Dark Matter

Originally published in http://thisdarkmatter.com/black-friday-fiction/black-friday-fiction-5/ Copyright © July 2015 – This Dark Matter

1 – The Opening: Breakfast

She drops the newspaper on my desk
and tells me 85%

85% of what?
I ask

------------------------------

She drops the newspaper on my kitchen table
and tells me 85%

Between the coffee and the half and half I have left out
and the crumbs from my toast – pumpernickel rye with butter

An article from the Wall Street Journal or some other
reputable news source

85% of what?
I ask

Over 1/4 of the universe
she says, it’s dark matter

I thought you just said 85%
I say

Doesn’t matter – it’s all dark matter
she says

How do we know this?
I ask

Doesn’t matter
she tells me, they’re coming together
1 mile beneath the earth

Who?
I ask

The scientists
she tells me, they’re coming together
to conduct experiments
for 300 days

they will congregate
1 mile beneath the earth
in South Dakota
the Black Hills
she tells me

Hiding from Cosmic Rays
these scholars will study and chant
and pray and search
for some proof of this Dark Matter

Burning incense
with vows of silence and secrecy
in a trance-like state
meditating
on the gravitational pull

It brings things together
she says, it’s like the glue of the Universe

And then what?
I ask

And then you can finish
your pumpernickel toast
she tells me


2 – The Conjuring: Invitation

I see you looking over your shoulders
what were you doing out there in South Dakota

1 mile below those snow capped
Black Hills, burning incense

Chanting the names of your idols
over and over –

Darwin, Dawkins
Hawking, Voltaire

In a trance-like state
for three hundred days they’ve gathered

These mystic priests of science
hiding from cosmic rays

Shooting out gamma rays
to find this elusive stuff

This Dark Matter
what is this stuff that makes up

More than 85% of our known universe?
they haven’t got a clue

But now they’re saying it’s destroying itself
inside the Milky Way’s core

This has now become urgent!


3 – The Gathering: Banquet

How would you describe your sense of vision to someone who cannot see?
How would you explain the Grand Canyon to a blind man?
How would you describe the taste of a Granny Smith sour apple
to a person without a tongue, or a cappuccino to someone who cannot taste?
That sensation … how would you describe Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique
or Brian Eno’s Ascent to a deaf man?

What are they doing down there?

That sensation … to feel, to smell, the scent of fresh bread
or an apple pie cooling in a window sill.
How would you describe that
to a person who cannot –
who cannot?

What are they doing down there?

You can see them working feverishly in the shadows of their gamma rays
hiding from all light and cosmic rays and other high energy particles
and weakly interacting massive particles – we only know they’re there
by measuring the gravity released, absolved, acquit, annul, void

What are they doing down there?

Dispersed, displaced, relegate,
supersede, supplant, unmake,
usurp, uncrown, exiled, banished, deposed,
it’s keeping me up at night
I cannot sleep – this dark matter is affecting me
this dark matter – it has affected me …

You can see the silhouettes of these mystics
dressed in robes with cokebottle lenses
in a trance chanting to their gods
these monks of science in white labcoats and pocket protectors
stuffed with a cargo of pens and mechanical pencils, a sliderule

Clutching scientific calculators and iPads
reams of yellow legal paper
with calculations and inscriptions
searching for proof of this dark matter
proof of their very existence – of their soul
and of God himself

What are they doing down there?

These pujaris ripping off their clothing
dancing to the firepit and to the drums
and to the gravity
bringing everything together
existence and consciousness and other worlds
and otherworldliness

In vows of celibacy
in prayer and meditation
in study and in trance
burning, burning, testing procedures and hypotheses
experiments and research
burning and burning the midnight oil
that fragrant incense

How would you describe that smell to someone who wasn’t there
to someone who could not smell
who did not have the ability
olfactory system gone
no taste, no scent
those shadows bouncing off the stone wall
deep within the cave

1 mile beneath the earth
the snow capped Black Hills of South Dakota
how would you describe this scene
to those who cannot see
to those who cannot discern
the colors, the shadows
bouncing off each other

What are they doing down there?

The orange light, the fires
the green flames, the blue core
the white, the hellish red
those men of science
these mystic bodhisattvas
these priests of Algebra and of quantum theory
these searchers

How would you describe this scene to those who were not there
to those who cannot feel the immensity of the universe
of the gravitational pull
of the longing
of the pull of the dance
and the rhythm and the chanting

How would you describe this scene to those who cannot feel
who cannot know that there is something else out there
that there is something beyond the gravity
beyond what we know

Only 15% of the universe is not dark matter, for Shiva’s sake
for the wrath of Ganesh –
oh holy Krishna, oh mighty Vishnu
how can we describe this scene to those
who were not there
and do you think that these 5 senses
are the only ones?

What are they —


4 – The Closing: Maintenance

Please don’t forget
she tells me, to clean up the crumbs
from your pumpernickel toast
and kisses me
on the forehead

Death Is Like a River

Originally published in Perfume River Poetry Review – Issue 3: Night Terrors, Copyright © 2015 – Tourane Poetry Press

I

Death is like a river, the color of burgundy wine

flowing down the mountain toward the ocean, vast and wide

so much potential

Pinewood boxes carry dead soldiers

convoys of ships going down

never to be realized, planted

fruits of their achievements

There’s a revival happening right now

in my living room, daughter singing the blues

carving pumpkins – O Death, do your worst!

Ghosts of our past haunt our present

howling rattling chains we ignore

these ghosts move through our lives unnoticed

O Death, you visit me each morning, embrace me at night

the dew on the grass soaks through my stockings, mud clings to my knees

Your boney fingers embrace my neck

tighten around my throat

this honeymoon of death

this funeral of eternity

this sleep

He comes to us when we do not expect him

this black-cloaked phantasm

he comes when we aren’t ready

and visits our loved ones

I carve your white skull

empty it of its contents

light a candle to shine

from your eyes

II

So much potential wasted

young men and women returning

in a pinewood boat, sailing

that burgundy river

draped with a flag

It’s getting colder these nights

I walked by two people

on the street holding a sign

on my way to the theater

You can go deeper into the unknown if you choose

turning back from what is safe and comfortable into something else

I saw Anthony Bourdain kill a goat on TV last night

suffocated under watchful eye of the tribal king

to keep in the blood

Ignore it, pretend it does not exist

Death comes when it comes

it does not know fair

it does not have principles

or ethics

You don’t have to go to Syria or Afghanistan

you can sit by a parking structure, hold a cardboard sign

meet Death there too

Death does not discriminate

that cold chill lurks, returning

into nothingness

Palm Springs Sonnet

Originally published in Tule Review, Fall 2013 – Copyright © October 2013, Sacramento Poetry Center Press

Quest for the Holy Grail: The Sunrise in

Palm Springs, it seems so odd to me, by the

time 8 AM rolls around it feels like

one o’clock in the afternoon – All the

sun dresses and short skirts, low cut blouses

open-toed sandals and bare white ankles

I’m blinded by the sunlight streaking be-

hind the mountain range, rises so quickly

placing shadows in the queerest angles –

Suddenly the manicured lawn becomes a

dry and empty desert choked of any

moisture, save what they can steal from the north

to keep those golf courses green, the Devil

speaks in backward rhymes, It’s on the level

Foxtrot

Originally published in Tule Review, Fall 2013 – Copyright © October 2013, Sacramento Poetry Center Press

And in those days Dad would pile us in

the back of the green Volare and we’d

take the drive up 880, past Freemont and Newark

and into Oakland, to the Coliseum

to watch the A’s – Ricky Henderson

stealing his 100^th base, Dennis Eckersley

recording his 45^th save, record setting years –

Dave Stewart striking out the side,

Dave Kingman hitting another home run,

Billy Martin getting tossed by the umps –

           one

                      more

                                 time

and the return of Reggie Jackson …

and the only character bigger than them

was Dad, buying us hotdogs and soda-pop,

crackerjack and popcorn, pennants and programs,

talkin’ bout Rollie Fingers and Catfish Hunter,

and how Mom danced the foxtrot with Vida Blue

This Glass and Aluminum Structure

There’s a novel, and it’s written in the present
tense so as to propel the action forward

Put the reader into the scene – but it’s a
memoir, meaning the events have already happened

The people have already changed, that moment

of epiphany has already occurred

And so those characters aren’t even the same

people anymore, they’re more like

Shadows of the characters in this novel –

and those places aren’t the same

As they were back then either – new

roads have been built, some have been improved

And widened, sidewalks have been added

freeway onramps have been built

The population has changed demographically –
the airport has been improved

New industries now thrive where

before they were not even imagined

Except maybe in sci-fi magazines
from the 1950’s, and in dreams …

And people fly to locations and to different
cities from this glass and aluminum

Structure as they go way up high
in the clouds, travelling at great velocity

So that in relation to people still

on the ground they are not the same

People anymore, they’ve changed –

that moment of discovery