It's a fundamental law:
all matter emits radiation
(all of us even you right now)
& the energy level depends
on the temperature of the object
(inversely related to intensity).
This is black body radiation.
Here, in our meager summer rooms,
we have long infrared auras
(only lizards see them);
our atoms are gracefully aching away,
smeary leaking daubs in halo.
The hotter something is
(like that fling of sun up there)
the more energy it heaves away.
That molten starry tussle
is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit
(& so we see it yellow-white) -
"But," you say, "what if something
is hotter than a star, what then?"
Something, you mean,
like the strange chemistry that burns
burns burns burns burns burns
in my brain on a Tuesday night
when remembering an autumn day
in a cemetery in Paris so many years back
(Chopin Morrison Abelard Heloise Wilde Piaf &c)
it was such a perfect day with her
(the synapses and relays are all
clicking clicking clicking clicking
with wild remembrance)...
Well, then (in theory)
I should be giving off ultraviolet light
at an almost infinite rate (wouldn't I?).
I don't know what it means
that I am here in the plush dark
quiet and quelled by thought
(except perhaps the catastrophic energy
is scrawling and etching me into oblivion).