PACKING (FIRST ATTEMPT)
At 10:31 a.m. I demand of my wardrobe,
Give me all you’ve got
because before lunchtime, I know I can at least
try to handle 31 shirts I rarely wear
and 10 pairs of pants identical, unworn.
It’s a morning thing to watch
entropy unfold before you:
to watch clothes laid out on the bed
inch outward toward the windowsill, the desk,
to watch folded sweaters slowly stretch their arms,
pull down their collars.
To watch disorder invade my closet,
to wonder what the ultimate result of unleashing
entropy upon this room could be: Will my clothes
expand in the space of the room, leaving
for me only an infinitesimal nook? Will they
act out my limbs and torso,
walk the streets as
imposters?
And where does that leave me?
KNOW THE ORDER
of the seasons, let chronology
unravel over your fingertips,
ardor of your maker slip
between the digits, the
numbers of a season, chanting
out their order to the bastion
May 22, 23, 24, 25…
Siren calling up to a dripping
crimson—Look at the sky!
Look at it. Why didn’t the
forecast say anything about
rain? I think I left my umbrella back at
home.
KNOW AN ORDER
What do you do when the white lines of a crosswalk
have been worn down? Keep crossing, would be my mom’s
advice. Throw it to an authority who’s dealt with this before:
the blurring of a crosswalk, a single-file line scrunched up
at a bottleneck, all signs of direction singed by the fire of
time’s dragon mouth as it swallows up a crumpled calendar.
Did we only get one chance to get the rules down on paper?
Check our predictions against the laws we were
handed? Told what a crosswalk was for before the lines
blurred away? Or is it generational? Instructions
passed through some tired syntax that just
stops short of getting the original message right.
Maybe one day they’ll paint back over the cross walk,
back over where they guess the original lines
once lay, missing by maybe just a micron each time,
until the paint puzzles off down the street, dictating the new flow of
traffic. They’ll keep crossing then, too, even when the lines fade.
Know an order to the Universe,
and you’ll foible every time it acts according to its own laws,
predicted by an inherent migration toward disorder.
Know the logic of entropy and you’ll never be content
with the stars, off by just a bit since you last saw them,
with a suitcase lying open on the floor, clothes
crawling eternally outward.
What do you do when you suspect
that you’ve unleashed the atom bomb of the Universe
in your bedroom? Keep packing.