By Phil Long
As a poet, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to say common things creatively. I also think about saying creative things commonly. I love the struggle to capture the universal in a tiny particular or manufacturer fresh insight through surprising combinations of language that trigger fresh synaptic connections. I feel like an alchemist wielding a magical formula transforming familiar things into wonderful things. I wonder how difficult things might be said more plainly and I wonder if impossible things can truly be said at all. I think about how truth that is really understood might be too hard to express and whether truth that is too hard to understand might be found in new expressions. I wonder where things come from and how they exist. I wonder. Cosmology. Ontology. Philosophy. I think about the uncanny power of words and ideas. I enjoy gleefully exceeding the comfortable boundaries of language to unleash the unexpected – the unintended. I wonder if it’s working. I wonder if it’s worth it. I wonder if the conceptual grammar required for a greater understanding of the mystery that is reality could ever be found in the winsome wanderings of a willing wordsmith; if a poet in a staircase might somehow connect the dots or generate a flash of light.
And lately, I’ve been thinking,
what if its all poetry?
Since science can only concern itself
with the physical emanations of Ultimate Reality,
What if the most fundamental particles
are really verbs and nouns?
adjectives and adverbs, the stuff of worlds
cuplets and rhymes, the elements
sonnets and ballads, minerals
and the light… it comes from a person?
What if it’s all poetry?
What if matter is actually made of what really matters;
our perception of meaning,
an electron-scanning microscope
looking closer at the smallest patterns of existence?
What if atoms are iambs
and rocks are merely metaphors?
What if it’s all poetry?
What if relationship is a star
exploding with the source of ultimate meaning
and conscious awareness is the fuel?
What if fools are pollution
and broken hearts the black-holes
of fundamental reality;
Selfishness and greed, genetically altered absurdities
propagated by brokenness and hurt?
What if love is the source, and the goal
and there have been too many mutations?
What if it’s all poetry?
What if we thoughtful sparks
slipping through the biochemical cracks
of bio-logical creatures
are composed of material… innuendo
as real as we feel
as important as we hope
as loved as we want to be
And the stuff that makes us,
dependent upon the words of a Lover?
What if it’s all poetry?
What if ancient wisdom had it right all along
and modern science is only catching up?
What if Higgs is a field, of dreams,
giving weight to God’s ambition;
forming particles from echoes
of His kindness and patience?
If 96 % of the physical world
seems to be dark energy and matter
maybe it’s because we’re still living in the dark – ages
and what matters most is moral and wise
and we are only making matter worse – by inversion.
What if the extra dimensions we find in our math
are the places we should have gone to
And the infinite universes birthing infinite possibilities
are infinite poetry
flowing from an infinite Poet?
What if it’s all poetry?
What if the Large Hadron Collider is telling the truth?
And everything that is comes from nothing
but ideas?
What if we are words – generating fields
that give rise to particles – shaped by laws
that are molded and connected – by ele-mental attractions
being used as ink on this cosmic page
for the poetry?
In the language of life;
with words, that are personal?
Us, written in dust
with care and precision
and a vision for the future that ages of edits
– mutations of circumstance and egotistical intent –
have only managed to alter the reflection of perfection
still finding the Author’s intention?
What if it’s all poetry?
And we find ourselves reading in wonder
as our science plunders the pages
denying the Poet,
insisting on chance
Meter and rhyme unfolding in intricate geology
Language and story in physics, and biology
The weight of scribbled matter, psychology
The search for reason in unreasonable space
The search for purpose
in meaningless traces of eternity,
Just chance.?
What if it’s all poetry?
What if spirit is deeper than flesh?
What if what matters is what makes up matter
what makes us matter
and all that matter
is now holding this tale like a book?
Look,
What if it’s all a poem spoken to become us;
broken lines with an ultimate purpose?
It’s the only way a Poet would create us
or know us.
Phil Long is our conference Spoken Word contributor and Breakout Session Leader.