{All I Wanted Was Everything}
You say you know the reason why Archimedes died
tracing circles in the sand & how
you’ll go out this way,
a man too in love
with unifying
theorem
& consequence.
You say you’d stake your life
in trying to understand
why gravity, like me, crushes
& slips
through your hands,
when I’m a hundred percent
certain that we are two
points never to meet,
if you keep
trying to connect the small & large of you
& me. I could tell you why Archimedes denied
the invading hand
of a Roman solider reaching out to him,
that one last chance
to surrender
& walk behind
a new empire, as free
prisoner. I could say why a frail
thing, like gravity, must be capable
of such cruelty.
I’m putting it out there,
for you,
the human body,
as a transitory stage
for what you & I will never see.
Just billions & billions of caterpillars
or maggots
or grubs,
thinking we are life’s final & finite
destiny— thinking it’s enough that we give
live birth & bury
our dead. & I could say
one of our greatest was only digging
his own grave
because life taught him
nothing in the end. But my dear
friend, the science of survival is not a science
of discovery. & when we die, we go in
mystery.
{To Zero, with Strange Love}
Loving you has turned me into a given tree.
My branches are full of every war horse, hallelujah, allegory.
When I reach for you, I count my own rings of dust
& debris. Soon I’ll be a lonely stump, a last comfort
for a jilted bride, or— if I’m lucky, a resting potential
in which the last of my kind will seek rot as root.
How time lives in fear of you. My origins grow
indifferent to my deaths. & just as nebulous.
Did I ever mean anything? Say, why
{in the what of you}
are all my neurons like a plague,
swarming you, in great numbers,
&. Vanish. Loving you means I’ll never bear. Witness.
Yet. Having a taste. Of creation. Gives. Way
to weaknesses. I know.
Only the strange radiation of a string quartet
can escape you
& when you’re just about done with me
when there’s just a little left indefinite
& incomplete when nearly never-ment
& so close & not unlike that
perfectperfect
{xxxxxxx———}
I’ll collapse your veiled
{& throbbing}
battlements
nothing can strike at nothing
like the vibrato of cello
& violin I’ll be
whispering
& holding
you {down}
in every
note my
prince
if only to tighten & twist gulf & pit
tune my own strings
just to make you my fields my fields again
full of quantum
wildness {lit}
with gamma &
dissonance
piercing
through
why not
wouldn’t we not
be a cool bloom
the sweetest of sweet
nothings
Poet Wrestling with Her Own Aloneness in Its Time of Need {She’s Going the Distance}
One day, soon, there will be no more science fiction. One
day. Everything we imagine. Is real
though not. Everything is
a storm gathering
in the middle of nowhere, it
just feels like I. Can’t say
I don’t. Worry
about the state of imagination.
I crisscross & wrestle my way toward overwhelmed airplane,
& I worry about the states of our imaginations
which is to say, I’m trying
& striving
& hugging
invisible turns
when I worry
airport security who’s turning
on my laptop & telling me I’m random
-ly selected for additional
screening, which means I worry
you. The same TSA agent who’s asking yet.
Again. What I was doing in the Middle East
over. A decade ago. You ask as if we. -’ve never met
yet know my whole. History. I want to believe. Everything.
Is real. After all. & is that the trade-off. The residual.
Cost. For understanding {what we say. Is} human.
History I worry. we remember only. To use what we can
against each. Other. & I worry, greatly,
what would happen. In an airport if I just didn’t wait
anymore. To go off
course
with the vampire bunny hidden in my carry-on,
yes, a most vampiric & munching life
I’m carrying even if he’s mostly tachyons
with fangs of squarks
& smuons
all of which decay
too quickly
in super
- symmetry
all of which violate
your laws of everything
that’s allowed to be
real. But you’ll never find him, my TSA.
Darling. Who’s still holding me. By the arm as if. Worried.
Who’s the one really on the run. & who will approach.
Agency.
In this small airport on the border
where you claim. The only flight. Was cancelled
due. To storms. Somewhere, beyond. Control.
Somewhere, a connection I have. To make.
& I’m tired of waiting for you. To give
clearance to the eye of my immortal
beloved
who waits for no one, my little, crazed & bloodless
fury with too many sleptons {& too much
heartsick} churning
& burning
in the middle of nowhere
with electrolepus caress,
on gravirabbit course,
how we defy
everything you once were
in monster-bunny force.
