A Love Poem To The Universe, Beyond Comprehension

a love poem to the universe, beyond comprehension

how do you tell someone that without them you would be dead? without this i would be nothing. out of the entire world, i can only think of three things that saved me, and the universe is made of this in its entirety: flashing lights, the dark vastness and the endless possibility that lies within hope. you may be an atrophy lying on a white hospital bed. do you think the world is ever scared of its own existence lying restless in the middle of the night always tossing and turning in its bed of stars, it never stops rolling across the empty skies. always dreaming fitfully through the spaces. do you ever think like the world says “we are the thoughts some mind misplaces” are we accidental miracles not miracles catastrophes almost forgotten not forgotten misconceived for misconception. the world is larger than the girl. the girl still thinks like the world can hear her, crickets with broken wings and no violin strings to play. not everything is magic in this infinity, some are larger than others like this flower is faker than this flower is still realer than you. this bag is larger than the things inside it, it is a vessel or a container for what it holds but it is more. asks is there more is there more is there more said the girl when the universe answered said that can’t be all there is to this said there are no edges said the people assembled in the front row to watch the universe explode, behind a glass box that someone found to keep out radiation. you are a container and the universe said duly noted kept containing like it was supposed to, all the black matter anti-gravitrons particle accelerators science experiments, every paper mache volcano with mentos and diet coke it could remember, didn’t know it was larger than what it held inside it. couldn’t remember past the galaxies careening about laughing and screaming past each other or the flashing lights or the supernova or the little girl who wouldn’t let the crickets die in their own arthritic apathy because nobody wished for wishes any more and nobody asked but she did saying a list of things she had decided were true in the absence of anyone to tell her otherwise and the first thing was irrelevant because it was an important concept to know and the second one she couldn’t remember was a good excuse because everybody believed you and the third one was heartbreaking, beautiful and sad and it said that you are larger than the things inside you you are more than you contain added together even multiplied, the girl is smaller than the world and without this she would be dead and nobody quite understood what i meant when i said this saved me but the universe loved her for it, in its own way.

one must imagine sisyphus happy

here is the way i will live the rest of my life: one day at a time.

on sundays i will brew an entire pot of tea and drink it while reading a book or an article or a newspaper, anything i can do to never stop loving that magic and strange poetry of reality.

on saturdays i will go grocery shopping, the real way, at bakeries and butcheries and fruit markets. and if i buy something exotic, something strange, it will be my own choice, visiting italian markets and east asian seafood shops or arabic spice dealers. no one could blame me.

on fridays i will cook something new each week, a recipe to try, made out of something simple or complex but always different so that life does not become a terrible monotony and instead the flavour of adventure sits lingering on my tongue.

thursdays i will devote entirely to my menagerie, and wednesdays for the house- to clean will be to rid myself of any common perceptions.

on tuesdays i will be kind. not to say that i am ungracious or abrasive on every other day, but that i will make an uncommon effort to lighten someone’s day. the world will not turn any differently for it, but there are things we do for stranger reasons than this.

on mondays i will write, letters to my past and future selves, poetry, philosophy, discourse on science and reports, bills and taxes and novels and i will write like the world is ending in my hands because in a way it is.

every day i will live like the world is ending and i will get up and i will repeat this over and over and over, living this life because it is my only and my last, accepting the absurdity to be happy in my own peculiar way and falling in love with this strange, incomprehensible impossible world somehow over each time, every day that i live it and all its possibilities again and again and again.

occupation day

a girl walks in wearing a NASA shirt and galaxy print leggings, everyone thinks oh, rockets, she’s got the glasses to be an engineer. she raises her hand to ask, is the never-ending void an acceptable job? there was a help wanted sign on the desk of the universe and i’m attempting to fill the position. a pencil two rows over gets pulled in by her gravity (purple with black and blue sparkles) and she just smiles, tosses it back out past her edges and says you’re lucky it wasn’t turned into spaghetti. the physics goes over their head. all over her paper she observes and draws particles and she knows that by doing this she changes what they are but maybe if she didn’t notice them they wouldn’t exist at all. later when the teacher calls on her she says quantum mechanics and the formula for how long it takes to reach the ground because this time an entire desk rolled over to her, the focus of the room. it's an occupational hazard, drawing things in. red and blue logo and she thinks there’s some light inside it just can’t get out past her event horizon and she wants to know has anyone ever heard of something coming out of a black hole, or anyone coming back? her shoes have constellations like her freckles and no one noticed when they winked, twinkled, she shimmered out of existence. she was going to prove wormholes and timeless stars and maybe dead cats she was just waiting for her rocket to take off the ground. empty desk and David Bowie and the occupational hazards of being a black hole that even in your lack of existence everyone is pulled in by your void, the spaces in between stars and the letters on her t-shirt spelling out G A L A X Y where she left blank spaces for compensation. she’s somewhere out there tearing up a storm or aurora borealis, shining green-blue lights so far past herself she could never lose them. entire worlds and universes she could swallow in an instant with her big, hungry eyes. always looking up saying is there more? and knowing every star by name. a girl walks out of the room, into the office of the universe and applies for the position to fill the spaces, checks all the boxes until she’s told yes. supernova bursts forth from the room but she still says do you think anyone could ever find the edges? and runs chasing after it, laughing, crying, filling up the void.

tell him that there are other ones and zeroes

10100 / 101 / 1100 / 1100 1000 / 1001 / 1101 10100 / 1000 / 1 / 10100 10100 / 1000 / 101 / 10010 / 101 1 / 10010 / 101 1111 / 10100 / 1000 / 101 / 10010 1111 / 1110 / 101 / 10011 1 / 1110 / 100 11010 / 101 / 10010 / 1111 / 101 / 10011 00000000000000000000000000000 1111111111111111111111111111111111111111

PERSEPHONE: fuck the seasons. fuck change. peeling a pomegranate / only to find rot, blood-red hands for nothing sticky fingers and silver knives. empty but coming back for more, this / winter came quicker than we expected, came with a vengeance. sick from the inside- how it looks pretty but when it’s cracked open //

split, thick pulp rushing from inside juice dripping / and swallowed the brown. the red. seeds whole and the crescent of a fingernail / cuts across the surface quicker than a knife would know to sever. how it is only aimed, fuck anything more than an attempt to break this fuck / me more than anyone. i would know what it means when you say the rot started on the inside //

dear physics, a eulogy request in advance

Aaron Freeman, can your physicist come to my funeral too and explain my own dispersal? in my head i see them standing by the ashes talking about the metaphor this funeral represents- the spreading of what’s left of me, the explosion of my infinitesimal self into everything else. or maybe that’s just the poet in me, making up things as i go. they’ll probably stand and say we are all made of molecules, and matter before we ever even begin to considered cells, the division of life into life with or without kernels before nucleus comes neutrons spinning in the centre of things all the biologists will have a fit. but they’ll still wait with one hand on the urn, and say biology can’t comfort you like this will. say something about the law of conservation of mass (you were anything before you were this and you are everything after this until all the edges). something about stardust. dispersion, refraction into light. your physicist takes a seat at my funeral and i’m hoping it’s a comfort and not another reminder that i am in a thousand other places except for here. my english teacher mother tells them to restate their thesis and conclude in different words; your physicist and i know this is all in my head because funerals are for the living, and when this all happens i will be six days dead burned past the point of no recognition into the point of disintegration my bones fused together and crackling with delight, decomposing cells wicked away with flame- your physicist gets up again, walks so slow up the middle of the row to say i have done two funerals today, one for a catastrophe and one for an atrophy. someone once told me they could feel themselves slipping away. someone once told me there was an explosion implosion inside their curled up lungs every time they tried to breathe. a finger in the ashes and your physicist lists off its chemical composition to the mark, using words like the element of surprise or eloquence or a rare one, a smile. somewhere within these molecules they say there was a person once, twice, forever and now they can never die. or what’s left of them at least, is that us or an eternity, not until the ends of everything. the physicist sits down, science in their lap like a bible or a comfort. i am not here to witness but if i were scattered to the winds in my own fragility i would think even your physicist might cry if they come to the funeral.