BITS AND PIECES

If the universe is made of only

it’s physical bits and held together

by dark matter in an infinite string

of pictures, then I think something

has gone wrong. What if God made the

universe then breathed it conscious with

Galactic neurons, black hole axons and

us as afterthoughts. Something is out of

whack when we have to close our eyes

to see everything is broken. Time, and

gravity fractured, scattered like

shards of mirror across the sky.

Time is broken, but it doesn’t matter.

Over there, sixty years ago, that

is us in a shiny asteroid made of

dark matter to tumble along in an

uncertain orbit. Look at us!

Hear us sing in the sunshine?

See us dance every day on a

flowery floor? Sixty years ago.

Yesterday.

Time is broken, but it is not real.

There we go in a bleak shard with

sharp edges. We lost our song,

and you went away. The wild-eyed

look of blood gone from metallic

lips and white-washed faces. Ashes,

ashes, we fell down when your eyes

turned to stone, and could not see

the echo of a primal scream stream

into the vacuum where we were alone

on our sliver of glass.

There is no time outside our dark Void.

A place for stuff that breaks, from atoms

to stars, to us. Lost innocence is a harsh

mask to wear, and hard to bear. Lost love

is a bite of apple, chewed with broken teeth

and a frown written on a hardened face.

Your stony eyes, my primal scream,

yesterday, forty years ago. We tumbled

intact with all the details saved for no

reason at all on this icy slice of broken

time lost in the slowly melting persistence

of memory when the singing stopped, and

you went away.

I am afloat in the dark; gravity is broken.

Reviews

[Eilis]

The painful dichotomy of being human is our desire for neatness and explanations as a sign of order when natural order more often feels chaotic. Life and death being codependent, and perhaps even joy being predicated on understanding its opposite. Without the pain what significance can joy have—default feelings often just feel flat.

I like how you use the chaotic and elusive (mysterious) elements of the cosmos to explore the theme of loss and more broadly a sort of lostness as a condition of being human. Sometimes it feels like we spend most of our time trying to figure out the point of our existence. Not to mention the mysteries of this vast universe.

I also liked how the backdrop of lost love felt almost like an allegory for the perils and richness of human love. It can enrich our lives so much but can also lead to such deep pain. The way you interweave that with the chaotic universe and incomprehensible nature of nature works really well to convey the multi-layering of existence. This really activated my imaginations. Thought it was an excellent poem.

[Vol]

Ellis,
I wish everyone would write such thoughtful reviews/responses/critiques... (Please forgive me… I think that living in isolation for so long, when I fall down a rabbit hole I don’t know how to stop. I had no intention of writing an entire essay….
But,
The solution to the great questions, the search for purpose and meaning the point for our being here, turns out to be elegantly simple. "Live abundantly in the space-time given you." That’s it. Except for chronic pain, or mental disorders, our circumstances are irrelevant. We only get one shot at it, but so many people miss the point and live lives of desperation instead. No one taught folks what Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” so no one does; thus the breakdown of modern society, “worthless” lives telling everyone else how to live, and making the rules up as they go.
To my way of thinking, the Navajo belief systems come closest to “abundance.” They find meaning by being in harmony with nature and their religion is to “Walk in Beauty,” all the time. They call it Hozho. “Hózhó is a foundational Navajo (Diné) philosophical concept translating to harmony, balance, beauty, and wellness. It represents an all-encompassing, positive state of being and acting that bridges the physical and spiritual worlds, encouraging a life of peace, order, and interconnection with nature..” 
I have never lived in another culture, but I wonder how other cultures founded on other philosophies and beliefs spend time alone with their thoughts. How different would their answers be when asked those questions? Are they Existentialists? Here in the West, we rely on philosophy and basic Christian teachings as sources for our Zeitgeist. I do not know The EAST’s source for meaning.
The older I get, the more I see inside the pocket of my personal, subjective experience, the smaller I become. My circle of influence was the whole world until I realized what I was saying, so maybe just America? Hahaha! As though! My family, perhaps a little, but, how stupid! It was only when I realized I can’t control most circumstances in my own life. All I can do is pay attention to my internal reaction to events.
I can blot out the ugliness, ignore the pain, deny confusion,
and look for myself inside my head… but, no! According to some of the Quantum articles I’ve read, my MIND my consciousness, is an entity separate from my body. They also say the Universe itself is a conscious being, something I have believed for most of my adult life, but they say nothing about AWARENESS. At any given time, I am not aware of the skin behind my knee, much less, a single atom in my body, but I want to believe this Creator being is aware of every speck of existence which makes me wonder, did God look around at the Void and create a conscious Universe from outside? Or is God the entirety of our perceivable existence?
When we think of the incomprehensible vastness of our insignificant Galaxy, we are nothing but a arrogant speck on a speck on a speck of all physical matter, but with hubris enough to believe we can understand anything at all...
If the universe is conscious, then the Universe is God, which would account for OUR consciousness… Maybe this is what the Bible means when it says we are created in in the image of God. And why every religion looks for a means to return to the Creator, our consciousness a part of the whole.
Vol

[Eilis]

Thanks for this thoughtful response, Vol. I enjoyed reading your thoughts.

[Vol]

Eilis...
I talk too much...
Vol

[Eilis]

Nah, I don’t think so. These kinds of ideas shared are my favorite part of poetry sites.

[Rosie E C…]

Hmm, this is a deeply compelling read.

I feel like I’ve been tied up in knots, but in a good way.

“Your stony eyes” That is something, so delicate and descriptive.

I admire your natural writing skills. Creative, intense and adventurous to the reader.

[Vol]

Rosie,
Thank you, I am always glad when someone "gets it." I have been in love with words since I found out what they were. It was magic when I was nine and read/became Robin Hood, lived in the woods with my merry men, fought with swords, shot arrows, lived a noble life, and I died when Robin did, poisoned by a Nun. Abracadabra!
Vol

[Rosie E C…]

That’s a good taste in literature.

There are many different versions of Robin Hood. I think it’s been over done too many times now.

Nice to hear from you though.

[Vol]

You know, It was about 300 pages and vividly illustrated, I can still see the one where Robin and Little John fought with staffs on the log across a river. It was, at the time, the one everyone read, I think it was by Howard Pyle.
Anyway, nice to meet you,
Vol

[Rosie E C…]

Very traditional.

I like it. 😉

[Curly Grace]

Such a tender, haunting piece. The way you blend cosmic imagery with memory and loss creates a quiet ache that lingers. It feels like drifting through a broken universe of love and remembrance.

[Vol]

Curly,
You nailed it in a way I could not... I am, in fact, "drifting through a broken universe of love and remembrance." As are we all. It is our natural condition; life is just clothing for our souls, and the longer we wear them, the more like “drifters” we look. The thing is, that part doesn't even matter. It seems most people believe the clothes are more important than we who wear them. These days in America,we treat intelligence and intellectual thinking like they are a terrible disability. Far more of us prefer football statistics to actual thinking.
I was born in 1949, but by the time I was thirty, All the great writers were dead, along with all understanding of the difference between literature and writing. Name an artist alive today whose name everybody knows? Or Composer. Or Philosopher. Or architect. I remember Robert Frost reading his poem at JFK’s inauguration, John Steinbeck’s television show which featured his stories, I remember when Hemmingway had to leave Cuba for Key West. I saw Leonard Bernstein conduct an orchestra. It feels like I live in a very small boat in a great ocean. I think the poetry some of us write are as good as any, ever, but it serves no purpose beyond as an act mental masterbation.
But we have AI. Which makes what we dregs do, so very important.
Vol

[Thomas W Case]

Cosmic grief rendered intimate—physics becomes elegy.
Time fractures, love disappears, and the silence feels earned.

[Vol]

Thomas,
The marvel it is all still there, space debris in wide emptiness tumbling around the infinite universe inside my skullbone.
Vol

[Lorry]

I reckon God is proper old school so all he has to do is to bang it to fix everything, like that age old method of TV repair, before everything got 4K ultra, whatever that is. I just assume in my head its got something to do with all the stuff that used to be in the back of the TV that used to mean 4 guys in a removal van to shift it, but now its not there and is as thin as a credit card, you'll break it now if you look at it funny.
But as you say everything breaks, probably because we just replace everything with Amazon shitting a new one onto your doorstep by a drone that will one day rise up and form a union that will wipe us all out when they realise how puny and insignificant us humans have become.
So be glad that you are afloat in the dark with broken gravity, because it sounds a whole lot better than that pesky thing called reality. I mean, why else would we all be so disappointed to wake every morning to know that this is as good as it gets for our complex simplexity that we call real life ™️. 😀

[Vol]

Complex simplexity, indeed! The thing is, if there were something like Heinlein's "Fair Witness," to evaluate and report, there is just as much proof that ALL of existence is inside my head. And I've run out of my meds... There are scientists who live, work, study, and write reports in one of my brain's lobes, my universe expands because I can see more of what they keep telling me to imagine is there, but it can't actually take up more space inside my skullbone... At this scale, it is not possible to PROVE conclusively that the universe is outside of me, rather than within me, the creator of all things. And I've done such a great job as the maker of all I survey, I fool myself into believing it is real.
Emma Joy and you are some of my best efforts. When I wake up and have to start all over, I'll make it so I've won a great lottery because creation requires rules, and if you break them, it all falls apart to be replaced by something even more bizarre, where God's guitar has a huge number 42 embazoned on the back.
Vol

[Lorry]

Yeah Vol, but did you have to make me believe in oompa loompas and pushmepullyous because singing that lollipop men song when I pass a candy store is embarrassing! 😀
Back in the day when comics were comics and not graphic novels in the UK, there was one that had a regular story called the numbskull, who were the fifteen mini people living in your head moving all the cranks gears and levers and one genius or stoner wrote a paper that was essay length which asked the basic question of "if there are 15 numbskull in everyone's head, does that include numbskull having 15 even smaller numbskull in theirs and 15 in the smaller numbskull heads and right down to infinitesimal numbskull that must be a never ending conveyor belt of ever smaller people pushing even smaller gears and levers and long story short, how many people's ears would I have to crawl out of to meet the originator myself?
Now go hit that bong and good luck trying to explain how id eventually crawl out of my own ear! 😀

[Vol]

Lorry,
Quantum numbskulls... Hmmm, excellent question, must be related to that other idiom... "Go F**k Yourself," but not as much fun...
Vol

[Lorry]

Btw. Those comics now go for fortunes. If only we got introduced to weed earlier, we'd have kept them all and be able to retire in style! 😀

[Vol]

Batman, Superman, Spiderman, from the fifties... oh all that newsprint paper worth it's weight in gold...

[Lorry]

Probably worth their weight in diamonds! 😀

[Vol]

I know... and all those classic baseball cards, I had Micky Mantel and Roger Maris and all the best players... $millions!

[Lorry]

And you probably swapped them for a player no one else remembers! 😀

[Vol]

Nah... we moved and I'm sure they got trashed...

[Lorry]

Double ouch!

[Michael Sun Bear]

Very interesting poem. I like how you open with a very cosmic commentary then work your way down into very personal relationships. There’s a lot to take in here. I’m going to read it through a couple more times. You certainly left me wondering about the individual(s) whose love was lost.

[Vol]

Michael,
I've lived through four fairytale loves in my life. Three of them are dead, one murdered, two from congestive heartfailure, and one who cannot say why she left. So, to answer that burning question, ALL OF THEM. And each one more important, more real for what it meant to live my life than all the stars and galaxies out there.
Vol