Human Brilliance
We are ants.
The smallest sort that can sit on the head of a pin,
And live for only a day.
What do we know about eons?
Or planets?
Or gods?
Yet we think ourselves Goliaths;
Leviathans of the cosmos.
We say we know everything about the Universe
That there is to know,
And perhaps that is safest,
Because if the shell of the Earth should crack,
And split a terrible, pink dawn upon us,
Our minds would crack as well,
And our eyes would blaze madly
At the sight of all the dreadful things
We do not know.
Bodies
I am oceans,
black and boiling
in a thread-worn skin.
All my reflections
are papered over
so as they won't pop,
but what ghosts are
these red-ochre Venuses with
sagging breasts and bulbous bellies?
Are these my foremothers,
or oracles of cursed Creation,
or first carvings of Eve?
No shivering white flower.
but as fat and fearsome
As the first sun.
Sadness
is a warm quilt we pull around ourselves
when it's too cold outside.