What if
Your life is just a work of art
A masterpiece painted
By some big brain
With double-folding sentience?
Do you ever consider
The beauty of the detail(s)?

What if that weird coincidence
That happened today
Really wasn't a coincidence at all?

What if there are no coincidences?

What if when we go to sleep
Our brainwaves change
Because our minds go elsewhere
And it's best we just forget
When we wake?

What if reincarnation is real
And just at a universal scale?

What if life didn't originate on Earth?

What if there's something huge about
Deoxyribonucleic Acid
That we don't yet understand?

What if everything is a computer simulation
And everything above the first dimension
Is just a folded-up illusion?

What if we're not the only ones out there?

What if one time
At some random point
Along your vision's axis
You stared right at a planet
That harbored life?
Or even a star system?

What if religion and science collapsed in
On each other?

And what does this whole Eye business
Really mean?

What if the multiverse
Is more connected
Than we ever imagined?

What if God is a number? (a chuckle)

What if God is all the numbers
And combinations of them
And transmutations
And possible functions
And every algorithm
Every discordance and solution?

What if fate and free will
Don't really hate each other,
And it's just a game they play?

What if, just as we imagine characters,
Scenes and fiction
And paint them with words, sounds, and pigments
Our lives and interactions
Are painted by some society of higher beings,
In some fractalesque twist?

What if perception and emotional value
Are just the icing on the cake
And they are what makes life more
Than numbers and figures?

What if art
Is more than human?

What if the magical spells we once dreamed of
Have become our reality-
Songs, pictures, symbols flashed on the TV...

What if it really is like good guys vs. bad guys
And it's all just whispered above your head
Just within earshot?

What if it's not so black and white
And our only true villain
Is the stupidity of the mob?

What if it's somewhere between
Like it usually is?

What if we were always happy
Or always sad?
Would there really be a difference?

What if you could escape the circular nature
Of everything?
What would you see, looking down?

What if every system is circular
Because they're all gears
In some big surreal machine?

What if you're dreaming?
Wake up!
Nope, still here.

What if you're not dreaming at all
And it's really just that strange?

What if everything that could happen
Did happen,
And you are only allowed to see one of each?

What if the laws of physics
Are only so set in stone
In this universe
But there are others that vary?

What if the speed of light
Is the universal speed of time?

What if I'm actually dead
And this is just a virtual world
And I'm living through a computer?

What if reality is a very complicated computation?

What if I woke up as someone else tomorrow morning?
Would I even realize it?

What if one of my poems caused two people to meet
and fall in love? that'd be cool

What if one of my poems accidentally somehow set off
A chain of events that killed someone? that's weird and sad

What if gravity were as strong as magnetism
Or the other forces?
We'd surely have no planes
And getting up in the morning would suck even more

What if for once you were grateful and happy to wake up in the morning?
Ooh, got you with a tinge of guilt din't I?

What if the whole thing was a joke and no one likes getting up after a nice rest?

What if looks didn't affect judgment so much?

What if this is your very last breath?
If so, look out-

What if my imagination didn't have a bottom?

What if the act of believing in something
Made it true?

What if my red was your blue?

What if you could see tenfold more colors then most humans
Because you had an extra type of cone in your gene code?

What if the very fundamentals of science you were taught in school
Were mass-spread so no one could know how strange the universe really is?

What if the moon landing was fake?

What if conspiracies don't really affect you that much in the end?

What if there was an underlying pattern of questions and statements
Following a free-flowing logical train here?

What if it just crashed?

What if when the light went off on your webcam
That didn't mean it was inactive?

What if you had something to hide?

What if they're out to get you?

What if they're everywhere?

What if it's way over your head
And it's time to get out of the house?

What if Uncle Ben never got shot?

What if Tony Stark is just a friggen' badass genius dude wonder?

What if some levity never hurt anyone, but what if it did?

What if some guy was telling a joke, not paying attention
And he fell and broke his left arm?
I bet it's happened on numerous occasions.
And statistically, probably more if you change it to 'right'!

What if you didn't help that old lady cross the street?
What if the old lady never crossed the street
And she just sat there forever like a lost puppy
Doesn't it just make you want to cry?

What if you were sitting on that thing you're looking for the whole time?

What if your life is a TV show
It's all staged, Truman!

What if I'm not real
And a secret artificial intelligence project
Wrote this to test how convincing it is?
I promise I'm not but you have no way of knowing!

What if some of you start to suspect me of being a robot?

What if in some ironic twist of fate that made someone crazy obsessive about it
And writing it led to my very death?

What if I'm just here for the ride
And I don't have time to worry about things like that?

My eyes are getting heavy...

As much as they tell me
I need to focus.
I need to concentrate...
And leave the la-la-land dreamscape
Of my head,
I'm proud to even
I m a g i n e.

I miss the feeling of your body
pressed tightly against mine
as I held you in my arms

I miss the smell of your skin
when we would curl up in your bed
and cuddled all night long

I miss the way your head felt
as it rested on my chest
when we would lay on the couch watching TV

I miss being able to sleep
with you by my side
you are so beautiful when you sleep

I miss your smile
and how your eyes would light up
whenever you were happy

But most of all I miss you
and being able to call you mine

(To my Baby Girl)

I want you
whether it'd be in my dreams,
in the music I listen to;
I want the sound of your blood
to be my favorite song.
I want you to be the slight chill
when it rains and the steam
from my sweet, yet bitter tea.

I want you
to want me too.
I want to be the static in your TV,
the lustful glare in your eyes,
the lucid to your dreams.
I want to be the humid in your summer air,
the one that always messed with your hair.
You hated the summer because of it
and I loved your little complaints about it.
You preferred the winter's cold, Coldplay,
and the bitter frostbite that came with it too.

So want  me,
like I want you.

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I still recall how late it was,
In the dark other days of July,
After Mom's Birthday,
After all the fireworks,
After the Sparklers and Piccolo Petes
And Thundering Crushers had done their damage -

There was a storm that shuffled
In over Northeastern Nebraska,
That wet the streets
And brought wind and lightning,
And a booming sort of thunder
That whipped up the wind
And dropped golf-ball sized hail.
That sent tree branches
Into power lines,
That shredded house siding,
And tore at the veranda.

Yes, I remember...
But that wasn't how it happened.

Those were such humid, hot, windless days,
Where the minute threat of rain
Egged on that old mid-western fatigue
That moved from my tired, aching feet,
With their tiny hairline fractures that gnawed
And nagged at me with a jutting pain
That hopscotched up my back,
Then bounced off my right hand.
It was a piercing, sharp, angry pain
That made it hard to write,
Sometimes forcing me to do anything but rifle
Through Kitchen drawers
For pain pills,
As Garth Brooks crooned Thunder Road
At 2:38 am...

And me sleepless again.

Still, I'd try to fill in the vacant darkness
Of my night
With silly words
Scribbled on a yellow pad
With a fine point
Bic pen as
The Wind-Machine tossed waves of hot air
In my direction, and I would hear it
Sprinkle outside,
With a tap tap tap
The stars could not see.

Sprinkles dusted on
Steaming sidewalks,
And my body ached,
My head toying with
A lazy throb that
Moved from one side
Of my forehead
To the other,
Playing tag
With my thoughts.
Snapping at me
With a vicious
Sort of glee,

And Shania Twain started singing
A 'honey I'm home' song.
And I heard a boom that rattled
My little part
Of the world.

No,
It wasn't that.

Now it was warm,
And once again humid,
A Friday morning,
Lots of fireflies
And shooting stars
And mosquitoes.

Andrew was working the night shift
Up at the Liquor Store
And said it'd be a busy night again,
After the game let out.
And he wasn't interested
In the Strawberry Cheesecake
I had made.

And Shadow,
The black cat from outside
Brought her kittens over
For the first time,
And demanded food.

So they ate a spell.

And I went back inside
And there was a pain,
The kind that takes away
All your strength,
Zaps you,
Drains you...
And I had to sit...
Almost didn't make it to the sofa.

My head ached
And the TV set droned a Medium rerun
And Allison was dealing with
Larry Watt again
And I couldn't breathe.
I swallowed and tried to ease
Away the pain
And Allison was wearing blue and white
For some reason
And the phone was ringing
And I was on the floor.

Not sure how I'd fallen,
Not sure what was causing the
Dizziness or the confusion,
Not sure why my head was
Spinning.

Not sure why...

And then I lost it all.
Every green in the trees,
Every blue that painted the skies,
Every kiss, every hello, every maybe and goodbye.
I then faded out, everything shaded to black
And I was gone.

After all the Piccolo Petes and
Sparklers and Snakes
And Streamers had done their
Damage,
After Mom's Birthday
And Karen's call,
And Aunt Shirley's visit
With her new Taco Bell dog.

It was
An eventful
Evening.

Copyright © 2009 Richard D. Remler

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"God pours life into death and death into life
without a drop being spilled."
-Author Unknown
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