In the Beginning was the Word

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.

 

CosmoLyrical.com

Phil Long is our conference Spoken Word contributor and Breakout Session Leader.