THE HORIZON OF MEMORY

Consider the

on average

seventeen hundred friends you have made

twenty one hundred books you have read

fifty eight holidays you have taken

thousand times as many films you have watched

millions of recorded cells so crowd your brain

you learn to write

if only to keep track of these lists.

As children the

elusive sense of self is sucked

into every mirror, replaced

with fabricated memories

biographical accounts of someone else

wound with threads of

our own history

so of course we write things down

repeat them

to know where we are at in time

our place

silhouettes outlined against a stark

and bare wall

fading after the flash bulb's pop.

Whether through an imaginary history or

memories of the future our

minds travel, our bodies trapped

in the present but unable to lose

the past,

snip the cellular connection,

so when we remember

everything flows like floods

rapids rivers trickles,

brains shrink

memories fold

and our blood is fouled.

Forget the future, he mumbles

through stiff lips

standing still is a slow death

unable to make decisions

the outlook is bleak

released in a silent unseen collapse.

THE UNIVERSE WIELDS DESTRUCTIVE POWER BEYOND COMPREHENSION
(ROCKET WATCHERS CHEER)
For Carl Sagan

how do you find something that hides in the dark
after a billion billion suns explode?
while caressed by 4 dimensional space-time
it fuses elements, leaking deeper into supernova until
penetration
sucks into an event horizon,
riptide into the universe's gloryhole.

this is where N87 supercomputer simulation lives
where sweating primordial gases birth stars
and gorge on their waste, merging in
ferocious waves of staggering size
into a crowded bulge of stars, dust, hot gas
swirling clouds of havoc
circling a maelstrom of energy and matter.

but don't expect the singularity to be dark;
through the twisted logic of the wormhole
the white hole
flung out into another universe
ejaculating elements
seeding galaxies.