Quantum Sagas

Warning Flares

Holding this flame high
acting on impulse
in wont of oxygen
seeking the energy
of combustion,
maneuvering slightly
tendrils shimmering
flaring into
the daylit sky.

This flame is comsuming;
a plasma envelope
message container
can't be handled
and left to burn.

This flame is fading...
but with confidence
that I might win your heart
I will set myself ablaze
cobalt with fire
and run, laughing,
into the darkness.

smw [02.24.06]

Your Lullabye

When you came,
shimmering and unabated like a raging fire
in a tall stand of autumn oak,
(like a reflection on a choppy sea)
your graceful ambiance was an esoteric blue
like the eyes that light your face --
charged with the phosphorescence of your longing
and whose filtered, viscous glass
displayed a transposed image of myself
while we hovered within
the hushed hours of an unexpected evening.
Exchanging affection like quanta of energy:
invisible/infinitesimal,
and quickly building structure as if
pixel by pixel,
the immediate world was but an image
glancing across a screen.
And all that you were was tangible.
There in front of me,
smiling with the kind of warmth
that could only exist in a single instant,
radiating with raw honesty
from such a beautiful face.

When these photographic imprints appear,
flashed into memory without color or time,
yet contoured (like a line drawing) and spatially infinite,
pivoting on impossible angles
and just as deftly disappearing
along with my focused, good-natured intentions.
My thought becomes staggered,
and yet the imagery,
re-occurring in perfect chronological order,
frames enduring for a fraction of a second,
contain such annunciated cues to haunt me perpetually.
Sharing the truth loudly
and cautious to take each step,
for fear that I become selfish
and proceed much too quickly
to have all of you in one instant.

When I awoke this morning, early,
and even before the dawn,
the brisk winter air
was forcing its way into my room.
I was cold and empty with overwhelming desire,
met as though I were lying in nervous wait,
to have you here beside me again.
Laying together and gracefully interwoven,
like the very fabric of space
that ceased to exist between us,
when we could not possibly
be closer to one another,
and this falling rain; this minimalist lullaby
could be singing us back to sleep
while the cycle of your quiet breathing
and the subsidence of your heartbeat
softly hums the melody in canon.

When you turn to go
in the moment I have been preparing myself for,
that only exists in my imagination,
and yet so vividly it were as though
I was predicting future events,
like some love-bound prophet --
know that always I speak honestly of this,
where I would do nothing less
than smile, while watching you walk away,
having you believe that I'm okay.
When every fiber of my being
is longing to explode,
in a supernova of emotional intemperance,
exhausting my final ounce of energy;
gratuitously exploiting gravity
to pull you to me.
What this expression instead is hiding
is the focus of a deep concentration,
as I have begun to count the seconds
until I see you again.
But for here and now
before the generated vacuum of your departure
I wish it to be without abandon or concern
marked with simple veracity and unfettered
that sadness may never have a place to express itself.
Even if you should go,
forever into the ill-choreographed dance of life,
I wish you to keep dancing
and I will forever play the music.

. smw . 020706 . 2351 .

Finding Land

Like light leaving the room;
Leaves from their branches,
Departing without departure.
Wordlessly and lacking compassion,
Dissipating; dispersing,
To return in sporadic fashion.
As in bursts and perpendicularity,
Ever the more confusing to existence.
Like streams and swirled eddies
Intermeshing dynamically.
So, too, does the spirit leave the center
Ringed and shackled
To this bitter, facetious memory.
Falling across the grassy hillock,
Freshly trimmed
Like polished glass.
No friction, no counterweight.
Only paper and silicon
To pull mind to future.
To the apathetic condition.
Embracing comfort in logic,
In reason of the artificial.
Fighting like arguing
With your favorite friend.

.smw. [06.29.2003]

Quagmire

Oh how consistently woeful, you do survive;
Treading in your perpetual sea of sadness,
You sit in a trance.
Do not sulk in your ever-dying standards.
To seek aid from the closest personal space
In a limited universe of conundrums
Is not where the freedom lies.
Like a kindred wayfarer I am, waltzing
Through your quagmire of moral quandaries;
Dilemmas and Consequences.
You with your tortuous ambiguity:
Expressions and innuendos.
Hints, suggestions and allegations.
Would that I would give you what you desire;
That of which you would deserve much more.
For what you are truly in wont of;
In careless desire for...
Is something of which I cannot offer:
Heedless affection and dauntless attention,
Coolest of warmth and most perilous of searing fires.
To have your being perched and heralded
Upon the most grandiose of love's peaks.
If only there were a soul to personify
Your emotions; your essence...
Only then would it seem in perfect tandem arrangement.
Only if the present circumstances
Approached us in a slightly different manner,
Wishes and charity would not be so unrealistic.
If it was easy to add or subtract years
Of wisdom and insecurity,
Then it would be simply so.
To have the equations of happenstance
So easily unmodulated
Would be a gift and a curse at once.
Instead, attrition will wear faith thin,
And the intended, meaningless thoughts
Will sentimentally fade
With passing seconds;
Passing laughter.

-SMW [06_17_02]

Aether

We are the guardians of truth;
The overseers of honorable life.
Fumbling around in a shadowless universe,
Through space and time
Like lost ingenuity.
Laying hands and guiding hope
Saddeningly ignoring our own itineraries.
We stretch to the seams,
Brimming with our own losses;
Only to explode one frail day,
Modicums of starfire.
Nuclear is our enlightenment;
Our rage a stream of fermions.
In mythril silver,
Inelastic and tarnished;
And opalescent gold,
Pliable and methodical
Like the aether through which we glide.

We are the rhythm and the reason;
A claque for the cosmological acts.
Tools for the mundane.
Interested in nothing, soulless...
Nothing more than filaments,
For the sole purpose of photo-kinetics.
Every photon a bit-stream of beautiful thought.
Packets of quanta,
Interchangeable and exchangeable,
Subtracting from the downward spiral of entropy.
Motivated by causal infraction.
Seeking far-sought goals;
Using them as a potential difference.
Using those goals as a foundation
To counteract the absolute sadness
Of being who we are.

We are the march of infidels.
Standing in every doorway,
Sharpening our skills
For the next patron of destruction.
We loathe ignorance and self-deceit,
Abolishing all messengers of sour intent.
Intricate ploys of cyanide and guerrilla tactics,
All meager adversaries to our faith.

We are the harbingers of great intellect.
We are the youth and the central populous.
Absorbing knowledge by every means,
Osmosis to experience
To pleas of manufactured stupidity.
Every synapse and neural network
Firing on pure will alone.
Electrochemical responses
Based on sheer gusto;
A drive to be more than our opponent.
We worship intellect as divine right.
Longing for pi and supersymmetry,
Quantum mechanics and Chaos theory.
Hoping to find the Higgs boson
In some darkened corner of the physical world;
Hovering in the oblivion
That comes by way of hallucination.
Violating text and the laws of nature,
Finding meaning in 1's and 0's.
So shall we process every frame;
Every checksum!
Until we reach heavily encrypted information
And KNOW the answer lies therein.

We are the fulcrum and the pendulum.
We are neglected and passed-over.
Singularities in the modest universe,
We travel beyond the event horizons
Of antipathy and apathy.
Weakened with the lack of feeling,
Always seeing the intrinsic good in everything.
On the backs of dragons;
On the bristles of a broom,
Walking along the eggshells of humanity.
Methodically, we strive to gain new insight
Into the psyche of this world.
Pained by the violence
And the fear of living...
The fear of dying.
Cold is the water
Drip drip dripping
From the faucet;
From the river.

We are the guidance.
We are hiding the truth.
Somewhere within the quantum foam,
Speaking in the language of mathematics.
Interpreted by the few,
Missed by the many.
A pillow of science,
A pellicle from vision.
Swimming and crying out
In a frenzy of spin and charge.

smw [12.19.2000]

Springtime in the Void

for eleven years have i quenched the inferno
that originates fearful at the mention
of your fiery name
rolling off of lips as mountains and tendrils
tracing sunlight through the branches
falling on ever-softening grace.

rival of the soul
dancing in the shallows
forever lurking along the murky strait
never more than a handbreadth's distance
and always so forever arcing
in the distance that falls between
idle madness and intrigue and selfishness

like earth in the hands
glistening and motionless
forever you are slipping; trickling
cutting the air with edges so dull
a maelstrom hovering
in your localized circumference

always flowing
reaching out in streambeds
erosion forever unmasking
the creeping roots
formed of years in silence
without laughter
without mutual comprehension

sides superimposed
the left side null and numb
from streaming without cease
finally winning out of contention
and sparking haphazardly
out of mortal fear

now i stare openly
while rational thought flies transparent
while you speak
following with rain and wind and snow
and speaking in the cipher of time
where loneliness stopped existing
if but for one fleeting instance
when you called upon the flaring moon
and sitting there before me
you became smoke
and forever i inhaled you
'til my lungs thought to burst

and in the imminent explosion
i realized
that night should never come
in your coma of solar windfall
spinning at tangents to your destination
and orbiting in a haze about
my nucleus; my good intention
where the contingent vacuum
was filled with dreaming
of archetypes and monarchy
and your laughter was a collision
of fear and love
and wrenching sadness

for eleven centuries have i
stood in your downpour
with knees buckled in fright
head folded into the gaping emptiness
of my hands
where rain became salty
and stung like sweltering heat
falling from cheekbones
and joining the gathering mire beneath me

and now i stand
raised once again
as if from an afterlife
rejuvenated by your illustrious voice
chords and harmonies
and ever so real smiling
to be there as the mist clears
and standing in the field of your vision

:: smw :: 08.04.03 :: 9.49

Expansion

after moderately basking in your presence
the lack of your being here is a cold, vaporous expanse.
speech is so meaningless to follow the waning vortex of your departure.
gathering impulse on your inconsequential absence,
this momentum may send me quickly towards the breaking waves,
and past, to be dragged down by the undertow.
so you a siren, unintentionally luring me out
with the silence of those words that fall between
that i do not hear except for their echoing in my own mind.

:: smw :: 080803 :: late.early.tired

Worth it?

where do i draw the line?

like a tiger stalking forward,
ever faced with that invisible boundary;
careful not to rustle the brush
in fear that the prey will bolt.

but i do not blend with the grass.
i have no stealth,
and my joints are rusty:
squealing and creaking
with every step i'm not taking.

speaking with a comma
at the end of every sentence,
waiting for the silence...
but always there is noise.
white noise
frothy and silted.

when the night returns,
the monotonous curtain of space
like words saving you from solar rapture,
i will be there
melting, luminescent
(thick film of course).
for i cannot change my skin;
i will never soak up midnight
so well as you.

always in a bubble.
in that static cushion
of misplaced sentences
and misused vocabulary;
in that kingdom of bogs,
foxholes and trenches.

carried away
by a thread of semantics.

there is no future,
only moments
thrown on top of one another
like sacks of concrete
or potting soil.

:: smw :: 090303 :: 2154 ::

Round Corner

as dusk deteriorates
and reality strikes like a matchbook
i'm hit with a squall of coldness
sitting outside in a t-shirt

night is condescending here
and i am amazed that i can see stars
choked by sodium twilight
against the dark blue womb of the sky
and the clouds folded into the backdrop

it's a silent evening
and i am probably the only one awake
everyone else
huddled under their blankets
of misconceptions

it's rare to see stars here
i can actually see orion this night
angled towards the horizon
flying like superman

the stars are here for now
but not like in the country
but i can't go back to the country
not anytime soon
for comfort is not an option

i realize i'll probably die of cancer
and that now i am just wasting time
since i started my life incorrectly
so i must again start anew
why did i used to smoke again?

i remember where i was three hours ago
laying on my bed
sharing my thoughts
and not sharing my thoughts
it's so hard to speak when limited by confusion
but time is well spent
with someone who makes you forget

there i was
staring into your eyes
and time didn't matter
and life didn't matter
and night didn't matter
and cold didn't matter
there were no limitations

i have no faith
except in love
all that matters

i remember where i was
twenty-four hours ago
and now return there

.. smw . 10.05.03 . 0238 ..

Altogether Normal

in a moment of lupine realization it will come upon you
as the second drop of rain does so before a gentle shower;
that had you unhinged your jaw and filled the molten glass
with your warm breath before standing as a child does
in wont of incorrigible affection,
the day may have grown softer, less frenetic...
mellow, ethereal.
that laughing while crying and tasting the aeriform air
heavy with saline on that indeterminate evening
would turn your symbols to paragraphs,
you (perhaps) would have sheared the tether
binding you to your self-sustaining bliss
and retract the curtain who kept the stage
from the intrusion of polished mirrors.

(perhaps) i would have been powerless,
whimpering unintelligibly and pausing in wait
in the blanking room; the oubliette,
for the phrases to trickle as nectar
down the walls into tightly cupped fists.

:: smw :: 08.06.03 :: 00.31