space | J.J. Smith's "Numbers"

CLXXIV.

April 3, 2013 § Leave a Comment

particles

scatter, frenetic, unbound

absorbed,

human eyes imagine color

without perception, brilliant pinks, blues, greens—

cease to exist

unheeded travel;

dying cosmic giants burned into weightless, heat-absent black

if we blink out

who witnesses our light?

–

from a hospital bed,

I perceive shadows, warring particles

scattered, frenetic, unbounded

Devices capture, release, diminish

Urgent Care cries dissolve, rinsed in time

CLXIII.

January 15, 2013 § Leave a Comment

mid-drink collision,
“our thought, our intellect,
unquantifiable”

you: “pour me another”

amber ale rises
foam grips, glass edge brimming

you: “hydrogen bonds are strong”
(and why else it refuses to spill
but I cannot break fixation—
soft lips, how hard syllables crack)

“odd, how immeasurably
imagination stretches,
how we house ourselves”

“how does space contain itself?”

“odd, how matter distances from matter,
how unseen, how dark”

our planet pushes away
stars recede,
we relate, we muse on
alcohol dilutes

CLXI.

January 13, 2013 § Leave a Comment

light bearer, out
matches make haste, make waste

light bearer, free
singed glass, wax residue
cooled, released

sky-thriving bearer, burn;
luminescent child so young
so naive,
so mighty
we mimic, tireless

turning, our spherical engine makes white of air,
smoke of hot remains,
elements of elements

(unconscious roll)
born of giants,
women and men of chaos
dreaming ways to tame the stars
to fashion tiny bearers
to carve night

CXLIX.

December 21, 2012 § Leave a Comment

tracking stats and “likes”

twice, LXX is ignored

just that awful, violent roar of a machine

the [vacuum] I am steering over a carpet sewn by

hands sewn with sperm and egg

this man-made object is being steered by a man-made man

a union [of women and men]

which laid down these bricks [the building I am standing in]

…me, squeezed between a space, the same properties that bend this vacuum toward my will

the properties of physics and of chemistry

myself, bent in this sucking, awful roar of the [universe]

the killer suns, and all that I will never steer

I seek to steer a vacuum, bent within a vacuum

it drives me, relentless in its own way, never my own, never me

here, there is doubt. Nature is a complex, varied organism. See: atoms. Zoom out, see: a human. Zoom out, see: a planet. Zoom out: you see a thing, not the many things trapped, bent within its awful, violent roar—

—the atoms bent in the noise of war, intercourse, ingenuity, musical vibrations

—the people bent in the starlight, oceans crashing, land shifting

—the planet bent in its orbit, its turn, its satellites

—what steers?

tracking stats and “likes”

CXI is enjoyed

I must practice writing as Earth practiced itself

the universe practiced

as did its parts, its galaxies

water planets—our solar system—Earth survived

multicellular beings practiced

until I emerged

my mind, my eyes, my hand–they practiced

now words surface

- -

often, I fear my words are read

the meaning, lost

Returning: LXX.

December 17, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Just that awful, violent roar of a machine, the one I am steering over a carpet sewn by hands sewn with sperm and egg, a union which laid down these bricks which stack all around me, squeezed between a space, the same properties that bend this vacuum toward my will, myself, bent in this sucking, awful roar of the vacuum, the killer suns, and all that I will never steer — it drives me, relentless in its own way, never my own, never me.

- -

Always me, always everyone; in its own way it makes itself in the only way it ever could, as no way other than the way it formed could have occurred; it is perfect in its disorderly manner, in fact, by means of its perfection it is not disorderly but, rather, it is in order — all is in order; that is “us” (you, me) and all outside of “us” is also “us”; it is never within something in the same way that everything is inside of it; all is outside of it (think of it as being within and out of itself) and my feelings to its pull, its bending, are subjective and weighty with misunderstandings — I was mistaken in my seeing of the energy, just that awful, violent roar of a machine…

Returning: CXXXV.

November 29, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Watching films of stars receding and stars expiring

planets consumed

elements exhausted

matter compacted, clouds buzzing

It’s okay. Holding you, it’s okay.

CXLVII.

November 21, 2012 § Leave a Comment

If I could stare long enough at a single point . . . say, I was standing in a room and staring—not into a corner or at a blank wall, but if I could stare long enough, holding my friend’s hand while I did so (because her presence provides such strength), I could see into that spot, into this empty air, this vacuum, this invisible little nothingness between the ceiling and the floor and the walls, the part we walk through daily without feeling it pass through us—

if I could stare into the nonspecific space long enough I might see the atoms buzzing.

There is a law in quantum mechanics stating the specific placement of an atom cannot be exacted. A definite number cannot place its presence. The measurements are given in scientific notation so as to account for error. This is because the atoms are never not moving. Everything buzzes always. Without movement, nothing survives. Without the moon’s gravity and the tidal push, organic matter does not shift, life does not emerge on land. Stagnant lakes harbor death and bacteria. With only movement does life and light exist. With collision, new life is birthed. With a dying star, elements are hurled out into the nothingness; here, the debris collects and compacts. Planets are made. They move. The atoms they are made of move.

The laws of physics we are submitted to are specific to us and our size. Our atoms do not follow the same laws. They follow their own. How is it that the very essence of which we are made of does not follow the same rules?

The meteors and the red giants and the colliding galaxies are rushing ever-always, looming overhead. We are stuck between the quantum-sized fabric of matter and the ominous threats, the larger, unfeeling, relentless beasts. We are the Middle, a harmonizing of the unseen and the incomprehensible, all coalescing into brawn and sensuality and intellect and humor.

Vibrations of the atoms affect each erogenous pocket of matter—

screaming, we enter

pleading, we exit—

how magnificent, how frightening—

this begs interpretation but the truth remains evasive (“truth?” is the wrong question to ask here but I am left lying here, fighting off sleep and these poisonous thoughts that often plague a young man in his twenties.)

Another quantum law states how no prediction can be reached on what will happen in any given circumstance.

CXLVI.

November 20, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Took bus 34 downtown; walked eastward over the Nashville bridge. To my left, the hills rise far off. The river running north underneath is wide; if only I could leap up and see this expanse (I see it in my mind’s eye)

if only, might I know it better? Putting greater distance between myself and this planet –

when? we return to the sky, to the currents that silver bird rides, to the spot on this spinning rock I call “home”

there is a friend there waiting

–

night fell

halfway out the bottom of a hedge grown against a chain-link fence

a cat lay twisted

clawing at soil for good now

eyes dark and open

it is not moving anymore

–

bus 34 routes a half-circle eastward and north

men talk

lights pass

the hair on the back of my neck is wet from a day’s walk

CXLIV.

November 19, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Encircled by an arrangement of barns and sheds and other farm houses now converted to art galleries, cafes, and gift shops

my eyes focus on the tops of trees far off. In Nashville, landscapes feel swept aside, the acreage owned by freeways or rich estates. The remainder is in the hills; there, the trees gather, bronze-cinnamon heads peeping up from thickets of deadened redcedars, locusts, hemlocks…The heads, their color clinging to life through the cold…almost a rusted copper-brass like the buttons you see on dark jeans. Longer I look, I see green tinges.

On the tourist-hangout-outskirts, the ground hops and chirrups with dark olive-gold warblers. Their miniature, pointed beaks nip at gravel and things squirming in the soil, things tinier than them.

I can hear the hidden wildlife scavenging through scraps of a fire pit and flipping through tree limbs. I hear the many workings of Nature, my own workings with pen on paper on the picnic table with the heat of the relentless Sun down upon us all (and what is Sol but merely a labor of the elements? Are we any more than such?)

CXLIII.

November 18, 2012 § Leave a Comment

During the flight, Simon & Schuster’s World of Physics brought consolation; Weaver and Feynman affirmed my own life-mulling in the way that Fichte and Kant had this year previous–thank the Germans! Today, Blaise Pascal–thank the French! But these are only names, only heritages. Their words transcend them in the way that my own notes scribbled on airport receipts belong no more to me than anything else (do I “produce” these notes or, rather, discover them? And what is it I discover? That which lies dormant, breathing and waiting in nature.)

On the receipt acting as a page placeholder,

unlike the Greeks, I must form a concept of the nature of physical laws in the way that I have sought a relationship between the forces and structures of nature

no structure can exist without forces

the laws of nature which apply to a human apply to any celestial bodies as well

observation, reason, experiment

methods of understanding: control/isolate, deduction, approximation

CXLII.

November 17, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Confined, knees pinned against backseats stuffed with pamphlets:

emergency evacuation, vacation hotspots, celebrities — commercial fodder– high contrasts, candy colors

My forehead presses to the window; out, is a runway. The beast lifts, my belly lurches — in me is a collection of elements assembled by the terrestrial life shrinking beneath me

The beast wavers; I flutter

Up, rise, ascend — all great words, each unsuitable

–

Caught between the head of a stratus cloud and an overhang of wispy cirrus tendrils

we move smooth, a ship on fog water

Higher

we move unheeded, our mighty craft traversing white dunes

sand, water, air

does it matter? The blue much higher darkens black

bruised, the planet squirming in its womb

CXL.

November 5, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Since we cannot communicate

here is where I sit

Numbers do the talking, the doing, the presence-making

here is where I live

CXXXIX.

November 5, 2012 § Leave a Comment

There is no such thing as an absolute frame of reference when it comes to objects moving in space.

So how could things be “fucked up,” my fellow object?

CXXXV.

November 3, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Watching films of stars receding and stars expiring

planets consumed

elements exhausted

matter compacted, clouds buzzing

It’s okay. Holding you, it’s okay.

Returning: XCII. & XXVIII.

October 31, 2012 § Leave a Comment

XCII.

Soon as I dictate my thoughts to my limbs

to my fingertips

the keys

the thought vanishes with the magic of its inception

- -

soon as I etch mentalities into a yellow legal pad

I become less of who I was

I become much less

enhanced by refinement

bereft of any chance of purity

- -

am I More now or Less now than prior to This?

XXVIII.

No matter how I try, can’t trace my pen-hand. Its shadow attached, trapped existing; out of light, extinguished, is its only rest.

Move a thumb. It moves. It interprets. It soothes. It means. It mars. It takes.

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