following ICMS and EGOS 2025

before the second sleep, the mind flits 
between prayer, poetry and power games
planning for the ways we will be 
silenced, keeping watch, anticipating
the move to bring us back to relevance
the poetic transformation of nothing

to something. from fear
to action. the promise
of persistence, the hope
of composting grief 
into growth, making order
from disorder. to whom
these prayers are directed

I don’t know. an awkward plea to the blank 
and pitiless sky. a baby’s cry 
to the bowels of the planet that we,
steel race of woman born, gifted fire,
gluttons for crude, make hotter
than the forge of Hephaestus 
or screaming rubble after the latest
pass of the war machine.

let us mean something
let us matter against entropy
let this not all be in vain – carbon thinking 
and speaking to carbon, via silicon,
about its life in the shape of a human –
the universe’s ongoing conversation 
with itself, electromagnetic internal
monologue of creation, trying daily
to talk ourselves out of self-destruction

this tending to chaotic evolution, indivisible
from story. the third event to the nth degree
before and beyond history, we prepare
by stocking wood in summer
since winter always comes.