THE GOD OF QUANTUM MECHANICS

Tags

poem, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, Twist in the tail, wordplay

THE GOD OF QUANTUM MECHANICS

and the poststructuralists at the far table spoke French

we scanned the coffee shop
as we had expected there they all were: hero, shadow, mentor, helper, trickster, shapeshifter, gatekeeper (more than one of these)

the entire cast of
the hero’s journey

meanwhile shapeshifter approached
introduced himself (herself) as shaman
asked what we
were writing
how
does it read

told him it was a
film screenplay, he smiled (eyes dancing)
replied:
then I must ask
how
does it LOOK

to navigate this place
you need an acute imagination
it too shifts
one minute you are back
where you came from
(the twist of the Möbius)

the next
in a dimensional dislocation as
the path from
kitchen to
your perfect table in
the window

goes serious mind-game five moves ahead playing
contortions of your
garden-variety tesseract

and still no sign
of the god or any
of his disciples

the world outside getting hopelessly entangled
particles burrowed through a
dime a dozen but none
of us the wiser

trying to
get that cerebral sponge which
most transparently defines me
around
the concept of

the static wave and
why this thing
should have consciousness
(perhaps I should have
rephrased this question)

beset with questions, few
creative answers, our
script which does not
yet exactly answer
to that title

watches us, learns from us,
will write itself at
our peril

the cliche that we all
all of us are script, words,
characters

hardest thing to swallow
even here

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SIT YOURSELF DOWN

Tags

connection, poem, poetry, Universe, writing

“To win the war
caused by pain,” (Beyoncé)

sit yourself down
and let me
tell you
the story

the story behind
the poem

the poem
behind
the story

the woman behind
the man
behind
the
woman

behind the poem etcetera
etcetera
so many etceteras
behind each etcetera

the woman
behind it all
(beautiful etcetera, with
beautiful etcetera)
playing an all night song all night
about woman’s redemptive sexuality

so many connections
(connections within
connections) causing
chain reaction

chains breaking, slipping
falling

not in the snooker-ball atom-splitting
final fragmenting way

SURREALISM 101

Tags

poem, poetry

SURREALISM 101

we strive for accuracy
in the surrealism class

no quantum theory nonsense
full of disappearing
people and particles

I turn to the grammar book
but it has lost its shape
class could
design me a new one
but their
rulers and
set-
squares are seriously
Möbius-stripped

whilst I am counting
(why am I counting when
that could mean
there’s a bomb?)

a stuffed dodo (stuffed last dodo)
recites in heroic hexameter the
tall of Alice’s fall
down the extreme rabbit hole

as in
2001

getting bored with each kenning
each implausible refrain
I shut dodo up (tie his
beak with
our great flag)

and set them an exercise
likes of which they’ve never before seen
to write a
scene that

will show
in five adjacent theaters differently
yet simultaneously

or a poem
for a change

far too complete for the Universe,
infinite in meaning and complication
for this small human brain

NOOSE

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

NOOSE

I know some
stuff about
quantum
mechanics

a little about
string theory, too

but not enough
to change my
emotional
orientation

in fact, not
even enough
to tie a noose.

MOSAIC

Tags

narcissism, poem, poetry, Universe

MOSAIC

He wanted the Universe
to be his instrument

wanted the galaxies
to dance to his tune

hoped that all of space
would be his mirror

not caring much
for the talk of probabilities,
multiplicities

that the mirror reserved
for his perfect, cosmic image

was but
a tiny, tiny reflective piece
in the infinite proliferation
of mosaics within
mosaics.

TWO-SLIT

Tags

poem, poetry

TWO-SLIT

my little
words

smaller than
atoms

so small you can
put them through
a two-
slit experiment

watch them
interfere

wave
back at you

OUT

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

OUT

we are not what
we thought we were
not

what we assumed
surprise surprise when
we get down
to our
subatomic level

all the seething possibilities
in patterns of myth

only here we find
the absolute uncertainty
to figure
it out

KILLING ME

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

KILLING ME

It is killing him
writing so fast
to change
the world

erasing inhumanity, injustice
and suffering
things moving so
fast it is
a blur outside

just colours, shapes and
forms flowing into each other

and this, as he loses
any sense of anything individual, sees
nothing but the complexities of pattern,
must be
he realizes

how God sees the world, and beyond
that the Universe, Himself writing
everything at blistering
speed
the speed

of evolution, of
thirteen billion years
collapsed into a second

of this moment
in my poem, his poem, whoever
is writing
whom
at this moment

strung across the fabric
of space time
stretched out
to infinity

and yet
here we all are, twenty-four frames per second.

FIGURED

FIGURED

was watching Arrival
when I figured they would need
police to patrol every
two-slit experiment

untangle every entangled
human and alien soul

who together, unbeknownst
to each other
are writing stars in collusion
on a massive plasma screen

STUCK

STUCK

and where do
these “alternative
facts” come
from?

from the parallel universe
in the cookie jar

being mindful that when
you quantum leap
in there to grab
an alternative
cookie

you do not end up (as in
the great Simian joke)
with your
fingers (small
as they
are) stuck