As we lie in that bed of pleasure,
With you and your curiosity nearby,
We offer you, with a limp, extended arm, the treasure
That fell from our brain—a brain that thinks like a thinking eye,
Bringing the warm philosophy, which courses
Through our blood, as if butterflies gave birth to horses.
Relax by the vortex of the infinite,
Under its shady walls, come here and sit,
Let’s focus on our reveries…never mind the rest of it…
Dodge every debate, controversy, and sorrow.
Before you awoke, no science or art could compete with your dream.
Each lazy drop, sliding on vines, is lost in the lazy stream.
Our indulgent today will not be better tomorrow.
The question is not God, but infinity;
All—with enough time and space—will happen—
So Epicurus, two thousand years ago,
Trampled Aristotle, Plato, and all religion—
A drunken universe pours infinite wine,
Indifference to humans stamps the divine,
A tickling feather is better than wisdom,
There is nothing to do and nothing to know,
Worlds and worlds, a wind of infinite atoms, no sign
Of God, law, love, purpose, knowledge, design
More than shapes glimpsed in a melting snow.
But alas, infinity was disproved by Edgar Allan Poe,
Who claimed it was only a word. Infinite space,
Infinite time, infinite stars, would make the night’s face
Blazing white with the light of infinite stars—
Further: orbs, gravity, relation, movement, could not exist
If the process of attraction stretched on forever.
Infinity is not the wall, but our mind, on infinity, thinking.
Few venture into infinity’s sea without sinking
A little sadly, into that Epicurean nap:
The One World ignored, even as we sleep in its lap.
Infinity, that false God, that false Epicurean dream,
Hides our fate and purpose, hides the true, one God,
Volition: big bang, gravity’s return to all,
From which none can hide, no matter how clever, or small.
It’s true that belief in simplicity is odd,
But faith in infinity takes a leap that’s greater—
One world, simply made, tempts, sooner, or later.
Some object to simple certainty, fearing tyrants
Are those who feel certain. But the rants
And cruelties of tyrants
Spring from uncertainty and confusion.
Certainty of tyrants, like the Epicurean dream, is certainty based on illusion.
This bed is no accident, and neither you, nor I,
No accident beneath the one sky
That we can plant our flag in; if we die,
The moment and the reason were planned
By a soul that lives on, even if unmanned.
Every pleasure and pain we feel
Is by the will of our soul already willed, already real.
We played the trick on our soul already
Even as we drift, doubtful, unsteady,
Pushed by what seems indifferent chance,
Intoxicated in the intoxicated dance,
Flying through a universe alone,
Hurt by little particles of stone,
Electro-magnetic light in our eye,
Softened beneath a softening sky.
This is what you always knew
Would happen, just as it happens to you,
And if beauty is your last resort,
Or a tangle of oddities, or sport,
Drift above the dance all the while.
Two souls above one world can smile.
The world is self-punishing; ache not for justice.
Seek to find, not find advice.
Things are mostly OK now.
Be patient. Don’t try to wow.
Don’t be a sheep.
Argue to make your listeners weep.
Let the science tell you: trees are fed by CO2.
The sky is big—big enough for me and you.
Heterosexuals made the world, so why are they afraid of gays?
Writing is good, like food or gym, so why resent the MFAs?
The trouble isn’t what the trouble is, but that it stays,
Work isn’t real work, unless it’s work that plays.
Give me your hand, this poem is almost done.
We’ll watch the end of everything in this disappearing sun.
