21 May 2013

Shells, Shelter

They hide the ocean in a shell.
- Arcade Fire, "Half Light I"

It isn't fair how
little effort it takes
to swallow all of your heroes
and let them harden
in the kiln of your gut.
It is easy
to write about stars because
it is easy
to write about ignorance.
How can I trust my eyes
when light travels so slowly?

When the fire is out,
the inspiration is ready.
Be careful not to burn yourself.
That's easy, too.
One day, the antimatter
in your gut
will take those stars
and eat them.
How can I trust my brain
when antimatter and matter,
the yin and yang, the good and evil
are composed of atoms,
then strings
laced in and out of consciousness?
What good is reality
when it's hidden behind
layers of skin and muscle,
trapped in the universe
of one's body?



15 May 2013

Zeta

How the universe began is a rhetorical question, a function or formula. It hangs off the New Moon after coming back, decades after circling Saturn, transforming, restructuring.

I pretend to count your eyelashes, each one its own universe. Somewhere, with child-like wonder, I’m counting the veins on a leaf, counting the spots in my eyes, hoping for parallelism and connection.

In all capital letters, I ask, and the questions always come back--return to sender. That’s the center of romance. The center isn’t the heart; it’s the lungs. It’s the breath it takes to ask, to aggressively strum the vocal chords.

The number of veins is twenty-five. The number of spots is forty-three. In my throat, the answers bloom, and I trace them to Jupiter, where they separate into two paths of philosophy--to move forward or backward, the feature of balance.