Book cover


THE UNIFICATION OF LOVE

I could not accept it,
The love that was so clearly mine
And eclipsed what was mine,
Annulled it like antimatter
So that nothing mattered but you,
Even the light that lay like a puddle
At my feet and the ground that opened
Wide to suck me in. I needed
Seismology to detect the fault.
I needed a map. But most of all
I needed you, I could not escape
That fact as Einstein could not escape
The factors of light, the speed
And mass of matter that ups the anti,
As we would up the ante with an E-
He could not save himself,
He was going to die, all that wisdom
Relative as mc². So he recanted,
Took back the laws of logic
As a lover takes back a ring
Or half-hearted promises
Rendered out of guilt or duress,
And re-discovered Rilke:
Time-travel was possible

Only on paper. If I could go back,
I would recant the black holes of the body,
The quantum mechanics of touch,
The arms encircling someone else
Out of guilt or duress and the lips
Tightening on mine to enjoin
The treachery of the tongue.
I would learn a new language
To explain how pain
Embeds itself in the hitherto
Uncharted quadrants of the brain
To warp time, so that I seem
Like another. I would forbid
the transference and solve
The unlikely equation with love,
Which exceeds the speed of light
So that we can go back and unify
All theories, grand or grandiose,
To re-invent ourselves. I would
Fulfill expectations, you would fulfill
Expectations, and then we would meet,
Indestructible force upon impenetrable matter,
And celebrate the collision of our lives.


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