Cosmological Discontinuity Cosmological Discontinuity
With Best Wishes to Gore Vidal

Take a long hard look from the 
inside out/outside in.
Twist and turn what you see into a salty pretzel
And chew on it for a while without mustard.
Slinking to the edge of a flat surface
Sticking your head out into space
When your gray matter unbalances you
Tipping you over into the abyss.

No flexing phalanx of muscled beings exist to rescue you.
Screaming to get back onto the disk, your terra firma, 
Would be a waste of time.
Instead, as you fall you find relief in twisting into oblivion.
Where there is no bottom,
Only a never-ending fall

To no grace,
Poor soul who clung to resurrection--
A cosmic joke told by a laughing god.
Resurrection into what?
A galaxy of stars that twist into itself unboundedly,
Figure-eight skaters on a complex manifold
Destined to skim the surface infinitely to nowhere.

The reality that nothing else exists 
Beyond frozen moments of mime time--
Nothing beyond the clickety-clack of the keyboard
Finding keys to tap out hidden messages upon a page.
Other than that,
All is an eternal void where Gore has gone.



Beneath the Sand in SolitaryBeneath the Sand in Solitary

Above
waves cavort and pinwheel into shore
rolling bits of sand in its wake 
laconically turning them about
until the tide rushes them back out
erasing their memories.

Gritty grains scuff the surface of what lies 
in a hollow curve just beneath
Carving name-signatures into it
Shallow grooves speaking of eons.
It remains still 
gelatinous lumpen under the calcified hamburger bun
silent to the boisterous hordes
playfully shifting the sand above
with their pounding feet and plastic shovels
making ocean-melting mounds
while they revel in the sun gravel
etching grooves into their skin.

A three year old sits at the water’s edge 
pail in one hand/shovel in the other
tossing wet sand into his orange pail.
He dips the full pail into the onrushing water and
contemplates the escaping sand
now moving like ants from an invaded anthill.
Repetition finds a gray mound buried in the sand.
He lifts it from its hidey-home
pseudopod dangling like an overheated dog’s tongue.
Petrified, the mollusk falls from his hands;
father gives it a cursory look
pries it open
tosses it callously to the sand
No Venus to emerge from it
Only a morsel for a passing tern.

The boy has vanquished the mystery.
The ocean could not protect it.
Father turns his skin back to the sun.
He shuts up like a clam.