Days of Night

"Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation." Rumi

..
Macrocosm
   
Everything we are  
Is a dust mote  
Meandering  
Through a solitary  
Beam  
Of light  
   
It's all relative    
   
..  
   
1. The Observable Universe  
(approximately 93 billion light years in gravitational diameter)  
   
September 5, 1977. We hurl our metal eye into space. As of today, it has traveled over 13 billion miles from the sun. It still sends back images and telemetry and continually receives trajectory instructions.  
   
Satellites beam near instantaneous information across the globe. Instant messages connect loved ones and those who have never met, and those who never will, living disparate lives.    
   
Information saturation has made each interested pair of eyes into a junior philosopher and scientist, just like your humble narrator. Some study the stars, the curious constitution of our environment, we all study each other, distantly. We often unmask are worst selves, behind masks of avatars.  
   
Nations stockpile, lie, maneuver, gather strategically placed allies, endeavor to make them beholden through various forms of support. Countless impoverished nations with names, languages, histories and populations we cannot be bothered to even know exist continue their struggles, inwardly, imposed upon by greater powers, trying to make it through another day.  
   
Acts of war. Acts of terror. Bombs, vehicles turned into weapons, school children riddled with bullets.  
   
Afternoon in the west, in the south of the United States, where spring has sprung early. Warm air, sweat pools on my neck, brow. I traverse the familiar streets and avenues, for a bit of exercise, for a bit of movement.  
   
A mustang waits at the light. Engine revving, metallic nostrils foaming. The occupant sits behind a veil of sunglasses, enjoying the power at his fingertips, focused on returning into motion. Taut in his seat.  
   
Two young men are playing Tupac in a vehicle two behind. Ambitionz As A Ridah. I start belting out the familiar lyrics to the music.    
   
“So many battlefield scars while driven in plush cars  
This life as a rap star is nothing without heart  
Was born rough and rugged, addressing the mass public  
My attitude was fuck it, cause motherfuckers love it  
To be a soldier, must maintain composure at ease  
Though life is complicated, only what you make it to be  
Uh, and my ambitions as a ridah to catch her  
While she hot and horny, go up inside her  
Then I spit some game in her ear, go to the telly, ho  
Equipped with money in a Benz, cause bitch I'm barely broke  
I'm smoking bomb ass weed, feeling crucial  
From player to player, the game's tight, the feeling's mutual  
From hustling and prayers, to breaking motherfuckers to pay up  
I got no time for these bitches, cause these hoes try to play us  
I'm on a meal ticket mission, want a mill, so I'm wishing  
Competition got me ripped, on that bullshit they stressing booyah!”  
   
The gentlemen inside are laughing themselves to distraction. They belt out “West side!” At me in a somewhat mocking but also genial tone. The light changes. The driver of the mustang puts the pedal down. Tires screech at the asphalt, engine whines into motion.  
   
I am still waiting for the light to change at the crosswalk. A pedestrian goes by me. About 30 years old. Tie-dye shirt, faded and worn from many washings. Equally washed out jeans. Flip flops that had seen better days, before many miles calling out their namesake. He passes close, in orbit, on his way. I fix him with my steady, gentle gaze. The shadow of a smile touches my lips, like a fingertip sending the slightest shockwave into still waters.  
   
He stiffens noticeably. Eyes turn in their sockets toward me, then are cast down, then raised. He looks into my eyes and sees..  
   
His disapproving stepfather. Nothing was ever good enough. I’m stupid. He makes me feel stupid. He lords everything he knows over me. I don’t know how to do anything and I am not going to ask him to teach me. He’d just love that. Love to condescendingly speak to me like the child I was when we met.  
   
He sees..  
   
His first love. How cold she was when we reunited. How he knew in an instant she had given herself to another man, and now, there was nothing left of her tenderness but this reminiscence in reunion.  
   
Sees..  
   
His boss at the job he landed as assistant editor at a magazine. Landed it by sheer balls alone, but on the second day, got reamed out by who everyone called, ”the dragon lady” and fled the scene. Tail tucked between his hurrying feet.  
   
Another pedestrian crosses his path. Eyes ahead, doesn’t glance at either of us. Short and thin of build. Features perhaps a shade on the unhealthy side of lean. Hair half in his eyes. He taps the cross walk button as he passes, twice, but continues on without breaking stride, in another direction.  
   
Eyes in space. Satellite mirrors. Information saturation. Avatars.  Nations. Populations. War. Terror. Bombs. Weapons. Murdering children. Mustang. Music. Looking at each other. Looking away. Clicking the crosswalk button without wanting to walk that way. Do you know why we do these things?  
   
To matter.    
        
..  
   
2.  The Lanikea Supercluster  
(approximately five hundred million light years in gravitational diameter)  
   
How do we reconcile these years of violent change. The weather betrays our imbalance and woes. The death and billowing stench of the Salton Sea, microscopic in the lungs of an impoverished child, whose parents, unable to leave, are allowed to place their child on a respirator in a hospital. The bills can crush them later. Billionaires donate to charities, good tax cuts, but, I wonder, why one of them doesn’t go collect this child, this family, and move them into a wing of their palatial estate. One of several. The one they only visit occasionally, off season.    
   
Fires burn. Fires rage, uncontrollably. Firemen strive, endlessly, to contain the blaze. Homes burn. Lives, memories, accumulated within, burn. Is it not cost efficient to gather enough waters from across the earth to quench these flames. Is it even possible to avert the gaze of Sol, to perhaps throw a shading hand in its way. Is there nothing that can be done. Is there nothing in our meager power.  
   
So few of us fatten upon plush cushions of plenty. So many of us suffer, rib bones leaning upon each other, in depression, for support. So few of the fat lift a finger for the starving. So many channels to choose from. Such a difficult decision. Discuss vectors to treat disease, or what celebrity is gaining weight. A planet impoverished most egregiously in compassion. A planet growing bald as the pate of a vulture. Thriving with the hollow march of purposefully poorly made industry. Everything is replaceable. Also, you and me.    
   
Resting, residing beneath the umbra of another span of unproductive hours. Gathers the furrows of flesh in sheets, in heaps, as days of night arise, wings grasp the air, air grasps wings, hand in hand, gently, silently, ascend.  
   
..  
   
3. The Great Attractor  
(theoretically located somewhere between 150 and 250 million light years, at the center of the Lanikea Supercluster)  
   
Hear my voice  
It is the rich  
Deep  
Musculature  
Of the  
Yew  
Swaying    
In  
Tender  
Tones  
   
Feel my calm  
Presence  
Pulling  
My peace  
Continually  
Renewing  
Ceaselessly  
Hoping  
   
Folding under each unmoving palm, the perfectly partitioned hands of the yin yang. Faceless clock. Ticking hands. Force of water. Eroding stone.    
   
4. The Virgo Supercluster  
(approximately one hundred million light years in gravitational diameter)  
   
I remember..  
   
Aliis si licet, tibi non licet    
What gods may do, cattle may not    
   
Your love is the sun that men worship madly and you are totally insane and drunk with that love.    
   
I was your Atlas and the pedestal that held you aloft, my grip upon you was strong. Shifting your face in full winds, feeling you break and scar from your tremulous interior collisions, but could do nothing. Just hold the idea of you. It was inclement weather that made us part ways. I spoke as the Atlantean. I was old with polarizing love and menace. Now, in rebirth, I am young.  
   
Taking on the confines of solid    
Images, imbued with emotion that    
Somehow, comes across to    
You and we are there, united    
Equally, by our shared    
Existence, is when these thoughts were    
Struck and cast, these dice held in hand    
And you, who was kind to stop and    
Grasp  
When fumbled    
All of these were perfectly    
Beautiful    
Just then  
When beheld within the scope of their    
Impermanence    
   
And so, I was half of light, half of    
Dark    
Equinox, I called myself    
A firebrand    
Beside oblivion    
And you heard the furtherance of my tonal tides    
And saw these moments    
Focused    
Through my cyclopean    
Eye    
I wondered what was, from what paramnesia might have    
Called into being, to answer what was    
Missing    
These love desires resonated and bent my    
Soul mind    
Together    
All you had to do is look at me    
Hear the tenors of my    
Heart thoughts    
To know    
Which hemisphere was ruling    
   
Everything that is lost, in time, is renewed. So much goes unsaid, words cannot suffice, but that which goes unsaid, is seen, is heard. Each step is a funeral procession that shrivels, releases and becomes the greater life and each sentiment that began its organic wilt upon inception continues onward, in the great electromagnetic wave of the universe. We are overcome, we rot from our core, outward and bloom anew, into greater horizons.  
   
I was afeared and overcome by dread, I was nothing. Sometimes spasmodic in my movements with a funambulist’s over correcting gait, sometimes still as the same, calm on the surface, focused inward, finding the song of self. I wished I had words to tell you, how much the smallest gesture of warmth had meant to me. How I breathed life into its embers and its coals became all that I had to hold when I was within the grasp of the All Oblivion. Bent over me, broken and immobilized beneath its crushing weight. I wished, hoped, but did not speak. I am speaking now.    
   
Planets rotate with the unstoppable force of their progress through time-space, the concussions rip years from all in their wake. All is wilted as indeed it is distorted by the grip of some mal de mer, and this too is agonizing and beautiful to remember what we were and how we ebbed with the mad chemical intoxications of life. And further still is the beauty to imagine what might be, in the fullness of time.  
   
That which goes into the dark, emerges again. Its passage is fixed through heavens that we do not yet possess plain eyes to see, but know they are there, our anthesis of sentience sure to continually breach these bounds of knowing. Though we are not those titans, we live and move in cycles, and close upon the shoulder of each other’s doomed spectre, in what seemed a final movement, in a continual oscillation of renewals.    
   
Long after we had parted ways    
A short while before we are    
Reunited  
I had been looking close at the Old Book    
Again    
It had occurred to me, then    
Before there was light, there was depth    
   
Look on me, see  
Light  
See  
Depth  
See  
Complexity  
I am more than that which causes me to  
Fear  
   
..  
   
5. The Local Galactic System  
(approximately ten million light years in gravitational diameter)  
   
Hours untabulated  
Freely  
Hours given  
   
Classes in test taking  
In acquisition of  
Employment  
In Microsoft Office  
Direction toward training  
In health care  
Readily offered  
All one need do  
Is ask  
In polite  
Earnest  
Tones  
   
The local library  
Its resources  
Freely given  
On  
Timely  
Loan  
   
I stretch my  
Muscles  
I discipline my  
Diet  
   
I hope  
I try  
I grow  
   
..  
   
6. The Milky Way Galaxy  
 (approximately one hundred thousand light years in gravitational diameter)  
   
Much of the growing trend within this nation disturbs me. Much talk of walls. Much depletion of resources to those in greatest need. Much is thrown behind the feet that stride in rage and mouths of brazen contention. Much is endlessly brayed in separating derision. Somewhere between reasonable dialogue, long neglected compassion and the sanctity of silence, we have lost the spirit of our nation. To accept. Amalgamate. To grow rich in diversity. To strive in hope. In liberty.  
   
My eyes gaze elsewhere. My heart longs to be there. In loving intimacy. However, I labor, slow, deliberately, mindful of the present moment. Toward whatever horizon lay before me.    
   
..  
   
7.  The Local Star System  
 (approximately 65 light years in gravitational diameter)  
   
2005, Spring has sprung, increased light absorption and refraction has warmed the sea, the air, the stones, coaxed new growth, and us. We are warmed and growing. My cousin Patrick and I loiter on the front porch a while, taking in the milder sunlight under the shade of the porch.  
   
A little girl wanders down the street weeping. Not more than 8, little stick legs trudging mechanically, blood seeping from a skinned knee, all her focus upon her pain. Her brow of heavy clouds. Her eyes of rain.    
   
This is one of my neighbor Robbie’s children, I think. He tarred my roof a few years back. Always in and out of jail for a drug problem. I step into the street and ask her, What happened? She doesn’t answer, she changes trajectory toward me. Her hand flies up to her brow reflexively to shade out the light and see. I say, Come over here honey. Let’s take a look at that. She follows me onto the porch.    
   
My cousin’s posture is curiosity and concern from the intent and softened look about his features. I tell him, Patrick, please fill a pot of warm water and wet a cloth and bring it here. He steps into the house without answering. The child’s weeping guffaws are coming in slowing shudders, she looks to me. I take her hand and sit her in a white lawn chair, which dwarfs her tiny frame. I tell her, I’ll be right back. I go inside for the Band-Aids and grab a towel.  I root around in the box and find the big square one.  
   
When I return, he’s waiting with the water, looking anxious.  He has not been out of jail for long, can still barely understand him when he talks. That will improve in time.  
   
I kneel down before her. I say, Okay honey, this is going to sting a little. I pour some of the water slowly onto her wound. She goes rigid, her eyes widen, she wails in pain. I fix her eyes with mine and say,  
   
Okay, I know it hurts  
This is what we’re going to do    
You give me the pain  
Push it to me  
I’ll hold it for you.  
   
Patrick echoes sheepishly but tenderly, Its okay. She moans her tears, little waif, trembling with force. I wait. I pour again. Another round of pain and fear, she wails, though, less. I say,  
   
Okay  
Push push push  
Give the hurt to me  
I’ll hold it  
   
I wait. I pour again. She grimaces, but does not cry out. Her eyes are fixed on mine now. I am with her in this.  
   
I ask her, Where were you going just now? Her eyes grow distant a moment, she braces herself to force out, I’m going home. I say, Okay honey. Did you have school today? She wrinkles her nose and says, It’s Saturday, I don’t have to even think about school til tomorrow! I chuckle and I tell her. Well that’s good. Meanwhile, I am patting the wound with the cloth, then the towel. Now I tear open the bandage and begin to set the tape with gentle pats. She looks ahead. She’s calming. Good girl.  
   
I take a step back and take her hand as I turn, she rises to her feet, unsure at first, as if expecting renewed hurt. She finds her feet, turns and looks up at me. I say, You can head home honey. Please walk, don’t run. She doesn’t say a word, she wanders off the porch into the street.  
   
I saw this child again, last year. I was out for a walk, she drove by in a Camry I had seen around before. Features broadened and defined. Makeup on her mouth, around her eyes. Our eyes meet. She looks right at me.    
   
She smiles, wistfully, tenderly.  
   
I mirror that smile, naturally.  
   
She remembers  
   
..  
   
8. The Solar System  
(approximately two light years in gravitational diameter)  
   
Each an integral member of our dispersed coterie. Each, gone, separately. Here, I am. Here, in this broken shell of what I was, reaching arms into the next incarnation. I am unconquered by deaths of former selves. See these new wings test the air. See the might of their youth. See these new eyes open tenuously, at first, then fix their gaze upon what they have loved, all along, continue to love, with new hope.  
   
The clown, I was, still him, sometimes  
The king, I was, I plant a garden in my  
Hollow  
Crown  
Which  
Sits upon the  
Ground  
Growing  
Calcified  
   
Giant. Titan. Dragon. Moments.  
I am moments that live within  
A man  
   
The poet, I was, writes a novel  
Life writes the novel, through me  
Coauthored with a treasured friend  
   
Days of night  
Continue  
Without  
End  
There is no  
Terminus  
Only  
Continual  
Movement  
   
..  
   
9. The Earth  
(approximately several light minutes from the sun)  
   
I, alone  
Growing  
Healing  
   
She and I  
Speaking  
I shade my  
Brow  
To see her  
Better  
To be  
Gentler  
I must be  
Gentler  
With this  
Weary  
Precious  
Heart  
   
To see the people you love  
Moving  
Apart  
Away  
From you  
Is an  
Illusion, they  
Aren't moving  
At all  
They are standing still  
It is distance  
Itself  
That is expanding  
   
To see light  
Reaching  
More slowly  
Than light  
Travels  
   
Hands, once  
Clasped  
Pulled  
Apart  
   
This is the lament of my  
Solitary  
Heart  
   
This heart will send it’s  
Light  
More swiftly  
   
These hands will  
Attempt  
To return their  
Embrace  
Slowly  
By increments  
   
This heart so full of  
Tenderness  
This heart of  
Love  
   
..  
   
Microcosm  
   
Eta Carinae  
   
Everything I was  
Is a dust mote  
Meandering  
Through a solitary  
Beam  
Of light  
   
Sincerely,  
R Sculptoris  
   
Days of Night  
By  
Daniel Christensen  
Writing as  
The Fire Elemental