—⋅ < DEUS EX MACHINA > ⋅—
I. Within
progeny of The Stars,
don’t promise me callow
because don’t you know?
in childhood, we know more
love than we’ll ever receive
in adulthood, don’t you know?
and we are all the more wise for it.

enough of mirrors and vignettes
of shadows and smoke
promise incandescent and
give me inflorescence,
give me conflagration,
give me molten,
give me ember-baptized,
because your soul knew these
epithets long before you were
given your name.

we dwell in singularity most beautiful,
where the secret cosmos was whispered
from creator to created
matter is no longer matter here
silence, no longer silence

cosmic cold
permanent light
permanent darkness
these eclipses come and go
similarly, simultaneously

out of the ether,
out of the nothingness
compounded within nothingness,
exploded forth energy, time, space

inertia guaranteed deformation
and so was physics,
the story of our makeshift universe
came to be

II. Coalescent
with physics came energy,
and with energy, entropy—
there was a fundamental need
to form and exist as a whole

from the broiling chaos
coalesced a semblance of order

a thimbleful of electrons
the first firebrand subjects of time
pooling and burbling in
cosmic void, eloping from
regal, seething bordellos
clothed in holy light
abstracted and reified
in its sinewy grasp

and so was chemistry,
the story of atoms and
the quantum waltz

III. Altered
ionize the corona
life in those days was
frail as infant’s breath

and yet an idle walk
of six billion years
to our present

life-forms emerged,
alive as the sprawling acanthus
springing forth from the grave:
the second firebrand subjects of time

furiously clawing at the barren, fruitless earth
we suckled the heaving ***** of mother nature,
greedily drinking her life-giving milk;
fragments of her being embroidered into cristae
generation after generation:
the genealogy of the prodigal, thieving race

ever-changing,
we evolved

and so was biology,
the story of these life-forms
and how they kept

IV. Value and Definition
there are no deals to be brokered with the universe:
darling, you must accept what you are made of,
you must accept that you and i and all of us are stardust

in our toil to stake our claim and live our lives,
we are at a perpetual threshold; where our child-souls
are waylaid by darkness, ice-branded by malevolence:
these trials and tribulations are our birthright…
are you brave enough? do you dare?

if not, simply lay down your bruised body
kneel on your scraped knees
and in lieu of bargaining, pray, pray in earnest:
you’re not inhuman if you have strayed,
if your soul has been played by pain

nothing is absolute: not a poem
neither a castle, riches, human power
the oceans, the skies, nor the twilight
in the smallest of intervals~
we are golden urns pouring out of the sun
momentary specters decaying
naked as we came, in short-lived grandeur

the perfect constellation of the universe:
deus ex machina et machina ex deus

and so was history,
the ongoing story of us
and our cultures

V. Acknowledge
neither absolute nor relative
it simply is, as is, as has been, as will be
god doesn't need to be proven
because he, she, they, xe?
is the quiet recognition that my dogs
will pass before our i do,
is the remembrance of apricity
in the cold, northern lands,
is antimatter coffee and park benches
and calligraphy nibs and gilmore girls
and my favorite song,
is you and i and every life
that we have yet to live, darling

just tell yourself this is just physics
tell yourself that chemistry, biology, history
could even begin to broach infinity

suspiria de profundis
iridescent harmony of the spheres
in the quiet black, hear those arias of nirvana