And So The Gods of Circularity Smiled Down Upon The Earth
Prelude.
The wyrm feels
a hunger
that spans
from the points of its fangs
to the tip of its tail.
It squirms around
blindly, searching for
something to plug up its throat.
And then,
its snout meets a
solid.
Jaws expand, teeth bared
as it swallows
something thin, scaly, long.
Slitted eyes blink
at the length of its body
looped back around
to itself.
I.
Let me begin with a story.
There once was a sparrow / in a society of sparrows.
In feather and breezes, they lived / quite pleasant lives.
Food / was never a concern; / there were mealworms abound / to goad into their beaks.
And so / life was good.
But a sparrow, the sparrow, / our sparrow, in a society of sparrows, / felt a distinct emptiness.
Yes, an emptiness, the kind that starts as / just a pinprick in the heart / but feeds on all around it, / consuming the organs until / there was nothing left but the hole.
It sought out guidance, / but it was met with / reassurances that every creature / held such an emptiness / within their breast.
Even the mealworms, simple as they were, / held a hole– / that was why / they could be tempted into beaks / and swallowed up.
But still / this left our sparrow befuddled.
Surely, / there had to be a way to rid of the emptiness?
Shelter and food and societies / could do nothing but distract, / and in the next moment, / the emptiness would rear its head / and forcibly steal the focus / of our sparrow’s thoughts.
Day and night passed, / and our sparrow did as sparrows do: / eat, preen, sleep– / eat, preen, sleep– / eat, preen, sleep.
Our sparrow was distraught / and felt nothing at all / but the emptiness within.
Driven to desperation, / it wandered away at night / feet and wings guiding it in circles.
Eat, preen, sleep– / but food had lost all its meaning and taste– / there was little purpose in preserving feathers– / and its bare feet guided it away in the depths of night.
Day, night, day, night, / until it came upon a creature– / a beautiful creature, / with paws dipped in ebony tar, / a pelt that had stolen the color from fields of russet, / and snow that clung to the tip of its bushy tail, its muzzle, its underbelly.
Its breath was rank with the scent of rotting flesh, / and yet the manner in which the sun shone off those / pearly stalactites and stalagmites / only added to its allure.
Our sparrow was curious, / and so conversed with the fair creature.
“I have felt an emptiness,” confessed our sparrow, / “and day by day it has only grown / to eat up the rest of me– / heart and lungs–liver and intestines–throat and tongue.
I fear that it will eat me / until nothing remains.”
And so the creature replied, / “I have felt likewise, / but I’ve an idea.
If you leap into my mouth, / perhaps we can fill our holes / with companionship.”
And our desperate, little sparrow / felt overjoyed in this shared moment, / thanked the fiery creature quite profusely, / as was always taught of it, and leapt into its maw.
And in the next moment, / before our sparrow could even think to be anything / but ecstatic, / the cave closed in, / and nothing was left of our sparrow / but a bloody pulp that slid down the fair creature’s throat, / tasting like dew drops after a drought.
The other sparrows would leer and mock, / asking how one was so foolish as to not know better, / to never trust beautiful creatures.
But they do not understand / that the beautiful creature had not lied, / and that it, too, would be tempted into the claws / of a brown beast, far larger than it was.
That beast, too, had a hole / that would grow and grow and grow until / it left nothing but a corpse.
Then the mealworms, in their insatiable emptiness, / would swarm the body / before finding their way / into beaks.
And so it goes.
II.
Let us transition, now, to an idea.
the space between the stars,
the hole formed from a rip in one’s jeans–
the gaping emptiness from within,
the space enclosed within a straw.
two opposing forces
forever contrasting one another.
but an absence is still a thing.
something in existence.
same and different–
everything wrapped into one,
fingers interlocked, palms pressed flush against one another,
a sweat coating skin, reminders of humanity,
and in between sits a black hole,
warping something and nothing
in tandem.
over and over
until it transforms
into something and something and something, something, something.
contrasting each other, growing from each other,
tearing away from each other.
falling, spiraling, twirling
through the air like ribbons–
shadow and light forming a dichotomy
over and over and over and over and over–!
III.
Let me describe to you an image.
The sky is hazy with clouds,
orange and purple and blue
hues color it, wisping around
that great ball of light
we call the sun.
Beneath it there lies
greens of every shade
stacked atop a rough brown–
that of tree trunks or rich soil–
and even further sits a thick rush
of frothy, white water.
Aqua slithers
past rocks, down cliffs, across mud,
dragging along silt and salmon.
Yes, salmon–
those orange-fleshed fish with their hooked jaws,
tasting the water that was once briney and now clear.
From here they had come–
to the blues of the oceans they fled–
and back they return,
stomachs filled with spawn.
In droves they press upstream,
marking the whites of the river
with the silver glint of scales;
some might have sworn that
there were more fish than water.
Journeying upward has perils abound–
creatures far more vicious and hungry,
waterfalls that they must climb,
and ultimately,
they will reach their final resting place
after the birth of their children.
Yet still,
they travel.
Perhaps the salmon are musing–
thinking to themself about
what future will come of their children
and not for themself–
they know that
which awaits them at their trails’ end.
And despite it all,
none of them will ever
dare to turn back.
Thus, they go
forward, forward, forward,
and when their children are born,
they will be greeted with the decaying flesh
of the previous generation.
And those children will shift
from river to ocean,
calling the salt and brine their home
until they too return
to their birthing place and tomb
to welcome their own spawn.
IV.
Let me finish by sharing a feeling.
An energy resides
low in the spine,
resting right at the base,
coiled like a spring.
It sits and waits,
and waits and waits and waits,
a string pulled tight until
release.
When the moment comes,
the body need not think,
for the energy shoots up the spine,
zipping through webs of nerves
and granting life to muscle.
Pushes a leg to kick,
jerking away an arm,
jumping back
at the slightest touch of pain.
This energy shoots outward
in hopes of survival,
and once it is done,
it creates a halo about the head
before dissipating into air,
while a new energy builds
and builds and builds,
ready to be fired
once again.
Each time a struggle
to keep nerves firing
in order to fire more nerves,
fighting again and again for life
until those electric impulses
dull and fizzle away.
Life for the sake of being alive–
to live and live and live again.
To breathe in cool air
and feel the sands falling between our fingers
and taste the prayers on our tongue
for more time, more time, more time.
We are alive, asleep, dead, conscious,
a thousand things,
and yet we strive
for life
through shots of electricity
which will fire
again and again and again.
Life for life for life
expressed through those involuntary motions,
the movement of impulses
to jerk away from danger.
Postlude.
The wyrm, now a ring,
can do nothing but
slither in circles,
feeling the weight of its own scales
upon its tongue.
And when it peers upward,
its gaze is met with
a thousand other wyrms,
choking on their own, thin bodies,
forming yet another circle,
revolving about nothing.
And if the wyrm could see more,
see further, see beyond,
it would see
an infinite number of wyrm-rings,
posited in such a way that
it formed a bigger circle,
which formed yet another, larger circle,
and another,
and another,
forever.
And each circle
was almost its own wyrm,
chasing the tip of its tail,
through the nothingness of space.