Whence, then, does it come? Who knows?
-Nikola Tesla
Sometimes at night
I do what every
lonely person does
who can’t fall asleep,
whose wife and kid
wheeze with eyes closed:
the series of tubes,
where you have the
midas techno touch
for any noto knowledge
in front of your computer
screen. The thing about atoms is no human can see
or hear them. Sure we can see them in books
but for the most part:
I imagine I’m in a room,
sound canceled out
& I say a word,
is it alive?
Does it exist outside of mouths?
I wonder what planets talk about,
what they say, to whom?
Is it like Slim
at the corner of Paxton
and Reseda, clap-
trapping emoticons
to no one?
Or is it a poem
from William Shatner:
Spea
k
to
me now that I am
si
lent
plea
se.
I remember grandfather telling me a story from when he worked in the mines of Zacatecas. He said he was the last one inside & all he heard after everyone left
were the rocks
talking with tuning fork
voices,
nattering to one another.
Tesla once said,
“Nature.
The energy of a single sound may
determine the motion of a universe.”
Do words falter, fade?
Like washing
your Batman shirt for the
1000th time, black turned toffee color and the yellow bat sign flaking, looking more like a zero with
wings.
If so, let’s make new words.
Xeroiexano |ce-ro-ish-ano|
Noun
1. The taste of the universe:
This tastes like Xeroiexano-
oh, and it’s non-fat!
I Googled, can planets talk, clicked on a video, & played it loud in loops.
My wife woke up and said,
“this sounds a lot like Willow did in utero,
remember?”
I look over and see
Willow in her cradle,
raw as stardust theorems
& wonder how
her true doppler
voice
sounds as she says
dad
for the first time
and the sound shifts
from hypersurface
to motion
a universe.