The world as I know it
ended yesterday
and the day before
and the day before.
I am a reconstituted,
reincarnated, re-oxygenated
lump of carbon and water,
and some kind of godlike cellular goo
with the power of recollection.
Every cell, or sub-atomic something,
blindly remembers yesterday
and the day before
and the day before
until I am fooled into thinking
that I am altogether
more solid and lasting
than a gnat or a bloom or a bird.
That I am something
more worthwhile
than whatever I have the power
to kill and eat.
That I am something
so important
that it is right that I
build monuments to myself
on the very heads
of blades of prairie grass,
each of which,
as the Talmud says,
has its angel.
That I am something
so wise and all-knowing
that the days themselves–
today, yesterday,
and the day before
and the day before
–are measured in hours
of my own invention,
indicating beginnings and endings
that are neither.
The Spoon Cafe Journal – Since 1996
Spoon is a multi-author literary journal. A community of writers on the interwebs since 1996. We’re here to share stories about our lives, about our travels, about the people we come across. We’re telling tall tales and reading our journals, even telling some fiction. We’re giving away bits of ourselves and seeing through others eyes. More>>Subscribe to the Spoon
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5 Comments
its angel, for crying out loud. not it’s angel. i hate when i do that.
Our civilization’s belief in itself, in a nutshell.
I remember getting all torqued about someone throwing trash out along a highway one time and you said something like, “So what? The world doesn’t care. Humans care. Humans are all worried that the world will end, but it’s just that humans will trash the world so that humans will end. The world will just go on as it was when we’re gone.” Wise words from a wise man, and I still think of you, especially when I see trash along a highway.
Haha. Funny, I think of you too.
I really enjoyed this. I had a very similar feeling when I read about the Large Haldron Collider yesterday too.