I am slowing down as you are speeding up and we pass at an
angle to time
They go up and we move down with the vast oceanic swells
between us
Rotating slowly I see the beauty of the stars and galaxies
all around us
Spinning too fast in my time I became disoriented and
confused
I am folding up my ragged tent as you stake your newest
claim
Her mother can no longer stand but your child has just
learned to crawl
I am passing you as he is passing me and we cannot yet get
out of their way
There is a new well in your village and we celebrate by our
swimming pool
I read my book as you send one-fingered messages off
somewhere into the ether
The snow that sent you off the road was welcomed by the
farmers
We carved different ellipses around an invisible center of
gravity
They waste more than they can ever use as we eke by on
castoff remnants
I traveled quite slowly but was struck head-on by a speeding
semi
When at last I returned it seemed nothing had changed but no
one recognized me, either
The loss of the microscopic diatoms spelled disaster for the
whales
Parts of seconds were to seconds as seconds were to the age
of the universe
Her long lifetime could not be seen on the smallest of
geologic time scales
All their simpering adulation could not push his boat across
to heaven
We pass closely heading in different directions in all four
known dimensions
Their silly propaganda changes timbre, Doppler shifting with
the passing election
We observe a planet perturbing its sun as we are swarmed by
microscopic mites
We attack our enemies while trillions of our cells hungrily
struggle for their blood supply
Gentle winter sunlight shows the soft side of nuclear fusion
on a truly massive scale
We destroy expensive, sophisticated satellites with simple
high-speed brute force collisions
I am spinning slowly around in circles but you - You
are really making a mark
A sun-glassed business woman phoning in a leased car
distractedly strikes a fawn
I am sliding down the hill smiling, never to ascend again
He still climbs upward, his fatigue masked by the
anticipation of the run
We both stand quite still as my train leaves you behind at
the station
I briefly continue moving in small arcs after stepping off
the merry-go-round
This seemingly small increase in temperature rippled through
the biosphere
The insects hatched early, the chicks starved and the trees
were decimated
My bobber went down just as you roared by shouting hoarsely
from your speedboat
I sat down to be served as she struggled with the wood for
their cooking fire
Our music and fireworks filled the air but not a sound went
into space
I paused behind my muddy ox as your silvery jet gleamed far,
far overhead
The difference in our ages would make a full lifetime for
someone else
Our fossil bones would mix and date to plus or minus a
thousand generations
The look in the eyes of the mutely destitute mother spoke
too much to me
He thought disdainfully of all the little words he could
ever hope to write
The poverty, filth, sickness, slave labor and lack of hope
were as nothing -
Given the wondrous future paradise he learned of in the
magnificence of the mosque
The clockwork universe was underpinned by the chaos of
quantum uncertainty
Our most basic assumptions proved devastating to our
ecological niche
I lay on my back with arms outspread in a field bright with
spring flowers
20000 miles above, a geo-synchronous satellite moved right
along with me
I breathed deeply as my beautiful vehicle turned oxygen into
gases, poisonous to me
You survived by cutting firewood as your goats denuded the
drying hillsides
He had his two sons and their daughter-in-laws, so he did
not work any more
He strove hard to attain a corporate jet and to earn
a 7 figure bonus every year
She remembered as a child that it snowed very heavily and it
was always cold
Now, her obese youngsters went about smirkingly in baggy
shorts and tees all year round
Each small change was imperceptible but the first and last
photos were truly of different men
The runners showed amazing speed, but you casually drove by
them so much faster
Dinosaurs dominated the earth for 160 million years but left
here 65 million years ago
Our written history began about 5000 years ago with simple
bookkeeping records
The sunlight that sustains me takes 8 minutes from its
surface to my forehead
Four and a half years later, at 186k mps, it reaches the
very nearest star
He looked at me with those soft brown eyes and I just had to
stroke his ear
A long line of crowded stinking semis brought more cattle to
the slaughterhouse
I am slowing down as you are speeding up, but for a while we
have communications
I stand still on this rotating earth, orbiting the sun which revolves about the
Milky Way as it moves towards constellation Hydra at a mere 600 kilometers per
second
Cantor’s diagonalization
argument for uncountability > infinity: The real numbers is an
extraordinarily special set. If one were to graph the real numbers on
a line, any segment on that line contains the same cardinality of
points as does the whole line itself.
It’s
far too long for me to plan for any future
It’s
far too long for my constrained imagination
It’s
far too long to engage simple emptiness
It’s
far too long for even eternal love to last
There’s
just too much time after this blue-green-white earth is gone
There’s
just too much time when my memories are thinned beyond recognition
There’s
just too much time to be totally senseless, thinking nothing
There’s
just too much time to be far less than alone
It’s
way too much to even outline
It’s
way too much to hold inside
It’s
way too much to get a grip on
It’s
way too much and still, there’s so much more
I
have extra time that I did not even have to save
I
have extra time unfolding like a burden I cannot hope to lift
I
have extra time growing longer and more overwhelming
I
have extra time moving ever faster beyond my shrinking comprehension
I
have nothing to do and no way to get it done
I
have nothing to do and all the time in the universe to do it
I
have nothing to do then and do not even know it
I
have nothing to do and cannot get over it
I
don’t have to work anymore or ever again
I
don’t have to work because there are no workdays
I
don’t have to work and I have no boss
I
don’t have to work because I flow like water
Freedom
at last without any more choices to be made
Freedom
at last chained in molecular compounds
Freedom
at last in the vast black and near-vacuum
Freedom
at last at so close to absolute zero
I’d
be happy to live in eternal sorrow
I’d
be able to get by with constant pain
I’d
be alright with poverty and suffering
I’d
be better off than unconscious in that empty and unknowable void
