We

"To surrender to the urgings from group selection would turn us into angelic robots — students of insects call them ants."

The ants have it. They
Don't know the meaning
Of wegotism.
We do. We argue
Over who should do

What and when to whom.
We've lost it, we two,
We everybody.
We don't speciate
By population

Anymore. We split
Apart in our heads,
In our beds, our towns,
Our kingdoms, our faiths.
Death comes. We make haste

To appoint someone
To wear a black robe
Or sport a third eye
To act out the part,
Death, proud for our sake.

We can't agree who
Will have to survive
Long enough to say
Who will be assigned
Judge and jury then.

Know No Snow Blows So Slow

I love the lush stupidity of language,
the way meaning and nonsense bump up and crowd
one another like round twins in wonderland,

the profoundest concepts shouldering dumb sounds
like pranksters, "Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean?"
when of course none of them know what they mean, none,

while the dimmest, smallest phonemes, packed like clams
into narrow beds together somehow make
strange sense from mnemonic chants, from baby poems

dreamed up crooning soothing baby human coos,
"Whose got the pinkiest pinky toes? You do. . . .
Whose low nose knows no snows blow so slow? Yours does. . . ."