Breathe
By Andrew Krosch
The hive is cold.
I never sleep.
The walls are tall and solid,
a thousand times stronger
than concrete or steel.
Absent any color,
blank and perfectly smooth.
Insurmountable.
The only light inside the hive is gray,
the color of cold ashes.
The air tastes black.
Staying alive has become an act of will.
Sometimes I forget to breathe.
There is a cathedral in the venter of the hive.
Stone arches, a golden dome, minarets.
It is the most beautiful,
the most horrible thing
I have ever seen.
I saw the sun once.
When I was a small child,
a dream took me there.
In my dream I saw a window
to the outside world.
Beyond the walls of the hive.
A world of bright protein colors.
A warm plastic land.
Red flowers, green grass.
Dwellings, short and squat.
Trees tall and happy.
Lakes, cool and calm.
Market stalls, open wall and clean.
Bluesky, bright yellow sun.
A world beyond endless shades of gray.
It is all I see when I close my eyes – try to dream.
I cannot sleep.
Will not dream.
I try not to think.
Try not to dream.
To dream again. (To leave the hive.)
To think again. (To leave the garden.)
There lies the root of all evil.
That,
that
has always been
our original sin.
For in that moment,
free to think, free to dream
(free to precipitate the fall)
we became death,
destroyer of worlds.
I try not to think.
Try not to dream.
I try not to breathe.
History, Time, and Space
By Andrew Krosch
without history
new time drifting in space
abandoning all modern concepts
all claims on time and space
eliminate all presumptions about history all assumptions about time
all suppositions about space
conceptions of time and space
completely overthrown
without or within time, cause and effect relations
impossible to specify
temporal priority established
the probability of truth reduced to zero
the significance of the present moment
effervescent, transient and temporary
for this moment of permanent consequence
with the unbearable lightness of being
No Comments