Alone Again, Naturally
“Come and sit by my side if you love me…”
It was all good for a long time.
You knew where to buy a washing machine
and the street signs could be trusted.
Then cracks began to appear in the universe.
The much vaunted center did not hold.
The Spirit Banners were stolen.
The askers started to ask questions.
The questioners questioned the answers.
Suddenly, mere uncertainty remained..
Ideas, even things, became fuzzy as peaches.
Nothing became a primary substance.
Nothing comes from nothing.
You can’t hold nothing in your hand.
Physicists began to have twisted visions.
Mathematicians experienced meltdowns.
Not all theorems could be proven.
Not all numbers could be computed.
Newton began quacking like a duck.
π could be apple or blueberry.
The entire menu was called into question.
No one knew what to order, or how.
Now we can only refer to ourselves,
unsure of who or what we are,
imprisoned within our language where
philosophy can only be written as poetry.
Truth became truly unknowable.
Virtues fell like columns in an earthquake.
God vanished in a shadow of eclipse.
Reality morphed into vague anxiety.
Everywhere strangeness and strangers.
Abandoned by everything solid except
personal experience and subjective feelings,
the Supreme Fiction of existence,
a general retreat from the world began.
So now we sit alone, plugged into electrons
(themselves totems of variability)
ordering staples and baubles from Amazon,
because an uncertain world may be dangerous,
and it is safer to stay where you think you are
than to venture outside the programming
to where you can’t be sure of anything,
to where the street signs are all liars,
and the washing machines speak Chinese.
We long for the closeness of dark caves, clans,
bonfires, sweaty bodies beneath an overhang.
Neanderthal nearness holding the darkness at bay.
Small wonder so many have closed their doors.
No wonder so many more will close their minds.
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