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.

Gliding deftly along the city street
rolling quick and constantly
onward to some unknown scene,
some backward park in the nighttime
smoke curling from these
parted lips, moist and inviting
calling me somewhere I've never seen.

New day, new night
new feelings, rage in delight
fill me with your hilarious entropy,
knock my quarks into the next century,
will you please?

Now you're smoking the pipe and all at once you are free
between you and me, this smoke is thicker and sticks
like glue,
wispy and dreamy and the world spins and calls Toltec
telephone company can't pay me for all those calls collected
and rendered obsolete
Sun god dead as that silly calendar meme

Amaterasu,
and Imma tell you
these ladies in the picnic table
buried alive for boxed lunch and god's brunch
Jesus ******* Christ
and a indelible roster of good guys,
to which we all must strive to live and die
behind,
never moving forward
chasing our tails like a sick dog
under the jasmine runner between the decades-old tanbark
imported from overseas
dead trees
dead canine
and oh isn't it just divine?

You see it, pretty lady.
I can see it hiding behind your eyes
the things you don't tell the others because you're afraid
if they found out,
you'd be crucified.

Well honey I hate to inform,
With KGB efficiency that these love-a-dumbs
aint Methuselah,
they'll be dead!
long before your flood of tears tears me from the land
ballistas me across the great expanse to some strange Ararat
of the eastern seaboard,
or maybe wash me deep along the 80
into the desert sands and tiles
on a leaky cell phone screen
desperately trying to dial home on low battery,
realizing all this was one big deferred dream,
baking in the sun and shriveling
oh well, back to the grindstone-- all those lies plucked your nose,
gotta cut it back to size,
'else your soul it'll outgrow

Don't worry honey bee
It hasn't happened to me,
and We know with calcuable mathematical truth
that it'll never happen to you.

the planets. the peaches.
pruned. picked. for the reaches.
the centuries. a second to the eternities.
you can have it. say laugh when. you hear the jazz note.
the voice of all that i spoke. the saxophone.
like dialing digits of truth. on the telephone.
come on. say one and two. up and down. the diversity in one single crown.
upon the ears of sound. it's the heart's listening device. toss it like rice.
at a wedding. human genes get paired up. and twisted.
so simple. it comes in flavors of licorice. red and black.
off and on. check the track. when the needle skips.
we find all these differences.
let me bring it back. for diversity.
zeroes and ones. spread the spectrum. across high and low frequencies.
it's so easy. let the record speak. can you stay on beat.
the principles of the high. the sincerity of the meek.
whatever lies between. is one or the other. blended across the centuries.
and all mothers. give birth to the last. man to the first.
follow that. discussion of high low.
mid ranges get blown. saxophone pace the flow. get pricked by the tweeters.
soul from the bass feeders. save the appetite. for the words that i write.
and then speak. you you. not me. splitting hairs. atoms. quarks. and light.
beams. like a smile. across a broad spectrum. either off. always on.
high low. then get gone.

Canto I. Long ago and far away...

Under the bridge across the Kankakee River, Grampa found me. I was busted for truancy. First grade. 1946.

Summer and after school: Paper route, neighborhood yard work, dogsbody in a drugstore, measuring houses for the county, fireman EJ&E railroad, janitor and bottling line Pabst Brewery Peoria. 1952-1962.

Fresh caught Mississippi River catfish. Muddy Yummy. Burlington, Iowa. 1959. Best ever.

In college, Fr. ***** usually confused me with my roommate, Al. Except for grades. St. Procopius College, 1958-62. Rats.

Coming home from college for Christmas. Oops, my family moved a few streets over and forgot to tell me. Peoria, 1961.

The Pabst Brewery lunchroom in Peoria, a little after dawn, my first day. A guy came in and said: "Who wants my horsecock sandwich? ****, this first beer tastes good." We never knew how many he drank. 1962.

At grad school, when we moved into the basement with the octopus furnace, Dave, my roommate, contributed a case of Chef Boyardee spaghettios and I brought 3 cases of beer, PBRs.  Supper for a month. Ames. 1962.

Sharon and I were making out in the afternoon, clothes a jumble. Walter Cronkite said, " President Kennedy has been shot…”. Ames, 1963.

I stood in line, in my shorts, waiting for the clap-check. The corporal shouted:  "All right, you *******, Uncle and the Republic of Viet Nam want your sorry *****. Drop 'em".  Des Moines. Deferred, 1964.

Married and living in student housing. Packing crate furniture. Pammel Court, 1966.

One of many undistinguished PhD theses on theoretical physics. Ames. 1967.

He electrified the room. Every woman in the room, regardless of age, wanted him, or seemed to. The atmosphere was primeval and dripping with desire. In the presence of greatness. Palo Alto, 1968.

US science jobs dried up. From a mountain-top, beery conversation, I got a research job in Germany. Boulder, 1968. Aachen, 1969.

The first time I saw automatic weapons at an airport. Geneva, 1970.

I toasted Rembrandt with sparkling wine at the Rijksmuseum. He said nothing. Amsterdam International Conference on Elementary Particles. 1971.

A little drunk, but sobering fast: the guard had Khrushchev teeth.
Midnight, alone, locked in a room at the border.
Hours later, release. East Berlin, 1973. Harrassment.

She said, "You know it's remarkable that we're not having an affair." No, it wasn't. George's wife.  Germany, 1973.

"Maybe there really are quarks, but if so, we'll never see them." Truer than I knew.  Exit to Huntsville, 1974.

On my first day at work, my first federal felony. As a joke, I impersonated an FBI agent. What the hell? Huntsville. 1974. Guess what?-- No witnesses left! 2021.

Hard work, good times, difficult times. The first years in Huntsville are not fully digested and may stay that way.

The golden Lord Buddha radiated peace with his smile. Pop, pop. Shots in the distance. Bangkok. 1992.

Accomplishment at work, discord at home. Divorce. Huntsville. 1994. I got the dogs.

New beginnings, a fresh start, true love and life-partner. Huntsville. 1995.

Canto II. In the present century...

Should be working on a proposal, but riveted to the TV. The day the towers fell and nearly 4000 people perished. September 11, 2001.

I started painting. Old barns and such. 2004.

We bet on how many dead bodies we would see. None, but lots of flip-flops and a sheep. Secrets of the Yangtze. 2004

I quietly admired a Rembrandt portrait at the Schiphol airport. Ever inscrutable, his painting had presence, even as the bomb dogs sniffed by. Beagles. 2006.

I’ve lost two close friends that I’ve known for 50-odd years. There aren’t many more. Huntsville. 2008 and 2011.

Here's some career advice: On your desk, keep a coffee cup marked, "No Whining", that side out. Third and final retirement. 2015.

I occasionally kick myself for not staying with physics—I’m jealous of friends that did. I moved on, but stayed interested. Continuing.

I’m eighty years old and walk like a duck. 2021.

Letter: "Your insurance has lapsed but for $60,000, it can be reinstated provided you are alive when we receive the premium." Life at 81. Huntsville, 2022.

Canto III: Coda

Honest distortions emerging from the distance of time. The thin comfort of fading memories. Thoughts on poor decisions and worse outcomes. Not often, but every now and then.

(Begun May 2016)

And I will make sure that if anything were to happen,
It would do little to affect you.

It's not everyday
You find a goose that lays eggs
With speckled jewels and golden flakes

The world is full of incongruity
And there's no doubt about the certainty
That something bad may happen,
And we don't want that, do we?

So listen carefully.


The world is a giant carboniferous spicule
Hanging in a nest of hydroxic gas and particulae
Spinning within the gaps of a blackened dome
Of limitless space and out of control
There is no telling what way it will go
There is no prediction that has fortold
Any number of moments in this tumbling slumber
Between the darkest hell and the further horizon

I so deftly advise you with all certification
To please place your bets and fly by echolocation
Your eyes will mislead, your ears will displease
And there is no way we can refund divine warranties

This machinery
has a half life of quarks
And energies that vibrate into other orbits
Trajectories
Retaining the spin and informative piece
Of that golden goose let loose amongst the canopy
Of dark,
off into neverland, straight on
Till new morning,
Beyond the stars

So please good sir don't migrate away from me
I have so much to give and such pain I have seen

Those that fatten their goose with **** till it quacks,
Those ravenous souls who ate their gift for a snack,
And when life finally cuts them down to their last,
They will howl and yowl and pray that goose back.

This is a game,
Have a good little laugh
Don't waste your time or your money
On a daffy Aflack

Policy that keeps you policed to the earth,
No way to fly,
Stuck in the dirt.
That is no way to live in the dream,
That is no way to let death trickle in

So please, pretty please, make sure you have coverages
And a couple extra dollars in the pocket of those jeans
Wander freely, you great big atomic bomb, you.
Do catastrophic damages and I'll pay your dues.

Ride the road coast to coast,
Fly a bird 'round the world,
Take a truck till you're home,
Find a love you can trust.
Find a place where your egg
And your legs seek nowhere else
Lay down those roots,
It's Eden or bust.

1.

It’s just the sound of breathing all together. Soft. Breathing air and water and blood. Nobody’s worried because nothing has happened. Soft lips gentle and closed eyes pure, untouched, unopened like new shoes. Head alone and empty, waiting to be bruised.

2.

The eyes are open and we’re holding hands. All of us. My quarks against your prose and your ghosts. You’re looking at me like you love me. Not even like you want to **** me. Just like you love me. Like I’m yours. Like I’m somebody’s. We don’t speak. We’re still holding hands with everybody else. On the floor there are broken teeth and ripped out ****** stitches but I’m not looking at them. Neither are you. Neither is anybody else. It’s all soft hands. Hips. Collar bones. Lips.


3.

The heat of your hand against mine. Fusion. You are not a ghost. They are. I am not either. We’re looking down. They’re not. We’re enlightened. They’re not. There is no roof and the teeth and blood aren’t real. They are only reflections of the stars. We do not speak except to each other.

4.

Teeth and stitches and bleeding hands and my blood is in your veins but you’re a closed circuit. I’m getting paler, but I don’t notice, because I am your dialysis, your transfusion. I’ll let you feel for me because I can’t feel my hands. You don’t expect it but you don’t tell me not to. Even if I die you will still hold me upright. My hands bleeding into your hands and open wounds in the wood floor. The glass floor unbroken because the teeth and blood are still just the stars. It’s okay because I know I’m saving you and I know you will save me. Cross stitch my lips so I can’t ruin it. Sew me up like a doll. It’s not your fault.

5.

Condensation into cold hands. Water droplets in their eyes as everyone else comes back again. Turns out I was just ignoring them. My blood in your veins. You’re not holding me up anymore, I’m clinging to your shoulder. Let go. You’re walking away and I’m following you and you don’t ask me to and you don’t wait for me so I step on the teeth beneath my bloodless feet. Even though they are only stars they hurt. Even though I am only a ghost I still run out of breath. Make me your Aphrodite. Yours before anyone else’s. Be mine before your lover’s.

6.

Now it’s all knees and elbows and raw hands on the wooden floor. Your blood my blood everyone else’s blood on my face. You let go of me. My blood in your veins, my cut up hands on the ground. Everyone else has better blood, more heart and less metal, and they all love you. Their blood, their flesh, their threads in your barely broken hands and you’re smiling. I haven’t seen you smile in a long time. I can’t feel my feet or my hands and in my head there is a swirl of stars except now they are only teeth and ripped-out stitches. Cut my face. Leave the stitches in. It’s not my place to speak. Look at me like you love me.

7.

There is blood on the ceiling too and you still think it’s the northern lights. My face is wet with someone else’s blood. Stitches. Teeth. Back and forth rocking on the floor. Cover me in your life. Your blood, my blood, your blood. I have no right to it. Grabbing teeth from the floor with numb hands and chewing them. Swallowing bone. Knock out my teeth and I’ll hold theirs in my mouth instead. I’m licking the blood from the puddles on the floor and dreaming of bullets to find more blood. In rivers, in sheets, drowning me softly. Dreaming of bullets and bullets and metal and blood. There is no more blood in me except in my stomach. Look away. Stab out my eyes. Cut out the stitches and put the metal in my mouth so I can sleep.

8.

I’ll wait among your absent lover’s things, something for you when the rest are gone. My stomach is hot and I’m not hungry. Blood in my lungs and I don’t want to keep breathing it. Dead nerves seizing in my spine. All I smell is blood and I think that’s a sign of brain cancer. Cancerous hands and teeth and bones and eyes. Bullets for the tumors in the grey matter. Metal and blood and skin and nerves and metal. Just one of your absent lover’s things.

9.

I’m too tired. The teeth are stars again. So are the bullets. Metal and bone. Let me eat this galaxy. Watch me.

10.

Teeth and bullets and stars. My empty head and our ****** hands. Teeth and bullets and stars.

Neutrons, protons and electrons compose
The entirety of atoms pervading The All,
Forming bewildering matter, objects and substances,
Ranging from dust to stars, planets, galaxies,
Superclusters, organisms, oxygen and water,
Living creatures.

Neutrons and protons in turn made of quarks,
Elementary particles, indivisible, positively charged.
Deprived of a structure of their own they strongly interact,
To create one and many zillion more.

Never alone always bound
In twos and threes, sparkling composites,
Hadrons at the heart of atomic nuclei.
Quarks making us.

While electrons, together with muons and taus
Only heavier but identical, are leptons,
The most common elementary particles in our world
Offer atoms their chemical properties.

Negatively charged, indivisible, smaller there are none.
Deprived of a structure of their own they weakly interact,
Frantically moving subject to electromagnetic fields.
Leptons making us.

Quarks and Leptons in conclusion
Minuscule nature of our essence shared
With that of all that exists. No wonder,
Everything in dualism persists.

Seeking harmonic balance and elegance,
A cosmos of particles interacting in countless manners
To materialise the entirety of energy in the Universe,
Shaping it with imagination and creativity.

As stars make gold, pressurised carbon diamonds,
Thirty trillion cells a human being, a human being a thought.

I love you,
Wildly, silently,
Imitating it's idly,
Displaying my affection quietly.

Timid, I am, of course.
Enjoying our discourse.
And everything you are,
I'm so heavenly immersed -

Yes, in your quirky quarks from quasars,
Running its benevolent course.

Still, inside, I thirst.
To let you know,
I'm yours.

Lost in a loving serge. . .

With quarks from the hottest starburst.

Quirky thought emerged with other things on my mind

and bid me notice, now

Quarks and humans have some things, in common,

characteristics, char acter ist ich bin fertig

for my close up, Mr. DeMille.

Charming, left right, up down, top bottom, in out, strange

that's eight, quarks are said to be of only six sorts, flavors

no in out, how odd, even I can't see why

every dimension we measure is ternal
ternality, ex or in, determines the spin,

which seems a shared state, neither in nor out,

Sanity, the state, is quarkish, too, like that.

up, down, top, bottom, strange and charm

From <https://www.livescience.com/18141-wacky-physics-particle-flavors.html>

I get it. We work. Quarks work. We both make things be.
We matter, but a little bit,
like salt. Maybe. Salt with all its saltness still in tact.

It’s Saturday morning. I’m at the acorn, my favorite coffee shop, on my iPad and deep in concentration. I’m time traveling back, to things seen and said, trying to create a story poem about recent happenings - or failing that - something quick and arbitrary.

I hear an “Ahem” and look up. A skinny, twenty-something man, with tousled black hair, clumsily dressed in drab browns and tans, was standing before me - a satchel over one shoulder and a coffee in hand. “May I join you?” He asked.

I looked around, there was only one other empty seat available, far at the back. “Sure,” I said, then, noticing my book bag filled the empty chair. I said “Sorry,” and moved it to the floor.
He took a seat.

He introduces himself, “Peter, “ he says.
“Anais,” I say, going back to my writing.
After a second he says, “What are you writing?”
“Poetry,” I answered, not looking up.
“So, something imaginary,” he said, it sounded condescending and irritating.
“Are you a student?” I asked, looking up to watch him settling in.
“Particle physics,” he says, cutting directly to the chase.
“Things too small to see,” I said. “Imaginary things,” I add a moment later, in revenge.
His mouth quirked, the suggestion of a smile dancing at the corners of his lips. He finished his coffee after a while and left. I saw him on campus a time or two after that - we would nod.

Then one thundering gray Saturday morning he was back. “Ahem,” he said. Then a moment later, before I could even look up, “ May I join you?” I looked up, and then around - there were plenty of seats. ”We can be imaginary friends,” he says. I smiled and nodded ok.

I'm just a miserable bunch of quantum field excitations. A bag of bags of quarks. And so's my truck.

I was entangled with a gal, but things went South. We're still ensnared— unmeasured and immeasurable with no divorce.

Dark energy, dark matter, dark thoughts-- I'll go to the dark side and jump in a black hole.

That'll teach you,  bit....   [loss of signal]

I'm a simple electron.
And, although I have my quarks,
It's usually a persona I don,
Pretending I enjoy meaningless talks.

See, I was once in a pair,
With a fellow electron.
And, although it was difficult to bear,
The laws of physics ultimately won.

The closer we got,
The more we repelled.
When she was ionised, it hurt a lot,
She left, regardless of how much I held.

She soon paired with another,
Leaving me to start a bond.
It was my emotions I tried to smother,
Of myself, I was certainly not fond.

For a while my thoughts were scattered,
My emotions being forced up and down.
But none of that really mattered,
As I soon met another who would invert my frown.

You see, she was a blinding photon,
And when we met, she certainly did excite me...
And, just like my friend the boson,
I hope you don't take this lightly.

She perked me up a couple of energy levels,
Until she pulled me out of my shell.
Now, together, we're quantum rebels,
I'm a simple electron, and this is the story I tell.

The Standard Model is full of sticky, quirky Quarks,
perky little Fermions, and the Boson Higgs,
the reigning King of Mass of towering might;
who, by spontaneously falling off in any old direction,
gives ad hoc Masses to nearly all, and to all a birthright.

And for all normal matter in creation,
the Boson Higgs is the physicist's salvation.
Alas, we could have learned more,
but a Weasel ate through the Collider core.

Existential exercise
--In & Out--
Eternal ebb and flow, the
Catalyst of the ages
Revolving and funneling
Precipitating and materializing
Quarks and photons into
Histories and futures and
Laughs and lies

Under, over, between, against, something
Needful things and quarks
Infinite infinity endlessly remaining
vacuous vacant and brimming.
Everything everywhere evolving eternally
recent past and the here and now
still reveals it's non existence.
Event horizon is nothing nowhere

There's this empty feeling deep inside
I feel in you I can confide
You were always there for me when I was in need
When I was with you I couldn't feel my heart bleed
Even though the pain and loneliness was still there
You showed me how to just not care
For so long now we have been apart
I'm feeling empty and that's just the start
Soon I'll feel the loneliness and the pain
I need you like flowers need rain
Sure we had our problems as most do
There were moments when I even hated you
It'll be different this time I know we can work
After all ever relationship has its quarks
So how about it, what do you say
I need you to drive the pain and loneliness away
Take my hand and don't let me go
It'll be our little secret no one will ever know

It is written, it is said, that locked inside every tiny head, is intrigue wonder and awe
but we haven't quite managed to evolve from off the forests floor
We have challenged and defeated, some ideas so narrow and conceited,
but still we forage, we fight, we squander, sitting in huddled packs sipping intoxication as we poignantly ponder
With immeasurable intellect we have managed to cosmologically dissect, quarks and strange sparks, gravity in black holes at an event horizon,
in the minefield that is the humans and their psychological gymnastics display we haven't really turned out anything much surprising,
our form , our structure, our natural physicality's we are most definitely compromising
As tantalising as it may feel to believe that from the caves and carnivorous ways we have moved , leapt boundless bounds into what would appear to be stratospheric realms of discovery,  I personally feel no celebrations passing my gloomy way as I still see a world of horror, **** , ****** , torture, and abuse, you will see me smile when I hear no more of anguish, see no sights to turn my stomach, and to never again speak of just how disgusting the taste of modern mayhem has become

there’s more
than 1 theory
in string theory, more than 1 dimension too
sometimes 4, others 26
all of which but few
are flat

genus 2 donuts would have less dough
some things are super
symmetrical, quarks
didn’t exist ‘til 1968, my attention span
shortens
to 5 feet 2 inches, when a String smiles back.

it’s intuitive
that 2 quarks attract
when pulled apart.  a tachyon
fits cross legged
in a chair.  gum pops sing
and the theory is boring without fermions.

strings absorb in the D-branes
of blue eyes
and matching glasses. stray
hairs, electrified with brilliance
warrant cats
that even Schrodinger knows are alive

Mesons, quarks, neutrinos, too
Drawn inexorably
Into eternity
To a finite point
Called singularity;
Rushing, streaming
Toward one juncture,
To a destination
With unknown structure.
Swirling, speeding
Into the abyss,
Reason, logic
Cease to exist.

Space and time
Merge in disarray,
Matter altered too,
No night, no day.
Warped, transmuted
Realities,
Become twisted, melded
Finalities.
Inconceivable dimensions
Reign supreme,
Nature’s laws violated
To extreme.

Crossing the event horizon,
No turning back,
Into the precipice,
Down a void of black;
Facing the vortex,
Light gasps in disbelief,
A terminal journey starts
Without relief.
Stars and galaxies
Give a sigh
As they spiral in
And begin to die.

One day we too
Will meet this fate;
The only questions are
The place and date.

The computer built by savages
held a fake Hard Drive made by Scottish Magpies
all external with no verification
whilst a Mainframe Computer is the real deal
the savages took their dud and market it militantly

Simpletons galore brought Scottish Magpies computer
in glaring ignorance they proclaimed keyboard at the ready
load in this disc and watch the show
we are now Gamers with total control
here's the operating Manual but its written in Advanced Braille

oh what a joke to see Barbarians play with dud triggers
this doesn't appear to be working says a semi-barbarian
don't be silly says Scottish Magpies, its working but its all invisible
just make sure you do a headstand when you access the keys
and know it NLP, that's Natural Language Processing
so come to us and we tell you what to say and do

A Mainframe computer is the real deal
Sophisticated, it uses a mainframe because only big iron provides
the processing power to support the many functions  required in a trained informed intelligent mind like factual support
clear and logical processing, while able to monitor signs of fraud,
like crooks, Barbarians and Scottish Magpies in elaborate frauds
as well as perform analytics in real time, and more—and all simultaneously.

This is not a Computer with a one word reference trigger
or visual perceptions programming for the dummies
Don't bother tell that to the Simpletons, its all above their heads
Don't shatter their dreams, they have been told they have Power
just leave them in their Kindergarten playground

Numerous number systems beyond the real:
complex numbers, octonions, omnions which can eat whole black
      holes.
It's axiomatic that your personal history, preferences, how you feel
account for nothing at all.

$30 buys a flock of chickens for a needy family (International Rescue
      Committee)
$29 gets a girl a school uniform (CARE), for $300 you can stock a fish
      pond (Heifer International)
$69 can start a female entrepreneur in the sewing business (Mercy
      Corps)
$5 will buy a bed net that protects a family from mosquitoes (Against
      Malaria)

20th century experiments demonstrated that electrical charge is
      quantized; that is, it comes in
multiples of individual small units called the elementary charge, e,
      approximately equal to 1.602
x 10-19 coulombs (except for particles called quarks which have
      charges that are multiples of
1/3e).

Why has the experimentalism of the avant-garde, which has failed in
      the novel, succeeded in
poetry? Because poetry is always experimental; while the novel, on
      the contrary, by its nature,
cannot be . . . which is to say that experimentalism is synonymous
      with poetry, and that applied
to the novel, it leads simply to the substitution of the novel with
      poetry. --Alberto Moravia

Man made the town, Fibonacci inflated zero to be the wheel
around which the universe turns and language is the soul
walking and talking quietly or going angrily to war.
"Counting is in its very essence magical, if any human practice is at all.
      For numbers are things no one has ever seen or heard or touched."
      As are words.

Joan Didion thought the scariest stanza in all of poetry
begins Row, row, row your boat gently
down the stream. The elements, the material penumbra,
irresolvable for the mortal, readily dissolve in words and numbers.

i hope, i try to hope
--to believe--
believe me, i try
to trust in trust i think i feel, or think or know
there isn't any code that satisfies
though maybe there's an uber-uber-ultra-meta code beyond what even codes can mean?
meh.
i enjoy the hypothetical,
Paris in a bottle, fairness for all sentient beings, faith in nothing comprehensible,
an English teapot circles Jove from afar
or all that's uncontrollable, for some all-purpose good to decorate the brackish, ocean truth.
and uncertain science is another case,
mistrusting all, testing daring thoughts with razor sight,
to sharpen speech and challenge all
to flex the truth into a fitness ground on which to stand, objective stern
and method doubt to peer and scan the detail bare, denude minutiae
into ever smaller parts, expanse of raw and empty space attuned,
to vibrant nothingness rebound
muons, gluons, tauons, quarks and bosons --Higgs the boon for popular appeal,
to bridge or monumentalize the science-mystic gap
appall the ghosts that Galileo keeps for company
i enjoy the fantasy,
dragons in a flask, perfect love for all, dancing in the dark in joy regardless of the shutter thicken dust

punto / contrappunto (patty m /nat)
(on the why of messaging, on the Underground HP)

none can fly,                          all can fly
except in words,                   in deeds, indeed,
yet others turn                      those who believe turn
lead into gold,                       golden faerie dreams real,
penciled in the salvation     hints inked upon the skin
of the host, the blessing       are the blessings of the host,
of solving great puzzles.      deeds of salvation solutions.

Yet unbeknownst for many.  known to all
its jiggling all the quarks,      the clashing of the neutrons
spinning electrons that          within all of our protein protons
affect many,                             effected upon each,
invisible all is hidden.            where all was hidden, now visible

the message that isn't             let our acts speak ever louder
transmitted,                             realized,
holds no power, yet it             a time for action
remains a black screen            for each message, now an action    
in the catacombs                      in the clarity of daylight
waiting, waiting there,            no longer waiting,
millions of little pieces            each action a deed
when finally viewed                the summation total
                 
                                 grows gargantuan
                               funneling radiation
                                     from the sun.

Climbing roofs,                       to the streets leaping
sliding down drainpipes       knocking to open all doors
to the street,                             filling the stadiums & squares
I'll wait with you,                   no laggards, all in attendence
            
                                         they will come,
                                         poet after poet,
                                    spreading the word,
                              words to deeds, each of us
                           a messenger and a conductor,
                            orchestrating the symphony
                                        of revelation.
              Patty m.                                                       Nat

Awake.
Rise to meet
The day that greets you.
Do not rise to meet
The day you hope for
Or the day you fear.
The world is millions of
Quarks and neutrinos
Passing through our bodies each day.
The world is protons and electrons
Spinning in perpetuity and decaying.
The world is atoms and valance bands
Bonding into molecules and cells
Building organs and tissue.
The world is people and plants and animals
Feeding on each other to survive another day
In city streets and freeways
And states and nations
And continents and oceans
Under an atmosphere
By a moon
In one solar system
Of one galaxy
Of a universe that has hundreds of billions of them.
And space.
Most of all space.  
Empty and marvelous.
Relax.
There is time.
Time to greet the day.
Not the day you hope for
Or the day you fear
But the day that is.

Alabaster Archipelagos
Benevolent Beauty Beaming
Constructive Contradictive Creative Contemplations
Dante's Darling Dances Deliberating Denominatives
Effervescent Escapisms Endearingly Emerge Elusive Edens  
Fantastic Flamboyant ******* Flamed Fabulous Fiery Flickerings
Gorgeous Garden Gim'memores Gaudied Garnishing Gasps
Heavenly Hues Humming Heart's Harmonies
Immortaly Impregnated Inspired Ideals
Jessamin Jargon Jacuzzi Jams
Know-how Knacking Knurls
Light-spirited Lovers
Merge Magnificent
Naked Nocturno Nights
Omnipresent Ousia Over Odeons
Palpitations Perfect Peaks Pi Paws
Quintessential Quality Quarrels Question Quarks Quietness
Rododendron's Richameters Rescued Raw Reeling Ruby Realms
Sentient Syllabic Sapfo's Splendidly Spirited Semantics
Turning Turner's Timeless Timeless Twinklings
Unified Undulatory Unsolved Unicorns
Velvety Venice Voyages
Wanton Wantings
Xsylophone Xsantiphas
Yearnin' Yuki's Yen
Zed's Zealous Zen-it-hall Zeppelins

The night reveals more than just the stars
And moons and worlds and Milky Way bars
For the dark matter as a backdrop to the cosmos
Will one day rip its space-time fleece
But when and where, you’ll never know

Stars are like flowers and warrant no rebirth
From the gaseous remnants light years from Earth
For accretion pulls me in like your nebula cries
At the event horizon of a black hole *****
That gladly consumes my coy little lies

Watch them all burn and fail, once fiery *****
And consummate a lifespan for no reason at all
Churning in a chaotic standstill of time
Those supernova dreams and aspirations
Ultimately useless, but in all ways, sublime

Why do they exist and makes them die?
From the quantum quarks to the red giant eyes
I am searching for answers in an ignorant space
On a planet revolving on separate realities
Revolving on a path with a polluted trace

We sit in circles round an astral plane
Without questioning logic and something to gain
But like a star’s supernova, I’m ready to burst
Return from space and find our sun mid-stellar explosion
Eager to stand up and feel it first

It seems like a good idea,
A universal common currency,
Available to everyone.

It seems like a good idea,
Quarks are the basic building blocks
Of all atoms and molecules.

It seems like a good idea,
With the right energy they can
Convert into anything.

It seems like a good idea,
To recycle all to quarks.
No waste. Available upon demand.

It seems like a good idea,
Storage piles by type.
Up, down, straight, charmed, bottom and top.

It seemed like a good idea,
Until realizing everything can disappear,
“Cashed In”

It seemed like a good idea,
Even air becomes a commodity
To be sold/ controlled.

Does it seem like a good idea?
Could humanity ever be trusted?