Eta Orionis and The precision of stars

Some time ago, a beautiful blue binary star exploded off the westernmost crest of Orion’s Belt. Her time, as they say, had finally come.

And for a while, the aftermath of this event - the debris and resultant radioactive material - moved out and away into the vast expanse of space that had lain for millennia just beyond her reach.

Now, moving lifeless, mindless, still with that certain precision of stars, she follows a path predetermined by 900 light years of terrestrial anticipation.

And somewhere, on a dreaming planet some distance away, a young biped sits admiring a smallish outcropping of rocks lying at the place where beach becomes ocean. He scans the ground for something, only half expecting to find what he is looking for. And then, there it is. He picks up the dead technology, acknowledges the power it had once given. Wraps it ceremoniously in six blades of greenest grass. Holds it up over his yellow head. Then, in some ritual fashion, welcomes the end of the burning sky and vanishes into the nothingness of Eta’s final embrace.

Quiet - her fire burns in the distance. Moving out and away. Absorbing the milky white tentacles of a forgotten galaxy. Reigniting consciousness in a new way. Oblivious to form in this one moment.

How the rocks did glisten.

Infinitive

Need not come on strong
to need
not come on i
need not come on
to need
not come at all
come not i
to equalize
raise the living
to join
the dead
id been counting blades of greenest grass
to quiet
the voices in my head
when Jane had made her way
across the slow parade
having seen countless particles of matter
tumbling
stuttering to shatter
a new way,
the good road home
when
to listen is
to know
that
we need not come on strong
to need not
come at all.

Valence

Valence is not gravity
pulling
or a mathematical sequence
of arbitrary events

it is a misunderstanding
ever expanding
finally going

going gone

and magnetic fields, i am told,
envelop the earth
to keep the sun from
burning us to death -
we cannot see these things
yet we are assured of their existence

i wonder if what i haven’t proven
with mine own intellect
really breeds truth
i wonder if what they have told us
is not a lie
i wonder if a mind can lose its own mind
after giving in to reason for an hour or two

finally,
in this reality, i wonder if that same reason
can save us
while in the next,
(the one just beside me)
i know it cannot.

Bone rider

The road was littered with bones
human, so long ago

it seems they had taken the stadium and begun the slow process
of weeding out

and my love for you was a flower
regardless

but i am not a part of this paradigm
i am not structured
i am not you

my body is a house
a temple for a mouse

while you are so completely separate
distinct

a beauty unqualified
part hypnotized
tundra

aural is the sound a soul makes
when it lacks connection
goes misunderstood
goes

and no matter how much we ride this flame
the flesh will ultimately keep us apart
to savor the flavor of
absolute isolation.

To nagus verve, desanctuary

To nagus verve
i perpetuated a rhyme
where once had been reason
subdued and pantomimed

and urged, i succumbed
to an illness, expanding,
and delivered a fragile fate,
a momentary loss of control,
as the next failure became reality

but i had stolen words
to explain away the hypocrisy of
my disease,
some kind of narcissistic mantle
of disbelief
that shattered those tiny
particles of time that had been sold
to nagus verve,
desanctuary

to verb infinitely,
is to participle the apostate,
where resting is measured formally,
assured of a sudden truth
i had already known,
my blind tongue
engraved:

i am addiction,
replete.