Truth? a lewd's you
in known certain terms:
whether veins, when drowned
hawks a gin (loomin’)
a shin splinters as
mines bore on; why ‘ol
car bonfires grow tired
of a pack o’ lips’ wisp ring,
“Hydra Djinn—
Sine diem purgare nox.”
Redeem and weep
in tents, faces & phrases
met a fizz[i call]y
drunk in jest id bouts
wrested liver's tried & tested [buy con-
testant after contest-
ant] where West lids gaze
in two, the joy of the flame
hungry's gasping for air
[nothing's becoming] bright
berthed of ash-end tombs
lit up in the night.

a warm glow shifts softly
in space & rhythm.
i pull the curtain aside & sit in the back--
a handful of seats, but only one
gets worn, the others
fool the mind into believing
imagination defies physics
to drink from the creative cauldron,
that ever-boiling vessel
churning out new
patterns & threads,
weaving fresh fibers between
spirits & minds.
the holographic hardware,
whirring too fast for ears.

our mind is the web & we spiders
spin the silk,
carefully or sloppily,
connecting the strands to catch
not flies but images,
sparks, bulbs & flashes.
often small, but once caught
emerge as a garden of gems
whose faces refract & reflect
until nearly all gems become one.

what's required is
a bright enough light
with fluid agility,
to illuminate & reflect
the whole nebula through
one, clean face--
perhaps the original gem itself;
for what would our mind be
without that raw crystal
forged in the stars?

The answer is in the quantum world.
Each probability exists in some reality,
As a multitude of collisions bind us
To who we think we are.

We cannot see the coded matrix,
This code to solidity in the face
Of empty space. We are not
creation’s children, but creation itself.

If we never met,
If our paths never crossed
I'd have been zoning out in the void,
a lonely particle.
Me would be the only reality
in that cold dark emptiness.
But we bumped heads,
stuck together,
and BANG!
A universe,
beating hearts,
love.

I

I’m not playing here

this is real

like looking up and wondering a little

about nothing really

clipping thought coupons

into a phone

on the backs of Denny’s’ receipts

that’ll be worth while on sale

maybe a cradle

a rocking chair for an aching back

or a shovel

'cause that's all that really matters

II

but I cannot bring myself to

do what we (brothers) have done

videotapes donutting for unblinking eyes

blurry words, maybe

faster than (the) sea

mathematical and black

reflecting (truth)

what really matters

the violence of things that mean something

that pump the kroovy

that crumple old

inky receipts

thrown

III

they warp the desk

spinning the world into the anaphora of a pale blue dot

a period

a full stop

IV

It looked all right through the windows of
Our cosy sitting room,
The day was light and the sun was bright
But the house was like a tomb,
The other rooms were as cold as hell
With their stalactites of ice,
That dripped from the bedroom ceiling down
To meet the stalagmites.

I’d settled Eve on the couch and spread
A blanket round her arms,
I didn’t think I should tell her, just
In case she became alarmed,
She’d spent a week in the sitting room
For she wasn’t feeling well,
How do you say, ‘We’ve fallen into
The Seventh Circle of Hell!’

They taught us the laws of physics were
Impossible to change,
Gravity, mass, and basic math
Had a certain, definite range,
But men of science had interfered
With the particle known as ‘God’,
They’d built the Hadron Collider and
The results, they said, were odd.

I could have told them how odd they were
When I went outside to see,
My car was covered in mushrooms
And a train sat up in the tree.
A whale was floating beneath the Moon
And a porpoise lay in the park,
The light was bright in the sitting room
But outside, it was dark.

Nothing remained the way it was
For all the colours had changed,
The lawn, the colour of strawberry jam
And the sky was rearranged,
The stars were falling like sequins in
A cluster of drops like rain,
And ice was forming up on the eaves
That tasted like champagne.

I went inside and I slammed the door,
I turned on the News at 6,
They said there’d been an apology
But it wouldn’t be hard to fix,
They’d run the Collider backwards to
The way that they’d done before,
And hopefully, the ‘particle God’
Would be as he’d been once more.

I sat with Eve as the sun went down
And I tried to keep her still,
Away from the hallway mirror so
She wouldn’t scream or squeal,
The lines were deepening on her face
As our lease on life had lapsed,
I hoped she wouldn’t go out today
With the world outside, collapsed.

The sun rose up in the morning as
It had for a million years,
And everything was familiar,
They’d run the thing in reverse.
The News went back to the good old things
We were used to, from before,
Stabbings, murders, infanticide
And that good old standby, war!

David Lewis Paget