Why can’t we read anymore?

Posted on 31 December 2015 by Thomas Kearney

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Can books save us?
Chapters? Paragraphs? Words?
Is that overoptimistic?

I feel perfectly engineered, marvelous,
not limited to events.

Our brains, wired to the beautiful universe,
are important: a kind of glue that holds together
the world. I think, and knot together the fabric
one word at a time.

There is a special kind of tool that flattens one self into another;
there are, often, beautiful universes to be found on the other side,
though this constant hopping from one to another is also exhausting.
My days are exhausting days.

I exist, holding together the world.

So I started making changes. Random, usually.
The shocking thing was how I didn’t have to fight time and space.
What a wonderful feeling it was!

My mind, however, remains a problem.
If you have suggestions for that, please let me know.

(I am starting something new here.)
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The Toy

Posted on 26 December 2015 by Thomas Kearney

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It was a witch’s toy,
that’s what they said.
She made it, they said,
and so everything that happened must have been her doing.

Some people said it was made of darkness and old clothes.
Some said the wind whistled through it.
Some said it had old dry bones in it,
some said they were human bones.

She not being a witch, so she said,
it was no witch’s toy, whatever it was.
She had seen her son playing with just such a toy,
that’s the reason she made it, she said.

He was playing with it as he ran and laughed
between the green grass
and the blue, blue, blue sky
—oh, it was so blue!

That was how it was, she said,
after he died
and she danced and danced.
That was what she saw, she said, just before the vision

ended like a snapped-off twig

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