The relentless
flow of time
has driven the evolution
of the universe
and created
extraordinary wonders.
—Brian Cox
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A Familial Threat to Freedom of Speech
It is too close to explore too close get too close the fire could burn the fire could burn the fire could catch your sleeves if you don’t pull back too close far too close towards the center of you where you might feel enlightened where you might feel lighter
perhaps intuitive where you might trust your gut if you were not shamed into getting close enough yet blame will chain you from getting close enough
surely you can’t tell what I’m babbling about
that’s their goal
Blame-storm-ing
bleym • stawr • ming
bleym
assigning blame
(or as the euphemism experts denote:
demanding accountability)
starts young; the handing
of guilt from adult to child, the heirloom
of ownership
carried through families
holding gaslit torches
to blamestormed flames
through holiday
through phone
for generations back
but not forward—not anymore;
not in my house.
stawr
we roar at starlight
because if we protest inside
we will be placed in solitary confinement
as punishment
for anger towards
the elders who taught us to roar.
ming
her mink shawls
accentuate sacrifices
she made to decorate
her hollow vessel,
same as the crown
of past acceptances
and the shackles
of future shame.
Un-bih-NOHNST ➕ kwī-ˈe-sᵊnt
Unbeknownst is the June 6th Word of the Day over at politically charged Merriam-Webster, and it’s one of my favorite words ever, so even though I recently updated this blog, I can’t help but take a stab at drafting a quick poem for this brilliant word.
However, I committed to looking up some new medical-related words in a previous post;
So it’s time to build a creative combo pack with two words.
I’m pretty sure creative combo packs were how sentences were born. But don’t quote me on it; my feeling is an intuitive conclusion, and therefore bears no roots in facts.
Like how our president makes decisions…
…Okay, scratch the theory of the birth of sentences—for now. I’ll get back to you.
Teach a man to reason
and he’ll think
for a lifetime.— Phil Plait
💗
Unbeknownst to You
The more we learn
the further we stretch
our Known World, expand
our living Imagination
into the unknown
Universe; but if unbeknownst
to you, the Universe created
black holes that absorb light
and emit Hawking radiation;
and if, unbeknownst
to you, Evolution formed
eyes that absorb light
and emit Consciousness;
and if, unbeknownst
to you, photons contained
density that affects
their interaction with neutrinos;
then how will you be able
to question the Universe,
to consider the truly unknown
beyond your veil of delusions?
💗
Quiescent 20-Megaton Explosions
After a meek, little asteroid
flew over Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey,
it descended upon New York
then dented a car
with a football-shaped rock
that brought laughter to the village.
Off in Arizona, Meteor Crater’s
mile-wide dimple still attracts
tourists, an object once 30-
to 50-miles across, laying ruin
to 50,000-year-old buffalo;
while in Hawaii, Kilauea Volcano
proves again
as above, so below
yet we ignore the pattern
of decay we once so deftly
kept in check, as if all the asteroids
in the cosmos lie quiescent and benign;
as if the cells in our body
are unaltered by greedy events;
as if all the ripples
in the Earth will never be
enough to break
our sound barriers and register
as the desperate screaming
of the star-stuff beneath our feet.
65 million years ago, the dinosaurs had a bad day. A chunk of rock, six miles across, moving something like 50 times the speed of a rifle bullet, slammed into the Earth; it released its energy all at once, and it was a explosion that was mind-numbing.
If you took every nuclear weapon ever built at the height of the Cold War, lumped them together, and blew them up at the same time, that would be one-one-millionth of the energy released at that moment.
It wiped out 75% of the species on Earth.
—Phil Plait
