for earth. A wind springs up. The birds stir in the dovecotes. It is so clear in this cold light That the firmament turns without music, That when the stars forge The atoms of our being No smith […]
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Returning to camp
I have gone among those rutting Stamping wind-blown men Out on the fields of heat. I have felt their voices hammer Like the stone axe, Felt what it is to feel The need of ligament To arc the body as a bow, Unsheaf the bones And send them flying Hard into the haunch of space. […]
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Antidotes to fear of death
Sometimes as an antidoteTo fear of death,I eat the stars. Those nights, lying on my back,I suck them from the quenching darkTil they are all, all inside me,Pepper hot and sharp. Sometimes, instead, I stir myselfInto a universe still young,Still warm as blood: No outer space, just space,The light of all the not yet starsDrifting […]
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Olduvai song line
Here our ancestors are sung Through labouring lips, A tunnel of loins, stretching Hot and long to this dry gorge Where some are rising still To score the surface With their bones Used by kind permission of Carcanet Press, Manchester, UK