THE ENIGMA OF TIME IN VERSE: PART TWO
Dear Friends, having introduced ‘The Enigma of Time in Verse’ in Part One, along with few selected poetic quotes, I now mention what some of the important Philosophers thought about Time down the past centuries. But while doing so, I have tried my best to simplify some of those early concepts for better understanding and appreciation of my readers. If you like it, kindly re-post the poem. Thanks,  – Raj Nandy of New Delhi.

          THE ENIGMA OF TIME IN VERSE : PART TWO
   I commence by quoting Sonnet 60 of Shakespeare about Time,
   Hoping to seek some blessings for this Part Two composition of
   mine!
“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
  So do our minutes hasten to their end;
  Each changing place with that which goes before,
  In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
  Nativity, once in the main of light,
  Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,
  Crooked elipses ’gainst his glory fight,
  And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
  Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
  And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
  Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
  And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
  And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.”

              PHILOSOPHY OF TIME
Animals are said to live in a continuous present,
Since they have no temporal distinction of past, future,
or the present.
But our consciousness of time, becomes the most
distinguishing feature of mankind.
Though we are mostly obsessed with objective time, -
As the rotation of our Earth separates day from night.
With the swing of the pendulum and the ticking of clocks,
Which regulates our movements, while we try to beat the clock!
But the ancient theologians and philosophers of India and
Greece,
Who were among the first to ponder about the true nature
of all things,
Had wondered about the subjective nature of time;
Was time linear or cyclic, was time endless or finite?

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS ON TIME:
I begin with Heraclitus, the Pre-Socratic philosopher of 6th Century BC born in Ephesus.
He claimed that everything around us, is in a constant state of change and flux.
You cannot step into the same river twice Heraclitus had claimed,
Since water keeps flowing down the river all the while and never
remains the same.
This flow and change in Nature is a process which is ceaseless.
The only thing which remains permanent is impermanence!
Here is a quote from poet Shelley reflecting the same idea:
“World on world are rolling ever
  From creation to decay
  Like the bubbles on a river
  Sparkling, bursting, borne away.”

Now Heraclitus was refuted by Parmenides, born in the Greek colony of Elea,
On the western coast of Southern Italy, as his contemporary.
Parmenides said that our senses deceive us, since all changes are mere illusory!
True reality was only eternal and unchanging ‘Being’, which was both indivisible and continuous - filling up all space.
Zeno, a pupil of Parmenides, through his famous ‘Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise’ had shown, that when the tortoise was given a head start,
Swift footed Achilles could never catch up with the tortoise,
Since the space between the two were infinitely divisible, resulting in the impossibility of movement and change in motion!
Now the Greeks were never comfortable with the Concept of Infinity.
They preferred to view the universe as continuous existing ‘Being’.  
However, unlike Heraclitus’ ‘world of change and flux’,
Both Parmenides and Zeno have presented us, with a static unchanging universe!
Thus from the above examples it becomes easy for us to derive,  
How those Ancient Greeks had viewed Time.
Time has been viewed as a forward moving changing entity;
And also as an illusory, continuous and indivisible Being!
To clarify this further I quote Bertrand Russell from his ‘History of Western Philosophy’;
“Creation out of nothing, which was taught in the Old Testament, was an idea wholly foreign to Greek philosophy. When Plato speaks of creation, he imagines a primitive matter, to which God gives form as an artificer.”

PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON TIME:
For Plato, time was created by the Creator at the same instance when he had fashioned the heavens.
But Plato was more interested to contemplate on things which lay
beyond the sway of time and remained unchangeable and eternal;
Like absolute Truth, absolute Justice, the absolute form of Good and Beauty;
Which were eternal and unchangeable like the ‘Platonic Forms’, and were beyond the realm of Time as true reality.
Plato’s pupil Aristotle was the first Greek philosophers to contemplate on reality inside time, and provide a proper definition as we get to see.
He said, “Time is the number of movement in respect to before and after” - as a part of reality.
To measure time numerically, we must have a ‘before’ and an ‘after’, and also notice the difference objectively.
Therefore, time here becomes the change which we see and experience.
Time takes on a linear motion moving from the past to the present;
And to the unknown future like a moving arrow travelling straight.
Aristotle had developed a four step process to understand everything inside of Time and within human experience:
(a) Observe the world using our senses,
(b) Apply logical rules to these observations,
(c) To go back and consult past authorities, if your logic agrees with their logic,
(d) Then only you can come to a logical conclusion.

No wonder in our modern times, experiments conducted by the LDC or the Large Hadron Collider, located 100m underground near the French-Swiss border,
By going back in time simulates the ‘Big Bang’ conditions, that moment of our universe’s first creation.
The scientists thereby, study the evolution of our universe with time, which  resulted in the  finding of the Higgs Boson !  (On 4thJuly 2012)

NOTES :  All elementary particles interacting with the Higg's Field & obtain Mass, excepting for photons & gluons which do not interact with this field. Mass-less photons can travel at the
speed of light with a mind boggling 186,000 miles per second! Now this LDC is a Particle Accelerator 27 kms long ring-shaped tunnel, made mostly of superconducting magnets, inside which two high-energy particle beams are made to travel close to the speed of light in opposite directions, and the shower of particles resulting from the collision is closely examined, presuming that these similar shower of particles must have been produced at the time of the ‘Big Bang’ some 13.8 million years ago, at the time of Creation! Sound like fiction? Well, Prof. Peter Higgs got the Noble Prize for Physics, for locating the particle called ‘Higgs Boson’ among those shower of particles, on 10th Dec. 2013.

NOW TO LIGHTEN UP MY READERS MIND, FEW TIME QUOTE I NOW PROVIDE :

“TIME WASTES OUR BODIES AND OUR WITS,
  BUT WE WASTE TIME, SO WE ARE QUITS!” – Anonymus.

‘Time is a great Teacher, but unfortunately it kills its Pupils!’ – HL Berlioz

“Lost , yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two
   golden hours,
   Each set with sixty diamond minutes.
   No reward is offered, for they are gone forever!” – Horace Mann


PLOTINUS & ST. AUGUSTINE ON TIME:
Now getting back to our Philosophy of Time, there was Plotinus of the 3rd Century AD,
The founder of the mystical Neo-Platonic School of Philosophy.
He had followed Plato’s basic concept of Time as “the moving image of eternity.”
Mystic Plotinus tried to synthesize both Aristotle and Plato by saying that the entire process of cosmic creation,
Flows out of the ONE  through a series of emanation!
This ONE gave rise to the ‘Divine Mind’ which he called the ‘Realm of Intelligence’ and is an aspect of reality,
When everything is understood in terms of Platonic Forms of Truth, Justice, the Good, and Beauty.
However, the later Christian theologians had interpreted this ONE of Plotinus, -
As the Christian God, the Divine Creator of the Universe.
For God is eternal, in the sense of being timeless, in God there is no before or after, but only a timeless present.

Now this lead St. Augustine, to formulate a very admirable relativistic theory of Time!
St. Augustine, the greatest constructive teacher of the Early Christian Church, had written in Book XI of his ‘Confessions’ during  5th century AD, -
His thoughts about the enigma of Time which had perplexed the Greek philosophers of earlier centuries.
To simplify St. Augustine’s thoughts, I now paraphrase for the sake of clarity.
Time can only be measured while it is passing, yet there is time past, and time future in reality.
To avoid these contradictions he says that past and future can only be thought of as present: ‘past’ must be identified with memory, and ‘future’ with expectation.
Since memory and expectation being both present facts, there is no contradiction.  
“The present of things past is memory, the present of things present is sight; and the present of things future is expectation,” - wrote St. Augustine.

This subjective notion of time led St. Augustine to anticipate Rene Descartes the French philosopher the 17th Century,
Who proclaimed “Cogito, ergo sum” in Latin, meaning “I think, therefore I am”, and is regarded as the Father of Modern Philosophy.

Now cutting a long story short I come to Sir Isaac Newton, well known for his Laws of Motion and Gravity.
Newton speaks of ‘Absolute Time’ which exists independently, flowing at a consistent pace throughout the universe, which can only be understood mathematically.
Newton’s ‘Absolute Time’ had remained as the dominant concept till the  early years of the 20th Century.
When Albert Einstein formulated ‘Theory of Space-time’ along with his Special and General Theory of Relativity.

Now the German philosopher Leibniz during 17th century, had challenged Newton with his anti-realist theory of time.
Leibniz claimed that time was only a convenient intellectual concept, that enables to sequence and compare happening of events.
There must be objects with which time can interact or relate to as ‘Relational Time’ he had felt.
Ernst Mach, like Leibniz towards the end of 19th Century, said that even if it was not obvious what time and space was relative to,
Then they were still relative to the ‘fixed stars’ i.e. the bulk of matter in the universe.

CONCEPT OF TIME AS 'SPECIOUS PRESENT' :
During late 19th century, Robert Kelley introduced the concept of ‘spacious present’, which was the most recent part of the past.
Psychologist and philosopher William James developed this idea further by describing it as ‘’the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible’’
William James also introduced the term “stream of consciousness” into literature as a method of narration,
That described happenings in the flow of thought in the mind of the characters, - likened to an internal monologue!
This literary technique was later used by James Joyce in his famous novel ‘Ulysses’.

TIME CONCEIVED AS DURATION: HENRI BERGSON (1859 -1941)
Next I come to one of my favourite philosopher the French born Henri Bergson.
The Nobel Laureate and author of ‘Time and Free Will’ and ‘Creative Evolution’.
Will Durant in his ‘Story of Philosophy’ says Bergson was ‘the David destined to slay the Goliath of materialism.’
It was Bergson’s ‘Elan Vital’ that life force and impelling urge, Which makes us grow and transforms this wandering planet into a theatre of unending creation.
For Bergson, time is as fundamental as space; and it is time that holds the essence of life, and perhaps of all reality.
Time is an accumulation, a growth, a duration, where “duration is the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and which swells as it advances.
The past in its entirety is prolonged into the present and abides there actual and acting.
Duration means that the past endures, that nothing is lost.
Though we think with only a small part of our past; but it is with our entire past that we desire, will, and act.”
“Since time is an accumulation, the future can never be the same as the past, -
For a new accumulation arises at every step, and change is far more radical than we suppose…the geometric predictability of all things, Which is the goal of a mechanistic science, is only a delusion and a dream!”  
Bergson goes on in his compelling lyrical style:            
“For a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature,
to mature is to go on creating one’s self endlessly. Perhaps all reality is time and duration, becoming and change.”
Bergson differed with Darwin's theory of adaptation to environment, and stated;
“Man is no passively adaptive machine, he is a focus of redirected force, a centre of creative evolution.”

Martin Heidegger, the German thinker in his ‘Being and Time’ of 1927, had said:
“We do not exist within time, but in a very real way we are time!”
Time is inseparable from human experience, since we can allow the past to exist in the present through memory;
And even allow a potential future occurrence to exist in the present due to our human ability to care, and be concerned about things.
Therefore we are not stuck in simple sequential or linear time, but can step out of it almost at will!

CONCLUDING  PART  TWO OF ENIGMA OF TIME IN VERSE
In this part I have tried to convey what the Ancient Greek Philosophers had felt about Time in a simplified way.
Also some thoughts of Medieval and Early Modern philosophers and what they had to say.
Where Sir Isaac Newton stands like a colossus with his Concept of Time, Laws of Motion, and Gravity.
Not forgetting Henri Bergson, one of my favourite philosopher, of the mid-19th and the mid-20th Century.
All through my narration I had tried to hold the interest of my readers, and also educated myself as a true knowledge seeker.
In my concluding Part Three I will cover few Modern Philosophers along with the relativistic concept of time.
Certainly not forgetting the space-time theory of our famous Albert Einstein!
Thanks for reading patiently, from Raj Nandy of New Delhi.
  *ALL COPY RIGHTS ARE WITH THE AUTHOR ONLY

.chris rea: god's great banana skin...

/ such random thoughts are a blessing, esp. after you've been walking for over 2 miles, in the cold and in the rain, with the setting sun... continually impressed by the nature of polyester clothing, how you feel the cold, but aren't cold at all, how you go back home and: you're dripping with sweat... /

the random thought?
about a saying, here's the schematic

synthetic a priori

                    4 + 6 = 10
                    IV + VI = X

                                         analytical a posteriori

which statement is true?
within the questioning parameters?
i think it's a trick question...
how else would you be able to
teach these statements and make
replica understandings of
said, statements?

(****... quickfire shots of syrupy
*****... **** me... give me the sweats,
and i'm not even constipated,
it must be the ***** doing
the magic... yeah... sober me?
doesn't like thinking...
but oddly enough, the drunk me?
pulls out philosophy,
no, not as some pretentious
high-brow interest...
   i just looked at philosophy as
a genre in literature,
nothing more)...

numbers, like letters...
or in the case of Roman numerals
(letters are numbers)...
i'm unsure whether you can arrive
at crafting them into existence
by analytical parameters,
i don't actually think
that you can conjure up numbers
from analyzing a priori,
given the ad continuum:
but... there was a point in time,
when / where: numbers weren't used...

Kant was a theist,
sorry...
  he says it plainly at the end
of his critique of pure reason...
in the transcendental methodology...
sure... he takes a "schizophrenic"
moment to write a thesis
and an antithesis on subjects like
cosmology...
but he's inclined, as i am,
counter to an atheist...
yes... god is probably a monster...
but a ******* gorgeous monster...
kinda like a femme fatale...
so what's not to like?

    but this thought didn't arrive
randomly,
and my consciousness
didn't hone in on it...
i didn't vector this thought
to an immediate conclusion...
the thought arrived,
and then: i had to make shrapnel
out of it...
the original thought was complex,
i had to make shrapnel out of it,
in order to put it back together,
so that a cognitive 3 seconds
could be rewritten in under 30 minutes
explaining, why the thought arose...

you know... when thinking
is detached from the moral (θ)-ought
you get to experience these "things"...
here's another schematic...

I + Φ (you put a key into a lock),
   Θ (you turn the key), O (the door opens),
hey presto... a free radical iota...
detached from both phi and theta...

i am free from making
a moral ought (i) or the immoral: ought (i) not?
i'm free, hence my concern for...
abstract questions...

back to the original schematic...

synthetic a priori

                    4 + 6 = 10
                    IV + VI = X

                                         analytical a posteriori

this actually has a theological
dimension,
supposing i am god...

   if i propose an analytical a priori
with a synthetic a posteriori...
well then...
             i can't change anything,
i can't actually make changes to...
with my omnipotence,
omniscience etc.
i already analyzed, a priori
the Kantian elevation to theology
comes, via me, stating...
if i analyzed the entirety of
creation...
            a priori ex nihil
(from the prior out of nothing)
how can i make a synthesis
in the a posteriori domain,
of the already existing things,
which didn't exist a priori,
since there was nothing,
and i already analyzed the potential
of nothing, and this potential
was realized as everything i would
know to exist... and i went along
with it anyway?

i'm starting to think that
the realm of analytical a priori
doesn't exist for mortals...
the gods can muse this ****-show
of a dimension over and over again...
we're more (being mortals)
synthetic a posteriori...
oh don't get me wrong,
i believe we have the capacity
to comprehend analytical a priori
but it's an analytical a- priori...
we've reached the limits
of the microscope, the telescope,
and the hadron collider...
or on our way to exhaust that...
still being left with an intact mesh of...
the orbits... summer, winter, autumn, spring...
but this thing with this schematic:

synthetic a priori

                    4 + 6 = 10
                    IV + VI = X

                                         analytical a posteriori

how can i conjure an understanding
of IV + VI = X...
analytically a priori...
when... i have no hindsight /
prior to understanding of said rubric?
well... with Roman you could say:
analytical a priori,
given the Ancient Romans already
had the letters I, V, X...
but... if you didn't have the concept
of measurements prior,
of arithmetic...
how can you analyze something...
that doesn't exist?
so... you had to synthesize a priori,
working from the letters I, V, X...
to conjure up "numbers"...
  numerals... you had to create these
numbers by a synthetic a posteriori
method...
and the 4 + 6 = 10...
        well... you analyzed the a posteriori
synthesis, and threw I, V, X out...
and began the second wave of mathematics...
and this is where, authentically...
analytical a priori comes from...
based on I (1), V (5), X (10)...
                    came IV (4), came VI (6)...
don't mathematicians treat their language
as that of or equivalent to the gods?

now... for the cultural exchange program
that i promised...

on the great British isles...
you have a variety of languages
& dialects,
i'm so sorry that the Scottish
"forgot theirs"...

but when you have something
akin to

English: red
Cymru: coch

or right... they have their Pict
Gael?

Pict Gaelic: dearg
Irish: dearg
Cornish: rudh

we'll require a second word...
what word, what words..
life!

English: life,
Cymru: bywyd
Pict Gaelic: beatha
Irish: saol
Cornish: bewnans...

back, "home"...
we also have sub-groups
in terms of linguistics...

there are the Kashubians...
and there are the Silesians,
and, there are...
the Kurpie...
akin the Welsh, the Pict,
the Ire,

and their language looks like so...
again, borrowing from
red and life...

Polak: czerń
Kashubian: czôrny...
  but that can be disputed...
why?
     czerwień is not actually
a noun, but an adjective...
a quality of being associated with red...
czerwony? that's a male
adjective...
   and the female adjective
is czerwona...
                ****...
a color has to be something...
the noun adjective that's blood...
Polak: krwawy (czerwony)
Kashubian: czerwiony
Silesian: čerwůny
ah...
   Kurpian... high polish?
Masovian?
harder to find the words...
have to use alternatives...

Kurpian: caban
Polak: tępak
Kashubian: osoł
  Silesian: yjzel...
(idiot, imbecile)

you know how hard hard it is
to find a Kurpian to Polak
translator?
i can't find one to boil down
to the examples or either
red or life,
i'm reduced to choosing other
words...
like...

   Kurpian: chwat...
Polak: chłopak
Silesian: bajtel
Kashubian: knôp...
(boy)

Kurpian: jédło
Polak: jedzenie...
Kashubian: jedzenié
alternative to Silesian:
  jadło, i.e.: it ate...
past-participle in
the verb...
let's see what the Silesians
call it...
Silesians: well.. a variation..
chlyb
godka
mietła
masa... all things you can eat...
(edible food)

only a word, like the Kurpian
word akin to kotnå
reveals that Vikings passed via "us"...
kotnå?
  an impregnated sheep...
with young...

Kurpian: łańï truń!
Polak: nie mów!
Kashubian: ni gôdac!
Silesian: ńy godka!
(don't speak!)

mind you... Kurpian translation
is hard to find...
and you almost wonder...
at the British isles...
you think, us, Polaks...
do not have sub-linguistic groups
in our ranks,
like your Welsh, your Pict,
your Irish?!
guess again...
you had them all along...
and you thought...
the Polaks were
a homogenous culture...
all this time...
primarily because our culture
wasn't multicultural...
oh but it was... but on the subtle side
of history...
mind you...
defenders of the galaxy?
i knew gamora wasn't white...
but... **** me...
even if black or hispanic...
she looked so **** attired in green...
i was thinking:
absinthe cherub, absinthe cherub...
and forgot about glorifying
Zoe Saldana in all that choc...
what?
   a green skinned chic?
                    if i can forget about
the existence of chocolate...
i'll just anything that moves...
but i knew she wasn't white...
i hate chocolate...
          give me an absinthe girl any
day of the week...
       yeah...
only the English have complex
ethnicity encompassing
a single language...
only the English...
                 like **** they are...
at least my linguistic variation
is suited to a bundle of words...
Welsh?! Gaelic?!
  completely different languages...
at least in my part of the world
all that is deviating
is a choice of variant nouns!
but then again, the English
speaking world....
        how's the new pronoun
dictum coming along?
you keeping up with...
   appeasing the new crazies?
oh... you are?!
    well... kudos and applause!

p.s. guess what happens with appeasing
the new crazies... guess...
i'll tell you...
you **** around with grammar,
some grammatical pedant will raise
his head up from the crowd and say
something like:
               what?!
and then the old crazies rise up...
and... your, ahem, little discussion
about changing the rules of grammar
to "ensure" that the language is
kept, "intact"?
      see... mm... hmm... the old crazies?
the old crazies have their own
methods...
they're of the obligation:
let my gun do the talking...
  and then...
  you get pol *** arithmetic,
of skulls...
           being counted in an abacus
of heaping up, "debris"...
         see... these new crazies
are bugging me...
  they're bugging me...
because the old crazies didn't
attack grammar,
and whatever delusion they had...
i couldn't see it...
the new crazies?
they're attacking grammar,
and the delusion they have...
is... associated with something
i can see as being self-evidently untrue...

the new crazies...
******* spinners... fakers...
    i prefer the old crazies...
at least their delusions had ambitions
to deceive in the realm of
the unseen...
       the unproved, and never to be
proven...
these new crazies...
i am supposed to speak asylum talk?!
so... society is the new asylum
with the past asylums being
abolished?!
who gave caffeine to these news
crazies?!
******* sane people's naive pandering...
while the depressed man?
hey boy... hey, hey, hey boy...
noose!
i've lost all sympathy for
the victims of a psychotic
version of a repressed P.T.S.D. example...
the mad have hijacked language,
disorientated grammar...
and... b'a'ah, b'a'ah...
                 no...
                              i'm with the old
crazies...
                    at least they're the ones
that can inflict genuine grievance...
rather this policing of restricting
     the orthodoxy of the use of language.

p.s.
i found only two paradoxes in this
world...
    schadenfreude: feeding a pleasure
from the misery of others...
as...
  finding wisdom in others' own
forsake of an antithesis of
universal application...
  mainly that, associated:
            to a self-gratifying benefit...
the joke ends within the confines
of schadenfreude...
as does passable "wisdom" attached
to instragram novelty of the "maxim"
by your wisened sages
of the selfie...
  
                  i've been among the russians,
i know what the true uber looks like...
you hitchhike...
hitchhiking? forget that?
ponzie scheme albatross thingy
of a worth of a british mensch?
    funny... a people can so easily
forget the practice of hitchhiking...
so easily: entertaining individual rights...
and: innocent until proven
guilty until some next
               teddy bundy comes along...
and then it's all: ooh! ah! woo'ah!

   you know, i don't like the cartesian
chiral dynamic,
the whole: nietzsche take...
sum ergo cogito...
          i don't like the:

innocentes quoadusque (qua esse)
                           reus....    inversion...

an innocent man might hang...
well... if you have the death penalty:
too late to regurgitate the
original statements...

but? where's the element of redemption
for the innocent man?
why are so many people captivated
by the shawshank redemption?
there's a redemption story...
   in the inverted game?
a jimmy saville walks off scot-free...

the continental model doesn't make
sense with a death penalty...
but without one?
redemption... the atlas "paradox"...
one man usually burdens the fate
of a reciprocate of the unit of one...
but not the many...

me getting laid or not getting laid
is as important to me as:
whether i know about last year's
snowfall...
*** *** ***... all that sort of
******* in the western minds...
*** *** but no children!
recreational procreation without...
any procreation... to begin with...

         i'll admit...
english humour is funny...
but schadenfreude is a borrowed term...
hence the lost in translation
element...
           the english are terrible at
appreciating if not simply applying
the original zeppelin bomb...
after a while: the english just became
annoying toy-whips
of ***** replicas...
       the english knew elevated slap-stick...
with monty python...
with fawlty towers...
          they borrowed a term like
schadenfreude and completely lost the plot...
they once, upon a time,
chanced to play a game of linguistic
comedy...
            
                 i'm pretty ******* sure
the germans relate to schadenfreude in a different
way... i'm guessing:
the deutsche are not prone to ridicule as
the english are...
               the aunglisch are prone
to ridicule out of a sentiment of spite
than out of a repose for giggles...
        
          i don't understand the german sense
of humour,
     but understanding the english attempting
to "understand" the german sense of humour
is an enigma in an enigma in a per se...

such integrated back into
the ol' continental ways...
                       kudos to the brits...
bringing back the commonwealth to stereotype
us europeans with a negative "circumstance"...
now them: ******* up to "correct"
their integration policies... for the commonwealth
peoples of the united wordly wealth of
made in china plastic toys!

     a **** among the brits has
the audacity to tell a german he's not
supposed to feel at home on these isles...
sure... and i will never feel quiet at home
in Islamabad either!
               so? equal count of hubris!
that's the only thing that ****** me about
these isles... god i love this language...
but... when you get your afghani hounds
on me to do your ***** work?!

      even though i'm not: deutsche?!
i'll ******* pretend to be deutsche!
           i'm not here to mop up your failed
integration policies...
i settled on keeping my language...
they settled on keeping their sharia,
their **** pajamas and curry...
while adamantly rejecting their language...
in order to implement their desired changes
by subverting your language...
and you gave your language on a *******
platter...
    
    by subverting your language
to accept their cultural tattoos...
  let me tell you: if a people don't respect
their own culture,
by way of god, by way of language...
and they are "integrating": without speaking
their native mutterzunge?
they're not respecting either culture...
mongrels ahoy!
   what happened to the african-h'americans
not speaking a word of african?

what will they do, ascribe themselves
to ******* scots,
left with no gaelic and more a finnegans' wake
accent gymnastics of some irvine welsh?
nae for no: some glaswegian smart-***
excess of nouns?
      
hell... they would have never built
a colliseum if they saw:
1 + 4 + 6 + 9 = 20
   i.e. I + IV + VI + IX = **
            imagine... a society where letters
worked perfectly as sounds
and as arithmetic concepts of measure.

lucky for me the roman empire never
conquered
the lands i come from...
always with the brits being...
oh so so proud having been conquered
by the romans...
what's the prize... archeological sites?!

much respect as great britain...
but... *****... please...
don't pucnh below the waist...
importing your commonwealth dogs
to mark you out among all the other
europeans like some prized asset with
an inkling into h'american affairs...
thanks to you: i'm bored of looking up
the telescope of h'american ****
with their waning cultural export
of a worthwhile entertainment of appreciating
their music.

Is it God out there in the woods tonight
Or some weird, unhallowed troll,
Uprooting trees in the scorching breeze
With a dread that shreds my soul,
The sky is glowering red like blood
For a warning, in advance,
Since ever the Hadron Collider fired
And swallowed half of France.

A planet, black as a pit of tar
Has appeared just up on high,
Has popped up out of some x-ray realm
And filled up half the sky,
The earth is teetering on the edge
Of a black hole, forged in space,
And threatening us with extinction,
What’s left of the human race.

It was all for the sake of science, so
They told us, overall,
To add to their fount of knowledge like
The new God Particle,
Though why they wanted to raise it when
There is no recompense,
As it ravages half of the planet,
What did they use for common sense?

There’s a hole down deep in the ocean that
Is swallowing half the sea,
The earth it quakes, and volcanoes
Are erupting frequently,
While we lie low in our cottage home
To the growling in the woods,
From some atavistic animal
Unwrapped from its hellish shrouds.

The ones who unleashed this savage beast
Have all been swallowed whole,
Are floating in some dimension in
Their Hadron hidey-hole,
We should have had them arrested long
Before they hatched their plot,
Lined them up with their arrogance,
Their science, and had them shot!

David Lewis Paget

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall
I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."
                    - Matthew the Apostle

I
Seventy-seven bottles of gin
lie in the guts of sensuous men;
seventy-seven *I forgive you's dissolve
in a fanatical mind's resolve.

II
What offence occurred under Saint Constantine's priggish eye?
Was it specious as a Samian's thigh?
Or Sumerians receiving alien diplomats?
Maybe somewhere far under Moscow Putin's massing cloning vats...

III
Whatever discursive and belligerent milieu
church authority finds most tried and true
seems to be the most important decider
in the future of things like the Large Hadron Collider.
Perhaps, unfoundedly, they find it funny that Higgs
(though it seems much like calling the Liberal Party "Whigs")
is a name shared by a man and a theoretical particle
(though it be libelous in any journalist's article),
and thus label similar advancements as "blasphemous".
I guess that this is what it is: believing just because.

IV
Who can know blasphemy from piousness?
Maybe all Luther did was obfuscate a prior mess.

V
Seventy-seven palm-branch-adorned, donkey-riding kings:
an automatic-ring-making-machine beleaguering proselyte rings.

the ashes of ancient
alchemical martyrs glow
in the great tunnels
of Hadron, whizzing
faster than time
at the behest of man,
the measurer of all things
including whether things
are worth measuring or not

a sordid joke on the great minds
that sorted the mystery out
long before quantum physicists
crawled out from under
the church’s labyrinth
of insulting confabulations
and pillaged the fortunes of others
to build the great rings

shall we bow to the new God?
**** your experience, I’ll prove you wrong
He bellows from the podium built from
the finest endangered trees
and polished with the spit of
all who disagree, and yet

it’s truth in action
the 9mm’s omniscient song
sung across this suffering world:
***** with me, and you’ll discover the truth

I am a Hadron Collider,
Colliding my life particles together
deducing the common denominators,
finding the parts that define me.

String Theory. A theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one dimensional objects called strings. In string theory, the multiverse is an idea in which our universe is not the only one; many universes exist parallel to each other where all possibility has potential as the universes are theorized to be infinite.

When I heard this for the first time, I imagined us all on this giant carousel, spinning in the infinite, to the ***** music of fate.

And the possibility was sweet, like cotton candy. And the potential seemed to rise like tidal waves and I was filled with joy for the other versions of myself doing great things out there somewhere.

Writing lullabies to star children. Kissing ink blotches on to skin like paper. Replacing the light bulb in the moon. Dreaming love into reality.

And I began to imagine the strings stretched and rotating, propeller like, in a theoretical game of double dutch. Fighting back my desire to move too quickly.  Feeling my body sway and rushing in too soon.

And I was sad for all of the versions of me that are struggling. Failing to see the beauty in the gutter. Walking alone in the rain... still. Writing quarky signs on information superhighway off ramps, like:

Quantum Mechanic.
Will tune your Hadron Collider
for food.

And I began to remember the geometrical string patterns we would draw on graph paper in math class. And knowing somehow, even then, that they stood like a veve for infinite possibility. And I began to wonder what would happen if I'd chosen differently at key moments in my life. The infinite outcomes circling like ashes falling down.

Would I be bigger? Smarter? Stronger? Easier to Love?

And the web began to stretch until it was bigger than my simple mind.

And I began to wonder at the insignificant moments. The moments overlooked. And I began to toy with the possibility that our fate is truly ******* in these moments. It was these choices that determine how easy we are to love. And how it would unfold into a chess match of a million different decisions until it was so far out of reach that it was painful to consider.

And these strings, interwoven and bundled “bigger than the sky”. Marionette strings to just as many possibilities as stars. Or more.

A universe where these strings are ropes binding sails to boats and time is the ocean.
A universe where music is medicine and I could sing your broken heart back to hope.
A universe where we could leap from place to place so I could find my young self and say,
“Listen. Don't try so hard. It gets better. And you become so much cooler. And though it seems so important now, it isn't. And guard your heart a little more than you do. And a little less.”

A universe where touch is talk. And to dare is normal. And our hearts are fluent in every language.

And then the notion of the strings as veins. Veins that form a complex system in a beautiful body of flesh and possibility and star dust so much greater than ours. With limbs and hands and heart and eyes and tongue and soul. And this body of possibility is not the only one. Other possibilities are forming other bodies. And this greater celestial body is interacting with other bodies comprised of infinite possibility all making decisions at light speed which will cause it all to reverse or go round again.

And in this framework.

We are you.
And he and I are we.
And once is always.
And never is nothing.
And I am everything.

And we are all the same celestial body.
Made from the same strings.
The same gift of possibility.

We are the carousel.
And anything, anything is possible.

And through it all. All I can do is wonder how...

How do I get back to the version of me where you didn't leave.

THE QUIRK OF THE  QUARK

(FOR SOMETHING HAVING NO EMPIRICAL SENSORY DERIVED QUALITY IT  
SURE IS ONE HELL OF A PASSION KILLER!

In bed
(between the sheets at last)    

I stroke your breast
with excited fingertips

ask you
“What ya reading Hon? ”

Big mistake!

“’bout Quarks! ”

“Quarks? ”

“You know subatomic particles...duh! ”

“...the irreducible building blocks of
the universe! ”

“Ahhh! ”
Your ****** comes alive
has a mind of its own.

I come
(from a generation)    

where protons, neutrons & electrons

were just
a lot of

coloured *****
hanging from a ceiling

or the stuff
of badly drawn diagrams.

Death by boredom
in a cold Science class
on a wintry morning.

“Unlike previously known particles
a Quark
(rhymes with Cork)    

has only a partial
Pos.  or   Neg.
electrical charge.

“I see! ” I say
(not seeing) .

“They are bound
in families of 3...”

She tells me.

“Really? ”

I interrupt her
but she interrupts my interruption.

“...to form protons & neutrons! ”

She continues on
in a hectoring lecturing tone.

“These triplets
(are you with me?)    ”

“Yes...yes! ”
(I lie)    

“...we call hadrons.”

She absentmindedly
strokes my *******

for(I guess)    
...emphasis.

I become positively
...charged.

“The pairing of a quark
with an anti-quark
of the same colour
is known as a

Neson.”

I can feel my mind
freezing over.

She just skates over it
with a knife-blade intellect.  

Again I grin & feign
an interest.
“So now...”
She continues in full spate.

I drown in her drone.

“The indivisible
constituents of matter

appear to be

the six what we call flavours of
Quarks.”

“Oh, and...six other kind of particles
known as

Leptons.”

I prop imaginary matchsticks
under my real eyelids.

“The electron
(by this time I have lost my *******)    

the Muon
(I feel like a *****)    

& the Lau
(I can’t sink any lower)    

each with its own
Neutrino.”

My eyes glaze
over.

“Now, according to Quantum Field Theory
all forces

between
particles

are mediated
by force carrying particles

called...called

Gauge Bosons! ”

My mind
goes into meltdown.

“One of these
(the Gluon)    
is responsible
for holding Quarks
together.”

“I see...I see! ”
I consider thoughtfully

‘though I
don’t.

“The physicist
who postulated

the existence of a
Quark...”

(******* that
Murray Gell -Mann)    

“...obviously liked a laugh
giving them the nonsense name of
Quark! ”

“And oh...on a whim
described them

as flavours & colours! ”

“Quarks...! ” I ruminate
(in an interior monologue)  
are passion killers
especially the details.

She laughs.
So I – laugh.

“Ha ha! ”
(** hum) .

Brought back to life
by the kiss of humour

I come out of
deep freeze.

Warming now
to her

subject

she informs me

“Each flavour of
Quark

comes in
3 colours! ”

“Horray for the red green & blue! ”

I holler.

She glowers.

I smile stupidly and sheepishly.

“Each hadron
(remember ‘em?)    ”

“Yes, I remember
I had one! ”

I mumble
& mutter

but it’s lost
on her.

My *******’s had it.
It’s more an R.I.P!

She’s blinding me
with Science.

“And what... pray tell...? ”

I dare to ask
a question.

“...are the 6 flavours of Quarks? ”

“Why..! ”

She positively beams
delighted at my interest.

“UP.

DOWN.

STRANGE.

CHARMED.

BOTTOM
(OR BEAUTY) .

TOP
(OR TRUTH) .”

“Really? ”

“Really! ”

“Why...I’ll be a...why
of course I shoulda guessed! ”

I stroke the beauty
of her bottom

(for comfort
rather than any ****** interest) .

“Protons have...”

She drones on and on despite my hand’s pleading.

“2 UP Quarks &
1 DOWN.”

“Oh lucky them! ”
I think
but only in my mind.

“...whose electrical charges combine
to give them a + 1.”

“Neutrons
(on the other hand)    
Are you listening? “

“Yes Mam...I am! ”

“...are made up of
1 UP
Quark
&
2 DOWN! ”

“...which accounts for
its neutral charge.! ”

“Right! ”
“Right? ”

My mind has hit
a brick wall.

I can’t go on.

“Oh, love...
Am I boring you? ”

“Not at all! No! Not at all! ”

I doth protest
too much.

I feel like
four flavours of Quarks
(you know the sort)    

STRANGE, CHARMED(I’m sure!)    
BOTTOM & TOPS

that existing for only
an infinitesimal fraction of a second can only be seen
in those self-annihilating collisions that occur when
protons and anti-protons are accelerated to speeds

approaching the speed of light
in a particle accelerator.

But in a hundredth of a billionth of a billionth of a second
I blinked

...& missed it.
**** that
Murray Gell-Mann

...she’s fallen asleep

Leaving me
with a revived *******

glowing lonely
in the dark.

Quarks
...****!

I design a tee-shirt in my mind.

“Ha ha! ”

“What...! ” suddenly you
awake...laugh

as I imagine
a Quark

would.

“April Fool! ”
You scream.

“I learnt it all off by heart! ”

“By rote
...joke? ”

“But it’s not April Fool!
It’s the middle of February! ”

“Yes but...if I had waited
for April Fool’s Day

You would have known
I was having you on! ”

You somehow
logic.

“Oh, come
here! ” you say.

“And let me give you a hand
with that! ”

“Quark! ”
I moan.

I’m at an (outdoor) dinner, with Peter, some of his doctoral-student friends, professors and their spouses, to kick-off the Fall semester and Peter’s second year in the doctoral program.

“So, what impressions did you take away from your time at the Large Hadron Collider?”
A 60-ish professor asked Peter. In this setting, as a student pursuing his doctorate, Peter’s comments will probably be noted and there’s a watching anticipation.

Peter is a tall, pale, scraggy, 25-year-old with unruly, deep-cove-blue, almost-black hair. Tonight, he’s dressed in a brown, distressed Italian lambskin leather blazer that I got him in Paris, as a fall semester present and his usual, dark, neutral shades of brown. To break those sleepy colors up I also gave him a soft-caramel-brown tie, inlaid with tiny, yellow, rubber ducks.  

“Two impressions, really,” Peter begins, “First, the Higgs Boson particle was discovered a decade ago - but since then we haven’t seen any notable results - the particles we expected, when we expected them. Of course, “no results” is an important part of the scientific process,” he continued, “and those researchers still deserve their doctorates, but it isn’t ****, and it won’t win any Nobel prizes.” He has the room’s attention.

“Secondly,” he says, looking around for reassuring eye-contact, “experimental particle physics is a very expensive business.” This observation generates nods, toasts and laughter all around.

When the reaction dies down, he gets another question.
“Why do you think we aren’t seeing better results?” another professor asks him.

“I think the problem,” Peter twists his head as he turns serious and begins his reply - and by the way, he looks adorable in the soft light of the dancing Japanese lanterns - “is the lag between the theories and our ability to experiment. It takes so long to build a collider, that theories out-evolve them. The apparatuses we have now - like the Hadron Collider - were designed based on theories from 30 years ago.” Again, there are nods and thoughtful looks before the professors move their questioning to the next student.

Later, we’re in the common room of my dorm suite, huddled together, talking hushedly on an overstuffed loveseat while others watch TV or read. “OH!” I say, still in a whisper voice, like I’ve just remembered something interesting, “You know what I heard - about the doctoral physics program?”

“What?” Peter says, I have his unblinking attention now. After all, I was talking with professors and their wives and shards of information are precious, not unlike atom particles, so he’s openly curious, his head tilted in focus.

“I was told, I say slowly and earnestly, “by a reliable source,” I begin playing with one of his shirt buttons, “that doctoral students,” I pause for maximum effect, to indicate this is important, “have equipment that’s 25 to 30 years OLD - outDATED equipment..”

He’s on to me now, and he starts to lean into me and grin. “that might not be able to get the JOB done!” I finished, busting out laughing as he caught my underarms with tickle fingers. I shrieked with delight at my own joke and his reaction.

“We’ll SEE about THAT!” He says while playing my ribs like accordions, producing newer and louder squeals and mutual giggles.

“Hey!” Anna said, turning as she paused her “Better Call Saul” finale.
“Get a ROOM!” Leong suggested, sarcastically, in mid-popcorn scoop.
Lisa eyed us annoyedly over her Chemistry book.
Sophy rolled her eyes, smiling and blood-thirsty Sunny barked “Get ‘er!”

We were in love, successful, and happy,
We had a graphic novel series and a hit CD.

We did everything together, I stood tall beside her,
Then some insecure scientist turned on their LARGE particle collider.

Right was down, and down was blue, and blue was east,
Now she's married to another man, and I got no teeth.

So there’s a girl across the street
A girl to whom he’s grown accrete
A girl he’s just to scared to greet
But yet still he sits and hopes

You see she’s in love with Darren
However Darren’s in love with Karen
And Karen sits and stares at Bob, who’s probably gay, probably not,
But still he drools over Linda,
Who’s stare is blank and barren,
Pointed at the anti-nerd, football loving, guru Darren.

Yes it’s really that simple,
Forget love triangle, more love enneadecagon,
Gone,
That reminds him, as it hits his head like a hadron,
Gone,
Are his hopes of him and the girl across the street.

Her features to him, were long developed similes,
They came to his brain, seamlessly, chemically,
Of course he’s never express these feelings formally,
But to him they acted as a soothing love remedy.

Her eyes were golden like caramelised sugar,
Or the enticing qualities of slowly melting butter,
Each eye, a galaxy waiting to be discovered,
And yes he means the chocolate bar.

Her hair is crimson like strawberry laces,
Which reminds him of the disadvantages of having braces,
But he braces himself as though it’s his duty,
Braces himself for an overwhelming amount of beauty.

She talks to him about all the awful things that guys do,
She then says she wishes that more guys were like you,
She says she wants that guy to show up this year,
But what she doesn’t see, is that that he’s standing right here.

So there’s a guy across the street
A guy to whom she’s grown accrete
A guy she’s just to scared to greet
But yet still she sits and hopes

You see he’s in love with her neighbour,
A chore that she knows can be a labour,
Yet she knows she can be the saviour,
Because she is even greater

So one day to no surprise, he’s looking out with eager eyes, they lock eyes, butterflies, quite surprised, more butterflies, they remain like that til sunrise, emotions start to normalise, then fluctuate because of those **** butterflies.

So there’s a girl across the street
A girl to whom he’s grown accrete
A girl he wasn’t scared to meet
And now they live and bond

Because that girls in love with Darren,
However Darren’s in love with Karen,
But who cares,
They have each other for the rest of their days

And beyond.

i'm staring at the computer like i
usually do,
not doing anything to it
just sitting there.
staring at it.
depressed
more that depressed, i'm anxious
and nauseous.
i haven't eaten anything in three or
four days
i haven't slept more than two hours a night
for a whole week
i go to work, my job as a sign holder,
and i read a book
or stare off into space
trying to fight my thoughts, attempting
to remain with my mind in a void.
when i'm not at work
i drink water
and i stare at my computer screen.
well, these staring contests can last hours
hours and hours, all day if i'm lucky.
without a thought.
thoughts destroy,
thoughts are evil.
i do not like thinking.
i don't like thinking because i ******
everything up recently,
i won't bore you with the details,
but i can't shake the feeling that i found
a hole in time-space
i slipped through that hole into another
universe
in which my life is ****
in which my friends don't talk to me
in which going to work is the only time
when i can have peace from myself.
it's all completely backwards.
it's a weird universe, though not
that weird.
everything else is normal.
the only
difference
is my unhappiness. but that's a big
difference.
i'm not all too sure how i got here. one
minute i'm drunk
the next minute i'm in this other
dimension. (i've got this
theory that the small
change
is because the universes were so close to
each other,
so physically close (as far as d.d. is
concerned) in fact
that they pushed into each other for a
split second,
imagine a vinn diagram,
and after that small point on the cube that
is our universe,
they intersected and were exactly the same
but just for an instant,
and when these coiled arms of the 11th
dimension moved apart,
i was pulled back into the wrong dimension.
the other matt from this dimension (the one
i'm currently in,
where my life is ****)
got extradited back into the one
I'M originally from
(the one where my life is awesome)
i don't know.
maybe he wished for that to happen.
he wished 'my life ***** so bad, why
can't i trade places with a me from
a d.d.?
and he got his wish,
the ******* *******.)
it's like a dream, lemme tell you, a
nightmare actually.
y'know how in dreams you have this constant
feeling that
nothing is quite right,
but you push that away and
continue with your business?
it's this tiny inkling that "hmm, could
this be a dream?"
but you ignore it and continue catching
those ducks,
trying to catch those ducks,
you don't know why why these ducks are so
important,
but you've gotta get 'em
and you've gotta put 'em in a basket
problem is they keep hopping out of the
basket
and running away,
SO YOU GOTTA KEEP CATCHING 'EM ****.
anyway,
this dream is kind of like that
but actually its a lot different.
in this dream
i'm living a life that *****
i don't know how i got here
and i've got this dread that follows me
that when i get the chance, i'm not going
to be able to stop myself,
i'm just going to die.
it follows me everywhere,
and i know that as soon
as i let my guard
down
i'm gonna jump in front
of a car while at work.
i'm gonna down both bottles of my pills.
i'm gonna take that knife while
i'm making guacamole
and slash my wrists
and run out into the night
and leap into that creek
and i'm going to **** in water
until i drown
bleeding
there in the creek.
that's not all.
i keep losing time.
i'm falling through the
th dimension at an alarming rate,
this has of course been happening
for a long time,
not just after i slipped through
into another universe.
this has been happening my whole life.
one minute i'm doing something
the next minute i'm doing something else
but i get the sense of the time in between
but i don't know what happened for sure.
the jumps started out huge
and continued shrinking,
like some sort of reverse big-bang
is carrying me along,
i've got whole weeks and months
that i don't remember,
whole years in fact,
that seemed to speed by or have sped by.
time jumps, i don't remember
those times, but i know they happened,
and i've got a sense of it,
but i don't know for sure.
anyway, the jumps have shrunk down.
but now they're more obvious,
now that they're smaller.
so i'll be sitting here staring
at the computer
as usual
and suddenly i'll get the
feeling that i just smoked a cigarette
(this one just happened in fact)
i'll think "man, i wanna go smoke,
wait, didn't i just smoke?"
i know i did
but i don't remember it,
it seems like no time has passed.
i check my pack and, sure enough,
there's a cigarette missing.
i go to get a drink of water,
but then i realize i have a
glass of water in my hand.
"when did i get this? just now? what?"
time jumped forward a couple of seconds.
i'm losing time.
i don't like this.
i miss when time jumped by a lot.
the gaps were so big i
didn't even notice them.
"sorry, i don't remember that."
"did you say that?"
"wait, that happened?"
"where are we?"
"what am i doing here?"
"what do you mean i didn't
come into work on tuesday?"
"what do you mean i've
been missing for three weeks?"
"what do you mean i've been
asleep for 34 hours?"
"how did the food i was cooking burn?
i literally just turned it on!"
this is my life.
this has been my life.
this will be my life.
anyway; i mentioned that other matt.
he's exactly the same as me,
except we switched places.
he gets to live in the
dimension i'm originally from,
and i get to live in his ******
******* dimension
where he ruins everything he touches.
the ******* wished for this
so he could have a better life,
the dimensions pushed in on each other...
you remember
me telling you about that right?
so yeah.
i'm going to find a genie, i'm going
to build a dimension hopper,
i'm going to jump through a black hole,
i'm going to run to switzerland
and cause the
hadron collider to have a meltdown
and
i'm going to ride the shockwave back
to my own dimension
and i'm going to go to that other matt
who'll be laughing, sitting on a couch,
and drinking a beer,
thinking about how great his life is now
and i'm going to walk up to him,
he'll know who i am the instant he sees me,
and i'm going to grab him around
the throat with both of my hands
push my fingers into the part of the throat
right below where the lymph nodes are
and i'm going to choke him.
and he's going to see the rage in my eyes
and he's going to pass out from ox-dep.
i'm going to then carry his limp
body to a bathtub
and i'm going to chain him to the bath tub
and i'm going to start hitting
him with a hammer
first in the feet, he'll wake up after
the first blow,
and then in the shins,
and then in the knee caps
and i'm going to work my way up
i'm going to hit him in that spot
in our knees that
hurts so bad we puke when it gets hit
and i'm going to hit him in that
spot we're both
afraid of getting hit in because
it's so ******* creepy
and then i'm going to pound in his ribs
and he's gonna start puking blood because
of the fracture
and them
I'm going to break his collar bones
with the hammer.
and then i'll sit down on the toilet
and just stare at him.
he'll know not to talk, since we're the
same person,
but if he does i'll hit him in the teeth
with the hammer.
then, i'll just watch as he bleeds to
death.
one living matt
one dying matt
the exact same person except one
of us is a ******* *******
and the other is a regular *******.
i will watch him bleed and choke
and puke and cry
and finally die.
and then i'm going to get a hack saw,
cut him to pieces,
put the pieces in separate trash bags
and i'm going to disperse
them across the country.
or maybe i'll just throw them
in the trash
or burn them
it doesn't matter if someone
finds fragments of him
because we have the exact same DNA and
the exact same finger prints
the exact same tongue prints
the exact same palm prints
the exact same hair follicles
we're the same.
so if he dies, whatever. there's an extra.
and that extra is me.
and i will take his place
and in the other dimension,
the other you's
will not say ****.
as i come back into the room,
sit calmly back down,
grab the beer the other me was drinking
and say "sorry,
i had to take care of that doppleganger."
you will not say ****
the these you's (the ones reading this)
will know what happened when
suddenly
i disappear under
magical or paranormal or
simple
strange
circumstances
and you all will not say ****.
just in case i'll leave a note
and it will say
"sorry, had to step out for a bit.
also: **** all of you"

because so help me god,
i will find him
and i will eat him.
fin.

p.s. i feel a bit better now.

Electricities ,a mystery to me
How a switch can just turn a lamp on,
And I always thought The Periodic Table
Was where my sisters kept their tampons.
I don't understand Higgs Boson ,
Can't fathom out that Hadron Collider,
Or , if an apple a day keeps the doctor away
Why can't fifteen pints of cider?
I was reading a book in the Science Section
And the Librarian gave me such a frown ,
It was called "The History of Helium "
And I couldn't put the f* thing down.

You're my quark who stride back and forth
to expect some gains from the proton of progress
and,
neutron of ignorance.
Then when you progress towards a great deal of ignorance,
you slowly gather yourself up,
to create a minute a hadron of deep insight,
powered by a glory of gluon!

Loading my hadron collider
With hampering Hadrian Wall.
What on earth am I doing!?
I know nothing at all.

I add some tea to my sugar,
Putting the kidneys in stone.
Getting chased down by a cougar -
My wishful thinking at home.

Feeling betrayed by my conscience,
The time is quarter to three.
In a world full of pretence,
I prefer to be free.

October 2013

to write in Latin these days, is to write the Vulgate, i am inclined to this graffiti for i abide by no cherishing of the tongue, Nietzsche said that Christianity is Platonism for the people... indeed the morphing of his maxim (God is dead) is likewise a Platonism, in that the populist reinterpretation is: Latin is dead; - so that the Vulgate might live.

we all heard it when *Dominique de Villepin spoke
against any sort of invasion - in uncertain times we
called for uncertain measures - and all we got was
more uncertainty with a failed intelligence -
populist poetry, as you like it - keep Shakespeare on
a peddle-stool long enough and Marlowe will
join the circus - the pseudonym for one of Lady Macbeth's
lovers - i have seen the marches of protest,
common sense overruled democracy, democracy failed,
common sense suffers - Mr. Milošević (sheer as former
diacritic, and itch as the latter) is handcuffed
while the western war criminals are
patted on the shoulder while *******
their pants with excess grey of gorillas' aged backing
for the entitlement of silverback and hip-replacement -
bred by children, we are governed by children,
in the end we end up punishing children,
the Disney shadow is never far away
from western politics - populist i я fox - desert?
(if ever a rune, it'd be this AT: Ѧ - post-Babylonian
AM to consider), alter:
do i look like a ******* camel herder to you?
that's whiplash with a blink given those
camel niqabs you did arson to with Jarred Jeff Chaucer -
suits you well... je suis Jarry, et je suis Papa ****...
get your ******* pokers out
you Algerian rapists? *** zee policé! (acute e,
missing hatch) - get a breather - minus the olives
at the street-market - shingaloong - na na na na (h multiplier),
meaning there's a supposed person itemising tribal secrets -
like this Amazonian Turk sourcing out an insomnia cure
with a cross-dressing Chilean Aztec with a
postcard from Azerbaijan stitched in -
while a white boy towed a burden no admiral cared
to whisper on the frothing encapsulation
of a destroyer and the cold cod look with mermaids -
and that literally was a minded fact - meaning?
generals on first dates with goats - horned eyed they were
bashing atoms about like the Hadron Mr. Switz.
(almost wrote Hydron, alias Hydrogen, gateway
to mind, ratio 1:1, as Rodin sculpted the kiss from Dante,
Francesca and Paolo - a paperaeroplane with
the following note attached via ultra-digression
and as poet's know, no paragraph rubric or break
for afternoon tea:
they were critical of communism to perfection
with what's happening in Turkey - an Army coup d'état -
i've never seen so many politicians anorexic on a diet
of fingernails - never in my life - prior... i have the tongue,
the rhetoric of bullets aimed at your head...
a storm-trooper with a gun: i have about 1000 100m sprinters
aimed at your head... bang bang and indeed you might be dead...
bang bang bang... you're dead, and Cinderella goes
to her ballroom gown event completely solipsistic.
what the Solidarity movement criticised wasn't
Communism, they were critical of the coup d'état -
communism and automated spying,
communism's Darth Vader voice-over is matched
with automated spying - why was social media invented
if we didn't want to be informed? i can tell you
how long it takes me to ******* - and are you to beg to
differ with me? capitalism never automated spying,
it automated freedom, a sorta-post-humanism when
people were allowed to perform the ultra-perverse acts
of freedom and later told: well, you can't really write a book
after all you've done, can you? and why would a book
like that... the European convention of authority wanted
straightened Brazilian bananas anyway...
Darwin laughed with words: they got over the skew!
modern phraseology? a smiley: or?
banana's tummy to peel and topple t'eh d'oh Cherokee chop chop
awaiting a garçon for the perfumed-airs of cold espresso
served awaiting a tip nonetheless with gusto! ah, die gusto...
when it comes to printing press it came down to
the salt mines being safer than the print genesis -
meaning that with printing companies asbestos was used -
the Chinese are famous when over-shadowing cockroaches,
prime with fireworks, last with gunpowder -
prime with prints, last with... whatever writing freely
meant for democracy when freedom was to be undermined
and democracy embraced - and autocracy (mono-republicanism)
rugby tackled - i can actually see mono-republicanism,
a Saddam Hoot-Sane - and i can actually see
mono-democracy - bring in James Cameron and a dozen
start-up app. geeks... we'll debate for ~15 minutes
(as in, fashionably the doors are closed, and we closed them
because we could hardly articulate what would be the forecast
with the weather prophets about the safety mechanism
of an orange thrown up into the air, levitating
or  being brought back down in the form of orange juice at
whatever Newton assemblage was obvious) -
and so we decided it was necessary to treat each individual
mention of event non-chronologically,
but as historian supermen would, with hindsight,
quantum June , a month of the highest rekindling of the sun
to shine supreme - to not dwell in chronology,
but as heroes of hindsight, to write post-eventum as if
glorified in numbering mentions akin to Achilles, heroes
anti-prophetic and endearing the whispering of
bookworms for their agitated mention of others' glory.

Infinite these halls of time
These corridors of vast expanse,
Eternity of Universe
No preamble to the dance.
No start, no pause, no finish line
No courtship in this velvet sky,
Jewelled stars in vastness pass before
This cosmic, ink black curtain high.

Einstein touched, to reconcile
Gravity in quantum thought,
Interpretation’s multiverse
In parallel dimensions sought.
Postulations spectrum bright
In rainbow, cryogenic sky,
Now humankind, in wonder gasp…
Too insignificant to cry.

M.
On the eve of the re-commissioning of the Large Hadron Collider
In man’s effort to prove the existence of parallel dimensions in the actuality of an infinite, everlasting universe.
26 March 2015

It looked all right through the windows of
Our cosy sitting room,
The day was light and the sun was bright
But the house was like a tomb,
The other rooms were as cold as hell
With their stalactites of ice,
That dripped from the bedroom ceiling down
To meet the stalagmites.

I’d settled Eve on the couch and spread
A blanket round her arms,
I didn’t think I should tell her, just
In case she became alarmed,
She’d spent a week in the sitting room
For she wasn’t feeling well,
How do you say, ‘We’ve fallen into
The Seventh Circle of Hell!’

They taught us the laws of physics were
Impossible to change,
Gravity, mass, and basic math
Had a certain, definite range,
But men of science had interfered
With the particle known as ‘God’,
They’d built the Hadron Collider and
The results, they said, were odd.

I could have told them how odd they were
When I went outside to see,
My car was covered in mushrooms
And a train sat up in the tree.
A whale was floating beneath the Moon
And a porpoise lay in the park,
The light was bright in the sitting room
But outside, it was dark.

Nothing remained the way it was
For all the colours had changed,
The lawn, the colour of strawberry jam
And the sky was rearranged,
The stars were falling like sequins in
A cluster of drops like rain,
And ice was forming up on the eaves
That tasted like champagne.

I went inside and I slammed the door,
I turned on the News at 6,
They said there’d been an apology
But it wouldn’t be hard to fix,
They’d run the Collider backwards to
The way that they’d done before,
And hopefully, the ‘particle God’
Would be as he’d been once more.

I sat with Eve as the sun went down
And I tried to keep her still,
Away from the hallway mirror so
She wouldn’t scream or squeal,
The lines were deepening on her face
As our lease on life had lapsed,
I hoped she wouldn’t go out today
With the world outside, collapsed.

The sun rose up in the morning as
It had for a million years,
And everything was familiar,
They’d run the thing in reverse.
The News went back to the good old things
We were used to, from before,
Stabbings, murders, infanticide
And that good old standby, war!

David Lewis Paget

(after Sarah Manguso)

The darkness of your eyes is a curious darkness.
I mean when I close them. Old dances are equal
in distraction, like the shifts in subjects in a song.
That's just the different voice in a choir, I mean.
I mean, I mean to mean: Meaning from the random
statistical patterns of this... "world"? Is it right
to call everything "this"? "World" seems to mean "here" and yes,
with "us". Like the positivists told the scientists, "yes"
this thing with our eyes-- expansive eyes,
microscope eyes telescope eyes large hadron collider eyes mathy eyes
--these eyes are "I". Would I be comfort,
--and yes, the substance of that word and not the action
that entails the substance being a thing that can be
--would you be comforted by the thing that sees
being the thing that sees you as you? Imagine
some other singer singing that no other such thing
exists besides ourselves. Is that comfort? Is that
a person or a poem? Is everything in that the same? Wonder
with me back to empiricism. Knock on the table
and think of it not as Idea (that beneath our own
that we wished to wish). Wonder
with me on this song, back-of-the-envelope
calculated tipsily, alone, at the edge of a party
--okay, the party of (this) life. Wonder
with me, there, here,
always. And open
your throat.

One of my year long sophomore subjects will be physics. At first, physics seems to be a menagerie of big, boring universal ideas and immutable laws rendered practically unimportant by their scale.

Peter, ok, let’s call him my boyfriend - just as a place-holder - is working on his “Doctorate in Applied Physics,” degree. “Will you help me with my physics homework?” I asked, hopefully.
“I’m sure we can work something out,” he assures me, wiggling his eyebrows suspiciously.

Peter got to visit the Hadron Collider, in Geneva, this summer. When I FaceTimed him he was as animated as a girl at drama camp. He was all, “proton collisions, Higgs bosons, top quarks and massive particles, bla, bla, bla..”
“That’s ok, I said, “If you’d rather not talk about it, I understand.”

Seriously though, I get it. Physics teaches critical thinking and problem solving. Fluid dynamics and pressure-volume-resistance relationships apply to the circulatory system. Pressure-volume curves can apply to lung function, heat transfer is applicable to frostbite, hypothermia and fevers - nuclear physics applies to nuclear medicine (SPECT, PET scans and radiation therapy and lasers) - yatta, yatta yatta.

But why ME, oh, lord?

she's been running through my mind
with her heels on
smashing all she can find
like a Hadron proton

a thousand miles an hour
she screams through the rooms
and she doesn't even know her power
like a flower in full bloom

The hadron collider showed an unknown influence affecting subatomic particles.

“Is this proof of a higher power in the universe?” asked Marianne Williamson.

“Is this Will, is this magick?”

Yes Herr Nietzche, there will always be unknowns in human science as the scientists should have known all along, instead of substituting the most recent names of observations as the replacement of God.

No, there probably isn’t free will but we seem to be life in the unknown with more power than any other around.

This universe may just repeat on and on but what do you do with that knowledge? Can you even help to choose what you choose?

All these past influences and instinctual impulses lead the charge. But there's that spark. That mystery if we can ever really know and comprehend it all with limited senses, time, and minds.

Maybe you don’t have a choice in your life, but you can have the feeling you do. The feeling you can shape your world amid the destiny you feel in your heart.

Practice being a yeasayer to life because that just might be your fate.
Amor fati each time around.

native gene to my city scene,
a city where seconds matter in a make haste lives,
in pursuit of the freedom to never rush again

hadron caldron nuclei lives colliding quirky, quarky manner
some pass with no reaction,
some fallout in love when connected,
love being among the debris particles detected
after a collision uncovering our element components

i too cross against the light,
perhaps hoping for said strong interaction,
a wasty way to fall in love,
but the electromagnetic strong forces so powerful,
that not to risk is not fall, falling is succeeding

for I have survived collisions once or twice in lifetimes prior,
the love byproduct was as strong as the force required
to separate it from its leaden shell

but love too has a half life,
a natural countdown to its own consumption consummation,
so to the streets, return, looking for another only
love poem particle

the madman dashing tween truck and car,
coming toward you,
interrogatory, beseeching glance,
why, that's me writing composing us...


5/21/17 8:49

Hold me to this silence.
Streams of traffic, mundane, speech
Will not enter here.

Hadron of strength.
Love is like particle physics
Understood by our own passion.

Faith unrestrained by parameters.
Vowed to each other
'Til death give way to eternity.

“ After decades of measurements and debate, we are now confident that the overwhelming majority of our universe’s matter – about 84 percent – is not made up of atoms, or of any other known substance. Although we can feel the gravitational pull of this other matter, and clearly tell that it’s there, we simply do not know what it is. This mysterious stuff is invisible, or at least nearly so. For lack of a better name, we call it “dark matter.” But naming something is very different from understanding it.  Over the past 15 years, for example, experiments designed to detect individual particles of dark matter have become a million times more sensitive, and yet no signs of these elusive particles have appeared. And although the Large Hadron Collider has by all technical standards performed beautifully, with the exception of the Higgs boson, no new particles or other phenomena have been discovered.”
Dan Hooper, Associate Scientist in Theoretical Astrophysics at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago.
I am indebted to EarthSkyNews and its writers and editor Deborah Byrd for their inspirational articles that set an imagination afire.

                           Looking For God
                  (a personal interpretation)

Oh, my goodness, Halloween.
Secular as we’ve become we search between
The stars for something we can’t find -
Something way, way, way behind
(or maybe not), for calculations more than hint
At something there.  Something here
And all around,
Something we can measure,
Possibly a ground of being -
Universe the metaphor -
Or should one say ‘universes’?

Utterly enchanting this research,
For ‘re’- means ‘one more time’, afresh, again;
We’re looking all the time and then some.
‘Search’, its origin in Latin’s ‘circle’
We are going ‘round in circles
To complete a circle, time and time again.
Looking for design and pattern
Palpable, its charm disarming
And perhaps alarming,
If we ever find it.

Looking For God 10.31.2017
Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; God Book II;
Arlene Corwin
I am indebted to EarthSkyNews and its writers and editor Deborah Byrd for their inspirational articles that set an imagination afire.

Mike
Matter

Ekim
Anti

Collision
Noisilloc

Nothing
Gnihton