What goes up must come down.

It's the law of gravity.

You throw a ball up into the air and what does it do?

It falls right back down towards the ground at the acceleration of 9.81m/s2

It’s the exact acceleration of anything in freefall,
Despite its weight or mass
Despite its shape or value
It falls right back to the ground at 9.81m/s2

So specific.

Well yes.
Yes, because it is important for you to understand this principle of behavior.

You see, the same law occurs in life.

Let’s pretend you were a ball, and I threw you up in the air…

I threw you up so high that you could see the birds and touch the clouds.
I threw you so high that you were gathered up in a breeze, taken across the entirety of the city.
I threw you so high that you were enveloped into a storm, tossed and turned in the wind and rain.
I threw you so high that you emerged from the chaos and floated above the atmosphere.

At this point, you’ve stopped.

For the briefest of moments, you're exposed to one of the most stunning of natural masterpieces.
The sky is painted a pretty titian shade spotted with drops of fuchsia and indigo
The sun shines and sparkles in your peripheral view, glinting and gleaming off of your rounded form.
A heavenly phenomenon.

Yet what goes up, must always come down
And after the briefest of moments, you fall.

You fall right back through the treacherous storms, being pushed forcefully by the wind
You fall right back down towards the heart of the city, tumbling in the breeze
You fall right back down through the clouds and past the birds
You fall right back down until you reach the ground and your journey comes to an end.

Your life comes to an end.

While in the air, you were exposed to a multitude of different situations and scenarios.
You saw beauty and chaos
You were really living.

But in the end, gravity takes its course.

Life takes its course.

Because all that lives must die,

And all that goes up must come down.

I finally understood
Newton's third law of motion.
To every action, there is
an equal and opposite reaction.

To every person you hurt
intentionally or not
karma makes sure
to get back at you.

something isn't nothing

I don't like it when people consider the minute nothing
I don't like it at all
something is wrong with that belief
to consider the small unimportant
the microscopic non-existent
meaningless
purposeless...
a figment of pure imagination
a non sequitur of time
as if size itself is the only factor of what is...
dismissing reality is a fatal flaw
for when that insignificant nothing
infects you
replaces your meaningless parts with rot
turns your own body against you
discards the fabric of your meaningless existence thread by thread into the null--
when your state triggers the process of decay
slowly killing you--
while the residual effects trigger the mechanisms of the minds of those around you to start discarding your future--
while every memory becomes thinner
when you start fading
walking your own path to becoming emptiness
to become the thing you dismiss
to become dismissed
from reality
from life
but slowly enough
to realize you want to live
to have that thing you didn't believe...
existed--

you will beg for something
and receive true nothing

It’s Hard Not To Be Optimistic: An Updated Sonnet to Science
by Michael R. Burch

“DNA has cured deadly diseases and allowed
labs to create animals with fantastic new
features.” ― U.S. News & World Report

It’s hard not to be optimistic
when things are so wondrously futuristic:
when DNA, our new Louie Pasteur,
can effect an autonomous, miraculous cure,
while labs churn out fluorescent monkeys
who, with infinite typewriters, might soon outdo USN&WR’s flunkeys.

It’s hard not to be optimistic
when the world is so delightfully pluralistic:
when Schrödinger’s cat is both dead and alive,
and Hawking says time can run backwards. We thrive,
befuddled drones, on someone else’s regurgitated nectar,
while our cheers drown out poet-alarmists who might Hector

the Achilles heel of pure science (common sense)
and reporters who tap out supersillyous nonsense.

NOTE: I am a fan of both real science and science fiction, and I like to think I can tell the difference, at least between the two extremes. I feel confident that Schrödinger didn’t think the cat in his famous experiment was both dead and alive. Rather, he was pointing out that we can’t know until we open the box, scratchings and smell aside. While traveling backwards in time is great for science fiction, it seems extremely doubtful as a practical application. And as for DNA curing deadly diseases ... well, it must have created them, so perhaps don’t give it too much credit!

Submitted to U.S. News & World Report

Dear Editor,

While I’m usually a fan of your magazine, as a writer I must take to task the Frankensteinian logic of the excerpt I cited, and I challenge you to publish my “letter” as proof that poets do have a function in the third millennium, even if it is only to suggest that paid writers should not create such outlandish, freakish horrors of the English language.

Somewhat irked, but still a fan,
Michael R. Burch

Keywords/Tags: science, fiction, quantum, physics, Hawking, Schrodinger, cat, DNA, infinite, monkeys, typewriters, Shakespeare, lab, animals, new, features

Limericks I - Relatives and Relativity

The Cosmological Constant
by Michael R. Burch

Einstein, the frizzy-haired,
said E equals MC squared.
Thus all mass decreases
as activity ceases?
Not my mass, my *** declared!

###

***-tronomical
by Michael R. Burch

Relativity, the theorists’ creed,
says mass increases with speed.
My (m)*** grows when I sit it.
Mr. Einstein, get with it;
equate its deflation, I plead!

###

Relative to Whom?
by Michael R. Burch

Einstein’s theory, incredibly silly,
says a relative grows *****-nilly
at speeds close to light.
Well, his relatives might,
but mine grow their (m)***** more stilly!

###

Time Out!
by Michael R. Burch

Hawking’s "Brief History of Time"
is such a relief! How sublime
that time, in reverse,
may un-write this verse
and un-spend my last thin dime!

###

Time Back In!
by Michael R. Burch

Hawking, who makes my head spin,
says time may flow backward. I grin,
imagining the surprise
in my mother's eyes
when I head for the womb once again!

###

Keywords/Tags: limerick, nonsense, light verse, humor, science, theoretical, physics, relativity, relatives, family, time, space

I some times think
That love is electronic
Like matter-wave

Elusive to capture in time or space
Yet travels at the speed of light

Capable of transmitting energy
Yet unable to completely fathom its form

Impossible to hold or capture
But without which, life is incomplete

Like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle
I cannot understand it, while i am in it

I would rather be absorbed like a photon
Gets absorbed in an atom

You be my atom, I shall be the photon
May you and I merge and reach a higher state
Of fulfilment.