Maternal Gravity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V-R3bHxuw8

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It was once believed that objects

fell because they longed to reunite

with Mother Earth. But then when

his bright telescope-amended eyes

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began to re-write principles and give

mathematic birth to truth suggesting it

was otherwise, Galileo would provide

the proof in 1632 that Destiny decreed

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he must devise, inspired by the brave

heretical Copernicus and making way

for Isaac Newton who, in 1687, in full

flower of his genius, as if he had

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received its laws from God, conceived

his vast Principia, whose academic

suavity elaborately would with elegant

precision undermine and redefine

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the inexplicabilities, the premises,

proclivities, as they’d been thought

to be, of gravity. That is, until

Einstein upended it with relativity.

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But still, the old belief that objects

fall because they long to reunite with

Mother Earth supplies to us far better

reason for descent, in fact requites

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the feverish desire for her love we hide

behind a show of calm surmise that

physics springs no less than we do from

maternal turf. A mother is why we arise,

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and why we fall. She is the land, the air,

the surf, the flood, the draught, groaning

quake, lonely squall. Mother said she

was the only explanation for it all.

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First of All

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dehFn5l1bGk

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23^rd street

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First of all, please know that the entirety of New York City

fits in my back pocket – no one part of it is any distance at all

from any other once you’ve mastered the subway which

existentially erases distance. Think about it. You walk down

the stairs in a hole in the street, you wait for a train, or rather

you wait for a door to open in a compartment that pulls up

in front of you and you step in and sit down and three, maybe

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34^th street

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four or five or six times more the same door opens and people

walk in and out, and finally the door opens a seventh time

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42^nd street

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onto the platform which features symbols (words and/or

numbers) you associate with your destination and you get

out and walk up the stairs through another hole and you’re

there. Or rather in another here. Where is distance even

noticeable in that transit? And what have you done to make

the transit? Let’s go over it again. You descended into a hole

and waited for a compartment to appear, sliding in on two

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59^th street

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parallel metal tracks offering you through its opening doors

ingress to an enclosure into whose premises you walked a few

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125^th street

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steps and sat down on a bench and eventually according

to various expectations being met that you had grown to harbor

meanings and identities to give you a sense that things were

knowable, you got up and ascended through another hole to find

yourself here. So you see, although we go up and down and in

and out of many holes in New York, they never take us there.

They’re only ever here. There’s also no time. There’s only eternity.

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145^th street

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As you learn when you sit and discover you can’t detect time

any more than you’re able to know where you are besides here.

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168^th street

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You see, the time and space continuum is a hoax. But not

a nasty one. Reality can only serve up to us those parts of itself

that we can imagine. That’s precious little of its whole. The needy

Human Soul is on the dole. It has to be carefully fed the few things

it can digest. Then it must get a lot of rest. Is there more for it

to learn? Beyond measure, yes. Will it develop the wherewithal

to swallow it all and understand? One can’t begin to guess.

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175^th street

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Do You Do What You Do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoomDMWIuHI

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Their bodies are strangely configured, these beings

impaled by two rackets which seem to suggest they

would like to be thought of as two tennis players.

They cannot be said to be carrying them, except

as a body may “carry” a spear piercing layers of it

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in the side, somehow not falling down in the throes

of demise one expects at the end for a creature who

dies, or sensibly ought to be dying. Surrounded by

bubbles and vertical strands, they seem to lack

hands, though they stand on assortments of feet.

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My markers and pens commandeer every day what

comes out on each new page of paper. I probably

sound like I’m lying, or that my already small mind

has turned into a vapor when all I can think to report

about how I come up with them is that I sit down

and draw. I’m bored with repeating I do not intend

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what I can’t not agree nonetheless that I do. (This

riposte long ago became coy and too-too.) But do you?

Know why you do what you do? How do you fathom

what “real” is? I’d love to have spread down in red

on a scroll rolled out boldly in front of the eyes

in my head simple words that reveal what the deal is.

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Premises of a Religion that Never Caught On

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYRUtSwIeG8

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The purpose of Existence is to drag

as many colors, shapes and other

business in as you can leave behind,

and then to face the dark without them,

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blind. To like this, you must be the kind

that likes things, not the kind that doesn’t.

Your eyes must never cry. But really not

to fret: dry or wet, the question eyes will

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neither have to ask nor answer is what

vision is, or could be for, or was, or wasn’t,

could have been, or might eventually be.

“What you see, although you’re blind,”

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you’ll hear from something that identifies

itself as Mind-of-God, “is me.” While

your heart is beating, what you feel about

this may indeed be of some academic

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interest to somebody else somewhere,

perhaps, but it’s unlikely you will meet

him. If you sightlessly perceive him passing

by, though, and he smells delicious, go

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ahead and grab and eat him with impunity.

Mind-of-God approves of any form

of eating. At least until your heart stops

beating. (Life is meaningless if fleeting.)

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When will that occur? (In passing, whom

you might to decide to eat, of course,

may not be him, but her.) When will you

be gone? Everybody leaves at dawn.

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