by the numbers

untitled (by the numbers)

out beyond the sitcoms,

wigs and tragedies, the radio

transmissions of hate and farce,

our pale blue disk winks

if there's someone who can see it

and hear us through the static

they could see a trillion sunsets

with a trillion unnamed colors

where another day decays

into another dusk

and the schoolroom

voices of profundity

often said: imagine

all the grains of sand on earth,

the stars are more than that

............

these numbers are too big-

maybe something smaller, like

a million dollars a year

per soldier in kandahar?

how about the number of ants

disassembling the carcass

of a cupcake on the sidewalk

beside the asphalt boulevard

molten in the august heat

just beyond the wilted marigolds

that grace the landscaping

of the fading luxury hotel?

how many salted molecules

inside the tears

of the philippino maid

who was just fired

because she wouldn't fuck

the supervisor who

moved out there from tulsa

after his brother-in-law

mentioned that the money was good?

what universe resides inside that salty drop?

these god damned numbers,

the brain cells lost to time and

the sweet scent of gasoline fumes

at the richfield station when i was nine

like a cicada, hatching from dark earth

into this ebbing

they always say: imagine

if you laid those dollars end to end they

would circle the globe four and half times

or if you stacked them all they'd reach halfway to the moon

a master japanese blacksmith

folds white steel like taffy twenty times

and hammers it to forge

a sword with a million layers

but the hadza people on the shores of lake eyasi

have no words for numbers greater than four,

beyond that, they just say many.

i've had many moons,

six hundred ninety four to be precise,

but i like how 'many' works

i'd like many more

if i'm lucky, more than four