Lies, Damn Lies, And…

Statistics have shown that the more brass you eat
the smaller the chance
that you will give birth to a moon

If you relegate the wildflowers to the backyard
you will be ten times more likely
to be cruel to family ghosts

If you seek meaning in dust
you will dust
incessantly

The more often you indulge
in wet thoughts at lonely midnight
the less often you’ll sing of conveyor belts

More people have a chance
of dying at the hands of a priest
than will love the pop music of twenty years in the future

Flake gold sprinkled on the cereal bowl
has been shown to enrich the soil
from which grows the tree of all triviality

and the leaves of that tree
stick to the skin and block daylight
seven out of ten times

Statistics have shown statistics
can serve as a gloomy blanket
on a perfectly shiny beach

In any set of numbers
there’s a fifty percent chance of finding juice
for the quenching of embers

A greater part of the darkness left behind
will be overweight children’s tears
pure as the moan of charmed snakes

The numbers want to strangle
the scent of lovemakers as clean
as new mown grass

When no one chooses to count
the mysteries separately
they are as ordinary as air

Statistics have shown
statistics
turn death black when applied too thickly

Ninety percent of all humans alive now
would rather be counted as one of the ripples
than be a Stone

that once launched
slices into water
that cannot be divided

and vanishes
to rest in the lake
with the others that have piled up

in infinite piles
Memories of singularity
and monuments to the rejection

of the laws of chance