DON’T PANIC WHEN YOU PANIC

Permanent loss woven into cloud gestures traversing
The green pasture. Try to escape the smell of the water
From the pool in which you drowned. I nearly had a heart
Attack when I was born to die where I’m fated to be. Art
Handlers, lowering a painting from the balcony, await their
Applause. You know this is a dream because it’s the only
Place anything real occurs. The paint knows who you are.
My head is on a sandwich plate pinned together with club
Frill picks with all kinds of sauces, meats, and vegetables
Running down my face. Moments you hold dear and must
Surrender—it’s letting go when you stop trying to make
Sense of why things around you are changing. I put these
Dead-air moments throughout to say something true—
Not lost but safe in the future of other people’s hands.

CARPETS IN THE MUSEUM

A glance at so-called history proves nothing can be done
Where enlightenment, spiritual education, and similar
Absurdities are concerned: one preaches and is praised
Or spat upon, one is promoted king or sent packing
To the afterlife. And everything will remain the same.
What priests and professors shove into children’s heads
Under defenseless names today is unconscionable filth.
You’re already dead if you don’t become supernaturally
Cheerful when someone mentions the word revolution.
Who cares what your name is or where you’re from?
Thousands of years of people who have tried to dress
The part practice prayer and are deformed by form.
Through the present, with its sloppiness of the senses,
On one great strangeness of the mind: elaborate mishap.

Aaron Fagan is the author of three poetry collections Garage, Echo Train, and A Better Place Is Hard to Find.