The Knowns (part 1)

All concentration of power is corrupt. Like how you can’t take a footstep without crushing something. So all footsteps are corrupt, says the ant. Intentions be damned. When deciding whether or not to trust someone, don’t take their promises for proof. Do they have the right to say sorry to you. Do you trust them to fail, knowing their failure is the progenitor of more than a thousand successes. We all make mistakes. Kings. Governments. Corporations. Gods have apologized before. The more power you give a person, an office, a title, only increases the consequences of their carelessness.

Who knows if we’ll cure cancer, or learn how to postpone old age, or master nuclear energy or muster a flying car in our lifetime, we’re still struggling to build better batteries but the propaganda of our society would have us believe we’re on the precipice of answering the mystery of the universe like it was a multiple choice question. See. Progress. I don’t know. Some things aren’t happening because they just plain won’t. Cancer is harmful mutation, life is what, positive mutation? How do you cure your source?

I say we put it on hold, because we are like children in the knife drawer, we aren’t ready, as a people, for the technology we’ve begun to explore. I say we focus on the knowns. In two hundred years we’ll be as hungry for fresh air as we are now for food. Clean water will entail a chemical equation. We’ll exclusively have picnics on rainy days. The sun will eventually become the bright cloud looming over all our nightmares. There will be no new magical source of food. It will be the same as it ever was. Alongside iron, steel, plastic zip ties, sustenance will be reshaped into shackles.

By Way of Means

When I write the word life, how much was written for me.
Gripping a bird feeder beyond clear barriers.
Moan yodeling in the corner forming soon-to-be hairballs.
Bare skull bearing antlers on a woodpile outside.
Deer turning up white in search of dirty green.
When I write the word life, I say the word why.
Then wiggle my hand until a pen gives me my answer.

Eat breakfast through my eyes and give time like spent breath.
Like carefree charity. Trash to me. Treasure to the tree.
New York timber living gnarled and surrounded
by their crumbling attempts at winter.
Which up here means more.
Apologies. Useless light switches.
Four families fourth floor apartment.
Generators hooked up to water heaters.
People choking in their homes for a hot shower.
Much by way of means.
Just no power.