By Jonas Mufson
I am learning about things
I am learning about the meaninglessness
of words-
that the particles of realness are
smaller than our capacity for understanding
I am learning about things
Hearing words like
system and model and projection
Words like graphite gray lines
on blank yellowed pages.
Words like shapes and numbers and directions
I am learning to embrace
the comforting lies of my five senses
Like a traveler in space
embracing the heavy, spiraling love
of their birthplace. The very thing,
their once definitive rejection, now
a warm inexorability, which pulls them
towards matter that can be
felt.
And what a small price to pay.
How glad the traveler is to touch
the Earth, when all it costs them
is the bonds of their body.
How joyous the pilgrim will be
to finally evaporate.
To leave behind the void of model
To once again become
blissfully unaware of projection
as the system that is capable
of knowing itself becomes, once more,
a part of the system that is not.
A part of the system that only is
and never knows.
I am learning fear
Acidic and sharp and awake.
Fear that encompasses knowledge,
consumes it like a sheet consumes
a child in a room full of monsters.
I am learning that fear can keep you
on Earth, tether you deadly,
away from the void.
I am learning the meaninglessness of words
Words like void and real and fear
I am learning to live stratospherically,
to hold the void in the same hand
that holds the powder dirt and
the squelch-live soil and
the delicate yellow parchment.