Author: Michael Angelo

Every day there is the uncertainty
of whether or not one has risen correctly
and has set their mind upon the right thing.

Somehow the birds knowingly go to their flying
and the worms untroubled to their wriggling—
but the person,

what do they do?

There are trains raging certainly through tunnels;
there are cars coughing confidently into dirty air.
Offices are committedly clattering
and classrooms are persistently prattling,
every place pours itself like a monsoon—
but the person,

what do they do?

On a corner with a starving dog is an old man
playing music with his ribs;

today’s meal
comes tomorrow, and tomorrow’s
comes whenever
a cherry blossom’s petal
falls onto a lake.

Tectonic plates
grind their old hard faces together
as nursing patients sneak away
to make love.

Time explodes

like mines, like grenades,
like jets and torching dragons,
like pent up anger and lusty housewives,
like punished children and young men pregnant
with propaganda,
like flowers on the cusp
of summer and particles conspiring  
the atom, God’s lonely heart.
Such uncertainty
is swirling,
so many questions of right and wrong.

It’s almost like air and water, this not knowing;
it’s almost natural—almost certain, like the person
living and dying

on a mound of questions.