This Poem Not Tested on Animals

Ideas are powerless mice
with the heart
of jelly-filled donuts.
Gooey, they stick
to the walls of the mind
like children cling
to the walls of a slide,
too scared to fall
low

through

the maze of synapses
they must leap across,
tunneling like horses,
tragically scarred
by the fraying logic
behind false fire alarms
and the wisdom devoid
from treadmill runs.

(Our mazes attempt to link work
with reward. While the amazing
universe unjust
laughs in her lab coat,
weighing a proton
as heavier than a thousand
electrons.)

Between

those leaps, we become lost
in our efforts to trace
the infinite gap
(there is no cross-
walk) from what we know
and what we are certain
is built on a substant
uncertainty.

Thus all our ideas
reach dead-ends,
when set
to explain how they
themselves came about,

but despite this defection of data,
they run
the wheel, until their tails slouch.
(And if that
were their last squeak, then
the data could be trimmed
and arrayed,

we’d write careful notes
on the side: Short-lived,
but cute
in their own little way.

But, no
like sobbing trick candles, they burn
out and have
the untactful gall
to return.)

/

and so I fall.

…

Where will I go?

means I'll never know:

To be at peace

to simply let go;

That is my purpose,

my path is not;

My goal is set

above all of this:

What I've learned

will cost so much;

What I'll become

matters not;

Where I'll go,

it makes me doubt;

The wind is cold,

but it only deceives;

My body is weak,

(or so I thought);

I was prepared,

my goal was not;

My path was set,

…

And so I climbed:

\

The Planet U

I float on the surface of the planet U. There is no one here except for me, so when I say you I mean myself. Only me here on U. You try climbing up the sides of the planet U, but the edges are too steep for me, so I dig beneath the planet U. The deeper I get the darker U gets. U eventually collapses on top of me and I can no longer breath. I am part of U now. U equals me.