"sagan" poems
two days
before we loaded the car
with what seemed like the entirety
of my heart and belongings
to move me across the state to attend college,
my baby brother found me on the kitchen floor,
crying
about the microwave.
well,
not just the microwave.
he found me in a crumpled up heap,
sobbing that this day
would be the last i had
to microwave things
in
this
particular
microwave.
i couldn’t justify my lament then.
my dad chalked it up to ***
my brother called me a drama queen,
and my mom told me i needed to eat less microwaveable things.
but i think i might’ve figured it out now.
five months later.
y’see, i grew up an ARMY brat.
attended five different elementary schools,
two separate middle schools,
one high school,
and two colleges.
i was never good at saying goodbye,
but i’m a pro at walking away.
i found out quickly
that while the faces and names
of my friends and classmates
change from state to state,
the character tropes
stay basically the same.
people and places become such replaceable things.
i worry,
a lot,
about being a replaceable thing.
there are talented people in this world.
people that can divine the past and future
from coffee grounds and tea leaves.
but can anyone here tell me what kinds of awful things my footsteps say about me?
there are boot marks,
with my name on them,
in places i know i should never have been.
and clumps of dirt stuck to my heels
that have been with me longer than some friends have.
i sat on the floor last night
while my love explained physics to me.
he told me
that gravity is a constant force,
and of course,
the earth’s gravity affects each and every one of us.
but our individual gravity affects the earth as well.
according to newton’s third law,
the earth pulls of me
with the same force that i pull on the earth.
my mass disrupts space time.
carl sagan once told me
through the clarifying prism of the television screen,
that we are all stardust,
collapsed suns
and black matter.
we belong to no place.
i belong to no place.
i belong to no place.
i don’t cry about the microwave anymore,
i don’t waste my tears on saying goodbye.
i know that every thing and every one has their time,
and sometimes that time is brief.
it’s a hard pill to swallow,
ultimately my favorite self descriptor is ‘infallible’.
but somedays, i fall
just to stand up and see:
the sun still rises,
the earth still turns,
the microwave still makes bomb-ass chicken nuggets,
and i am still here.
Nov 16, 2016
Nov 16, 2016 at 11:28 AM UTC
Sweet Earth, each molecule of me has come from you.
Sesame seed, broken into amino acids and calcium,
became my tiny bones; bananas, potassium,
the cells of my brain.
If we could trace each atom back, we'd find
Kansas, Iowa, Ecuador, Spain.
And further still, through unimaginable millennia,
these same atoms --the very same-- were flung from a supernova,
only to recombine, here, on Earth.
"Of star-stuff, are we made." Carl Sagan said.
And then (when I'm dead)
the same in reverse:
the atoms' slow dispersal:
pulled in by roots, washed by rivers, melted in magma,
blown, finally, to smithereens by the exploding sun....
Star-stuff, once again, become.
Aug 1, 2017
Aug 1, 2017 at 2:33 PM UTC
The sun sank in the tendrils of the winter winds
Light quickly faded
The long night begins
What is our hope for the spring to come beyond this winter?
The old rulers are dying, their grasp weakened
Their desperate ****** clawing for power falters
What will the youth of the world build?
Overthrowing the gray tired old men with no vision
Will there be a new light glowing in an abandoned barn?
An opening of joy to a time of new growth?
It is now dark in the cavern
The animals have bowed their heads
Fearing the burning world that surrounds
Glaciers melting, deserts blowing
Is there a song that will lead us to
A new morning, Sagan's galaxy rise?
With a billion suns shining?
Or will we crouch in the corners again
Fighting for any lethal advantage
Sacrificing the world?
We should pray
Dec 21, 2011
Dec 21, 2011 at 10:54 PM UTC
nobody gives a ****
about poetry
or books
charles bukowski
or siddhartha
nobody gives a ****
about the universe
or extra terrestrials
carl sagan
or that we are stardust
nobody gives a ****
about Led Zeppelin
or Pink Floyd
Joni Mitchell
or Nirvana
nobody gives a ****
except for me
Jul 19, 2013
Jul 19, 2013 at 12:27 PM UTC
If Stephen King was black
Obama would not be president
Segregation would exist all over again
OJ would have gotten guilty without a trial
Except the black part would be technologically advanced
cars that navigate themselves
Sonic energy distribution
portable wings
the Rockateer would also therefore be black
Disney Land would be scary and real
Darwin would have been black
Go go Gadget’s engineer would be black
Malcolm X would have been mixed race
Carl Sagan ran the blackest gang in Oakland
If Stephen King was black
Therefore
Stephen Hawkings is black too
Einstein invented Compton in ten minutes
On a coffee break
The bees Einstein was referring to are the African Killa bees
And Einstein was the father of Wu tang
Stephen Hawkings hangs out with Mike Tyson and Alicia Keys
The Black Panthers like every other morning in the blackest house Washington DC
Made me eggs benedict with fresh eggs and ham
Dr Seuss is therefore black by association
Aunt Jemima would run the FDA and tap maples trees in the Berkshires
But she is white now
America would turn a blind eye and play more volley ball
and in us
God would trust
Jun 11, 2016
Jun 11, 2016 at 11:35 AM UTC
In Memory of Carl Sagan
his pale blue
sense of wonder
suspended
in a sunbeam
taught beauty in
the faint sensation
of our atoms
put together.
a legacy of
dust and stars
billions upon billions
of stars
I saw the sky and
endless possibility
stretch over me like
broken shackles
form the past
and we remain the
momentary masters
of a fraction
of a dot.
© Ben Ditmars 2014
Jul 24, 2014
Jul 24, 2014 at 2:22 PM UTC
Sung and did not miss, watch this, where'swung
a dub when we need vees lots and lots of vees
the first friendly used many vees where we use double yous
vees and bees sound so much alike, s'ard to tell
Simultaneous, as always,
other-ther things begin and end while I am contrating on
a single point being made
on a single pin,
which is
bearing witness to my assertincertainty that at least
one thousand three hundred and ninety-two messages in lieu of angels,
numbering in the billions if Sagan was right,
fit
per pineal node post initial exterior inhalation and that first draft
look at this will you wontyou willyou wontyou
one thousand three hundred and ninety-two
guitar pickers in Nashville,
Ten percent of whom are sworn to sing Rocky Top
at every open mike in town every Saturday night
and we survived, didn't starve or go plumb crazy, though we tried.
It's good to be alive and remember imagining being
abundantly more alive, and
you know
or not, I can't say.
Did you read how Paradise, California burned for lack of rain?
We heard, Down here in the Lagunas.
All kinds o' folks prayed all kinds o'ways, and it rained.
Mud-makin rain.
Is it wrong to think the rain was called, if you can't imagine
rain obeying a request for the jetstream to dip?
Not here, we think right happens
right here on purpose
if you can imagine that a prayer,
wave of a wing tip, an eagle's
with permission.
this is the eagle wing effect, rightused,
should any attribute this to butterflies in China or Brazil.
The eagle acknowledges the Pine Valley hummingbird
who consented to make its final migration,
so the rain had a path to follow.
Dec 6, 2018
Dec 6, 2018 at 8:21 PM UTC
Oh Holiday Tree, Oh Holiday Tree
We named you inoffensively.
Your boughs have been de- Christianized
Rededicated to mankind
Oh Holiday Tree, Oh Holiday tree
takes all denominations
Oh Holiday Tree, Oh Holiday tree
Enjoyed by Jew and Pagan.
You twinkle with a million lights
like the Universe of Carl Sagan.
Oh Holiday Tree, Oh Holiday Tree
Takes all denominations.
Oh Holiday Tree, Oh Holiday Tree
No Creche beneath your branches
Atop your pine- No Star Divine
instead a golden dollar sign
Oh Holiday Tree, Oh Holiday Tree
takes all denominations
Dec 16, 2011
Dec 16, 2011 at 9:17 PM UTC
What is life
What is it's meaning
Age old questions since the brain of **** sapiens developed abstract contemplations
I wonder,
Could it's meaning be entirely subjective
And that life is simply a matter of perspective
We live in a vast and seemingly infinite universe
Isolated on this tiny grain of dust that we like to call Earth
To quote Sagan, on it
"Everyone you know, everyone you love,
Everyone who was,
Every human being you've ever heard of,"
Lived here
And that thought might be daunting
The complexities and mysteries of the cosmos may be haunting
But maybe we can find peace
In the inevitable fact that our existence will one day cease
So I open my mind to the thought,
Why should we worry about everyday grief
When to me,
This entire concept provides a sense of relief
May 1, 2017
May 1, 2017 at 3:15 AM UTC
And Carl Sagan
Would have said:
See,
This here
Is us.
We are but
Flecks of dust
In this vast region
Of space and time
Or so all the astronomers
Gravely would
Have us say.
And who are we
To argue?
When God created the universe
We were an afterthought:
It is possible.
Breathed life into us
And left us
To float
And spin
And twist like tiny
Wind up toys
And see for ourselves
One day the
Irony of it all. See
Maybe past it,
Around it,
Bend over sideways
And squint
And leer
Over ourselves
And towards
The slit-narrow
Windows of
Our homes,
And look
Forward.
And trace the
Hums of colors
Hanging forth
On the edge
Of our galaxies.
And come forth
And marvel at
The magnitude of
Our inheritance.
Feb 5, 2015
Feb 5, 2015 at 10:15 AM UTC
On a mote of dust,
suspended in a sunbeam.
Oct 18, 2015
Oct 18, 2015 at 10:05 AM UTC
You wanted to separate Your sickness from your genius.
Donate to each of your brain hemispheres the resposibility
to deal with your differente delusions.
You wanted to be a little bit more morbid than genious or vice versa.
Never is such equal amounts.
You wanted fame, whatever it was the side of the coin.
You wanted to defended the colors of Manson.
You wanted to defended the colors of Sagan.
But You are stucked in a spiral where you aspire to breath
the air that only the freedom, of being something without conscience to self judge
or being something the world wont even dare to judge, can give.
But You are not so morbid... or so genius.
You're just like everyone else. In equal amounts.
Oct 7, 2013
Oct 7, 2013 at 3:43 PM UTC
they say when you put your finger into the sea
you're connected to the whole world
but when i touch your skin...
i feel like i'm connected to the whole universe
to every atom in your body which was once a part
of some other being, some other thing
star, water, air, earth, animal, human
and when i think about it more and more
seems like i'm attached to you because
maybe - just maybe - some atoms in my body
were once part of some other being,
some other thing, along with yours.
and i believe more and more in carl sagan's quote that
"we are not figuratively, but literally stardust."
Feb 5, 2016
Feb 5, 2016 at 4:02 PM UTC
Creeping out of my head
they're sprawled across the floor
all hopes are dead
and laying there.
I have no want to go back to school,
although knowledge has always been my passion.
I can't even recall facts that I used to know,
like the creases on the back of my hand,
Music would radiate from my room
Either the guitar
the record player
or my computer would blast ballads
of love and of hate
but I can't even remember a single song
by the Foo Fighters.
And I used to know them all.
There is no love of knowing like there used to be
no drive for novels
short stories or poems,
I don't know how I am going to manage
the creativity that my life
will desire from my brain.
every desire to trip on acid
or philosophize like
Carl Sagan and Sigmund Freud...
or both
Dead as letters on this keyboard.
I used to be bright, long haired and free
I knew just about everything
and would be up to try anything,
but something happened and now
its flowing through the cracks,
I wanted to be cool
I wanted to be new
a smart boy,
with secrets of which
only some knew.
brain dead and sad
all my life draining
and I don't know what to do.
Now I'm a corpse
in a shallow grave,
if two feet above the my dreams
and queen sized
is shallow
Apr 30, 2013
Apr 30, 2013 at 12:03 AM UTC
The cosmos makes me cry
Like televised life
That lights my mortal eyes
Carl Sagan to Neil Tyson
Time spliced and atomized
Science realized
Generations inspired
I weep for lost time
I weep for lost space
I weep in wonder
Of what will be
What we lost
What we can see
And all possibilities
Between humanity
And me
Jan 30, 2015
Jan 30, 2015 at 7:19 AM UTC
my bones are yours for holding & we watch the planets collide. your naked knees bowed against my newborn flesh. i don’t trust anyone with the moon & where were you when the world collapsed? the universe broke when i learned to love you, forbidden symmetry found in some terrible tangle of muscles & tissue. i wore my favorite old t-shirt, cotton stained with blotted cream & coffee, you clung to me, frenetic fingers begging for some semblance of union. we so blurred lines became invincible in our quaking presence. we are entwined, a knotted strand of genetic material & starstuff, quoting communist daughters’ poetry & commanding a listen. listen. carl sagan is my personal jesus, I tell you, for nothing is romantic like biology. there are notches in my hips for your resting elbows, your trembling palms, this is where you belong. young eyes cracked open wide, we are spinning into the depths of some luminous night, human shells shed far behind. we are divine. we are celestial. this is who we are.
Jul 9, 2014
Jul 9, 2014 at 12:10 AM UTC
How can you
Let him do this to you?
So many lies
You fail to see through!
You insist on being
An incredibly stupid pigeon!
You don’t make sense,
Not the tiniest smidgeon.
You ******* when Clinton
Got a simple office beejay
But now you let Chump
Grab crotches along the way.
You turn a blind eye
When he steals from us daily,
And let him ruin the US
And continue pillaging gaily.
How can you
Let him do this to you?
So many lies
You fail to see through!
You claim he’s Christian
Though he acts like a true pagan;
You accept his KKK crap
And reject Hawking and Sagan.
You let him do things
That remove other politicians
When he should be
The point of many petitions.
You insist on being
An incredibly stupid pigeon!
You don’t make sense,
Not the tiniest smidgeon.
You parrot his words,
But his talk is completely bogus.
You holler and howl
And you think you’re fooling us.
But he is a charlatan
And often says what he means,
Then tells lies you like
And shoves them in between.
How can you
Let him do this to you?
So many lies
You fail to see through!
Apr 7, 2018
Apr 7, 2018 at 3:23 PM UTC
It is true one mind sees bloodsport in the heavens
and cringes in dread of feeling
kindly, like if that were me, what would I do but die?
nada, right, pass on
thank y'mam, feeling kinda woozy, ever after
seeing
2020 on TV…
Google the violence, ohshitnoknowknow we all know
enough evil to know it don't work like on TV, ever
after one burn, you know, fire works, every time,
to destroy at the touch
thunder, such a holy sound in the desert summer moment
on earth, around the middle,
not too cold in the winter
makes too hot to work in the summer, just
fine.
That's right. Life is like that, if you live in the right state of mind.
Back to the Future, once more, it is
always on or in the library,
ask libby, who in the whole world
before
my generation… we who did not get
stuck wishing we would die
before we got old…
who among us now is we the people minded?
Post war knower bubblers expand
until we pop like matured
pods of what people can be if we live this long.
Trouble your own house, inherit the wind,
as part of the meek inheritance agreement accepted
with the weather.
Earthlings all, hear ye, severe storms are part of the deal.
Free ticts to ever after on Bucky Fuller's spaceship,
Sagan's pale blue dot,
live to tell
we learned no lie may be belived and be survived.
We first saw earth from the moon.
More boomers blew minds beyond their
own imaginings, back then,
listen in radioman's
morphic broadcasts
from Khai Vinh,
the fishnet factory,
legendary - now ifier loosed for the attention paid
do you hear what I hear?
did we know the meaning in happy Sisyphus,
or did we find it known and tag along?
Like a rolling stone.
Aug 22, 2020
Aug 22, 2020 at 5:50 PM UTC
sweet sugar, sugar,
enslaver of untame
able-ibility
Artsy Inquisitive
curious seekers of more than you think you knew,
queue up, ya'll, the crow jest called,
then
this is the stream we walked
into the canyon
to find,
in the shade...
Rest with me near,
in your ear, lying tongue of folly formed boy,
heartfelt,
wishing please please me like I think,
oops, therefore I am, according to the rules,
Mosaic,
Cartesian and Euclidean realities
hold me true, so to you,
holder of self-evident truth by birth,
a mind under authority, as old military-minded,
allegiance oath bound men of honor
are,
at this juncture:
grunt-gutgenug, shield-wall, stone-throw-truer
beings such as I, the author
of this moment we share.
This
on a day of some sort of visit at ion ation,
action, touch and
stick,
stretch for ever, as far as we can tell.
Entangled, tied, un-tied, re-tied, entangle means
religamented relegislated regularity of folds,
religion, for short,
twisted into knots which serve
as springs,
for launching
meaning as well met forms of happen stances, poses
occurring by purest of fortuitous concurrence of Sagan events,
suppose, it is you called to position a self you can be
in each of the postures of the fool.
Foolishness is bound to the heart of the child.
Except, out grip-take-grasp, a being of our kind, ye
become as a little, insignificant, child,
a bit
of a bubble of being, getting ***** to the core,
ye cannot see this realm,
seen through
biome-balancing the future,
Prophesee,
he shall be called holy, hermit, hidden-knower,
digester of soiled persuasive sweets,
discovered in worlds under armoires upright folk
never recall, the taste of pepperment cobwebs
with mud pies, and mammamilch, kein moomilch
from the bovine ilk,
save butter.
Butter and honey shall he eat, 'til he know to choose
the good and leave the evil go on by
each day, in its sufficiency.
Dec 13, 2019
Dec 13, 2019 at 2:03 PM UTC
i always thought
it was the purest form
of romance
the way the stars
fell to the earth
to listen to our wishes
just as i fell so easily
at your feet.
but now, stood underneath
the same moon as you
i realise;
you are all i'll ever need.
Apr 9, 2020
Apr 9, 2020 at 5:48 PM UTC
French emancipation
French women are free, well-educated and elegant,
but spend much time to attract men.
Easy of virtue, yet frantically look to get married to
a wealthy man, who can free them of distressing liberation.
They will intellectualize their misery, see themselves
as Sagan Melancholic, ye yarning to me middle class
housewives worrying about the price of garlic, meet
other wives and talk endlessly about equality.
Nov 1, 2017
Nov 1, 2017 at 4:25 AM UTC