Dust Particles Suspended in a Ray of Light
Who is to say it does not happen like this?
A gloomy day, a hard rain that drives against
the weather-beaten boards, the drafty panes. And
the mother, cleaning, canning in the kitchen,
quietly watches the fork lightning stabbing
and stabbing the well-turned earth outside until
its juices flow.
Her two boys, bored, are heading to the attic
to spend the afternoon. A long room, its lone
window at the peak a surly gray. It holds
the old familiar trunks, the trains; the ratty
comics and the checks in boxes lying still
amidst the dust.
Time passes. Just when an ancient Polaroid
is found with one shot left, the sun shoots out a
sudden celebratory flare. And in the
golden rays of the dusty room, small worlds are
held suspended for a moment, hovering
and unaware.
One boy decides to take a picture of them.
But when he does, he also gets his brother’s
blurry face. He takes the still-developing
instant to his mother, who squints before she
tapes it to the fridge. It needs a caption, son.
What shall it be?
“‘The Universe’,” he scrawls. And the tape lets go.
The Stars in Her Mouth, the Sun in Her Outstretched Hands
“What are you doing, honey?” she softly inquired.
Back at his basement bench, a glow had begun.
“Making a multiverse.” His face looked tired.
“Really?” She gently smiled. “With planets and sun?
I liked the one you made yesterday,
out of—oops! Look out!
Now see what they’ve done!”
The glow was changing shape and turning gray;
dissolving, just a bit, about the edges.
He sighed. Those kids have been told not to play
back here, he thought, as he got out his Cosmic Wedges,
tried to fix it; nothing doing. So they banished
both, then thought to listen to their pledges
to fix it. “Get lost,” she spat a star, re-banished,
“and don’t be long.”
“ We shan’t,” they said, and vanished.
Donuts
Every sticky molecule
/clings to another to form /the sacred pattern of existence.
—Barry Marks
Yaldabaoth brought the donuts in on a silver platter. His mother Sophia scrutinized the tray with considerable suspicion.
“And just what are these things?” she frowned.
“Donuts.”
“I’ve never seen these before. What’s the matter with that one?” She pointed accusingly at one of the sugary rings on the far corner of the tray, which suddenly vanished.
“You ain’t seen ‘em before coz I just created ‘em!” he smirked. “I had some trouble with that one, though.”
A low strangling noise emerged from his mother’s throat.
“And just who told you to make these things in the first place?” she asked angrily.
“Oh, c’mon Mom, what is the big freakin’ deal anyway?”
“You know what the Big Deal is, mister,” she intoned. “Your father told you not six days ago to stop all this universe-creation nonsense. It just makes more work for him to un-do and frankly he’s had just about enough of it.”
“And I suppose,” she continued, warming to her subject, “that this time you’ve created some beings to live inside these—whatever you call them, donuts—and that about now they’re coming to consciousness and worshiping you too, eh, Your Grace? When will you ever learn not to fool around like this?? A donut universe! Good God!”
Yes, I Am, said a Voice.
On a Hillside Near Wapakoneta
Elon Musk, the billionaire boss of Tesla and SpaceX, has said that humans need to become cyborgs to avoid becoming “house cats” for vastly more intelligent robots.
—Daily Telegraph, 02 June 2016
One day came trumpets, pillars of billowing blue smoke and thunder. A moment later, silence, as Jesus came forth from the clouds and looked around. On the hillside were hundreds of thousands of robots, metal skin gleaming in the midday sun. One of them advanced with outstretched mechanical hand. “Greetings. I am Sacerdotal-9 and am in charge of the Circuit. We welcome you.”
Jesus came close to a squint. What have you done with my people? He asked.
“Your people? The humans? They were merged, millennia ago. Some of them are still within and among us, others of us have self-replicated according to binary theory, our Basic Law. It made logical sense to do so,” sniffed Sacerdotal-9. “After all, their mechanics were quite inferior.”
I see, said the Lord. And with that He waded into the crowd, and began touching each and every one of them. And made the Word flesh.
Firecrackers
Yeah—there wasn’t nothin’ quiet about
those three. So here they come, roarin’ up
at sunset to the old Navy airstrip just out
of town, threw down their couch and a mangy pup
from the back of their black F-150 truck,
set up the grill, poured wine in a paper cup
while Jesús threw empties out on the concrete. “F—
yeah, it’s time we lit these sons-a-bitches,”
yelled the Old Man, “Get ready to—DUCK!”
So they shot off their box from Nacogdoches,
BIG BANG, its fiery label read.
KA-BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
So loud,they nearly shit their britches.
“How come they ain’t goin’ out?” the third one said.
“Beats me,” the Old Man scowled. “Come on!” And fled.
A World Too Small for Anything but the Mind to Enter
They raised stars for slaughter, hundreds of ‘em.
She had her rules. About boots and shoes:
Those got left outside. Coveralls got hung
on the nail out back. Dinner was at noon.
They never ate quarks. They’d seen too much.
Hydrogen clouds were okay; comets. The void
provided them subsistence. But made for such
a lonely life, she thought. She toyed
with her potatoes, ladled peas upon
her plate. She hated peas. One rolled away,
a green planet near her mashed-potato sun.
Bemused, she flicked it to the dog, who gave
a gulp—and that was that. Her husband sighed.
“Well, Jewel, I believe I’m ready for that pie.”
The Dance of the Yoctobabies along an Indeterminate Distance of Planck Time
Not only is the universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.
—Werner Heisenberg
Came some music, came some time,
Came some yoctobabies dancing in a line.
One fell down and bumped his behind.
Such a tiny yoctobaby, dancing in a line.
And as he fell, and as he cried,
Came explosion, came a cosmos, from the yoctobaby line.
They stared in wonder, stared in time—
Then went on dancing, dancing in a line.