Sunday, July 22, 2018

Albert Carl Neil Charles Tyler Kurt Stephen and Me* Forrest C. Greenslade, PhD, 2018


Bang
energy infinitely expanding
particles and their evil twins
or waves it’s uncertain
everything related but chaotic

Voiding a black nothing
lusting attraction forcing elemental marriage
molecular gathering gaseous worlds
clotting exploding flaming
capturing lesser spheres
spinning in their influence

On one such orb
cooling in its unique place
condensing gasses
raining upon the surface
conjuring ever increasing complexity

In this water world
solid masses drifting
continents forming and reforming
in the ooze
creating itself in its own image
the helical first
directing invisible architecture

Tiny spheres begetting tiny spheres
begetting spheres of spheres
begetting tubes of spheres
begetting tubes within tubes
begetting swimmers creepers
racers climbers and flyers

Tooth and claw
the fittest fastest hungriest
sexiest and brainiest prevailing
fruitfully filling the orb
subduing it and having dominion
over the swimmers and over the flyers
and over every living thing

Honoring various gods or various one gods
slaughtered the unbelievers
building monuments to various gods
or to various one gods
or to themselves

And unto themselves
erecting great cities
devising great technologies
diversifying great cultures
painting on cave walls
printing on papyrus
casting in stone
iron bronze and cathode
sending texts bursts of ones and twos

And all this so I can utter
these words to you
now

* Einstein’s thought experiment about two people, one in the middle of the train and one on the platform, observing lightning strokes  as the trail sped by gave me an early primitive idea of space/time relatively. Two TV series “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” narrated by Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson inspired me to wonder about it all. I studied Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” in several biology and philosophy courses in college and graduate school. Tyler Volk, in his book “Metapatterns: Across Space, Time, and Mind”, expanded my understanding of the overarching architecture of living things  I met Kurt Vonnegut in New York and had a lovely conversation about his writing and his philosophy of the absurd. His books “Galápagos” and “The Sirens of Titan” colored my thinking about most things. Finally, I just finished Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” which prompted me to revisit a poem that I had written some time ago.

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