Poised

-for Webster Hood

Why is there a Universe!

How did the Universe come into being!

Shouts of joy or fear or accusation.

Bumping my head against the wall

like La Motta in Raging Bull,

“Stupid!  Stupid!  Stupid!”

Bertrand Russel’s frustration

when, as a child, he asked,

“What is matter?”

And the answer, “Never mind.”

“What is mind?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

The Universe is big

and getting bigger, expanding fast

and ever faster, a basketball

Crossing twenty-four time zones

on its way to the hoop.

Only there is no hoop.

No end to an expanding Universe.

I drift in infinite space

(or no space), an illusion

Of myself in an obscure place,

a floating reflection,

nothing holding me up.

What’s nothing’s circumference!

Pi and light—

the defining functions.

A circumference of no-space expands

@ speed of light towards a critical radius.

The impalpable algebra of infinity.

This U

a sub-atomic structure

of a larger U.

No U, just dots on a time line,

or like a bulb on a timer

on/off.

Vacuum soup. Eternal Mind.

An egg, a holy word, a string.

Winos and zinos in stasis.

Black bodies, black holes, blue lights.

Anti-matter, negative space and big bangs.

The quarks of love and strangeness.

And the quirkiness of God.

No limits: multiple Universes.

Limits: a one-night stand.

Singularity is the “instant”

the Universe appears, every region

squeezed into a single point.

 On an axis of time.

Poised.

A=Πr²-1/Threshold/+1E=MC²

Empty: does not exist,

has never existed,

will never exist.

Empty: has potential to exist.

Primordial mind pool.

Heap of awareness.

What is truly empty!

Every minim has stuff—

even without mass, there’s spin.

Exists and not-exists at the same time.

Either/or, neither/nor, both and.

Nothing spinning—no word for this.

Given previously annihilated U,

then there’s potential

for a new U to come into existence.

Things are already out of hand

by the time the Supreme Source

spontaneously gives birth to U.

Bodhisattvas in a lowrider cruise by

with automatic weapons in their laps.

I hear them peel out

On the corner of Hall & Piezzi,

laying down a streak of rubber

before their Dunlops dig in.

A mirror in the void.

A flight of photons combat

the resonate emptiness.

Can’t see the bullets coming.

A bullet on the charts—

and one to the heart.

Spirit tries to reach me

but hits an event horizon

like a bug on the windshield of a car.