‘Don’t stare at me,’ he said. ‘I’m narrow awake.’
The professor had claimed that he was nodding on
while she, the professor, listed things that make
top billboard hits of any awkward song
‘Hits marvellous,’ she’s explaining to the class,
‘’ow royalties and guest show bids accrue
to them as lets my wise advice amass
gold credits for their songs. I don’t mean you.’

Those certainties that we build on misconceptions
can not be certain once we see they are.
Similarly, those are passing strange perceptions
that let us think there’s logic in the far-
from-certain meme that we know what we doubt.
When we ask are lies to children how we learn
we grin as if averse to finding out.
I suspect that what we really hope to earn
are degrees, if not from universities,
of sanity, but facts don’t grow on trees.

Life requires less consciousness than drive.
A baby, Aristotle, and a rock;
and all the bees in every extant hive;
and, through a closet, darkly, Mandy’s sock
employ simple compounds (CO2
and thinned glutaric acid or some such)
to set up store, and eat, and grow, and screw
encouragements to sticking points that much
resemble little souls as they ascend
the rills of time to rampage in the sun
and then to die. We watch their cells descend
to molecule and atom when they’re done,
their drives expired, their dreams returned to stock
for others’ use when others wind the clock.

The clock, call it Creation, or a curse,
ticks on for aeons making no one wise
including those who notice it in verse.
Its whys elude the lawyers who advise
the rest of us, for money, about how
its bells toll telling tales we all ignore.
A moot point, Mandy. Stand, and take a bow
and pull another pint, then come and bore
your own way to eternity; come tell
us what you know of how the sweet life’s less
than permanent for people and for shells
while being still immortal. I confess
your wisdom shines, although you are inept
in finding terms for life I can accept.

Dawkins calls Creation little steps
that, building on each other, can progress
without a large Creator’s hand to schlep
evolving life along: the scary mess
of living things (old Greeks from CO2,
and rocks that talk, and mammals who eat eggs
of crows who eat the eyes of lamb and ewe,
and two-faced singers prancing on two legs). 
Stop listing, Mandy. Dawkins made his case
and does not need our twitter to confirm
he might be right. But, when I watch your face
as you tuck in our children, I affirm
there’s more to life than we can ever learn
and love’s a gift no deeds can ever earn.

I meditate on a single kilometre,
then on another, and on some more. I soon lose count.
I think of Planet Earth, and what could impede her
on her trips around the sun, should some star mount

an offensive as she sails the Milky Way.
I think of how every single light-year second
contains more kilometres than the ages, say,
of my ancestors summed. It’s good to reckon

with the big things in the universe. They don’t care
who failed to return my calls, or care who did.
It makes me realise that there are marvels everywhere
more interesting than superego, ego, id.

What haggis hangs here, blocking air and lamp?
This cellar’s atmosphere is what you grow
accustomed to at peril, and the stamp
of roundhead boots makes our life here below
the stairs not that enlightened save for thunder,
and lightning that casts shadows: Ermintrude,
projection of a haggis! Does she wonder,
albeit sheepishly, how Duncan would
make wing to rooky wood? This haggis nesting
above our heads, and fetid, makes our fast
less difficult than Cromwell’s, always questing
to root his futures from the simple past.
The haggis, falling, stifles our debate
as we divide its awful on our plate.

He remembers two past lives. He is unsure
which of them, if either, had been real.
He was Santa Claus in one; in the other, a human.
His shouts his fear and solitude into the void
or would do, had he voice or volition.

He remembers all about music except its sound.
He thinks of dancing. He almost remembers caring.
He thinks he’d be much better off if he could.
The void yawns him into wisp. He coalesces
again, and again, and again, not knowing why.

They bring him brandy with his breakfast. He says, ‘I am driving.’
‘It’s not optional,’ grins, and pours, the lesser devil.
‘Now you’ve sampled both do you prefer the void or here?’
Grateful he can care, he stands to answer
and wakes, and cares a lot that he was dreaming.