Nemesis
The sun has its nemesis, evil twin star,
not its opposite but its spirit,
undead angel,
extra life. Another version.
The Andromeda Galaxy bears children
who become us, year after ancient,
ridiculous year. The children,
the alternatively filled selves unrecognizable
to our faeries, our animals and gods:
us utterly replaced.
The kids we were, rejected like organs
donated to the wrong body.
Why arenât they dear to us?
Why is that child least loved
by its own grown self?
If you arenât me then be banished from me,
weird orphan with limp and lisp.
Who, nameless brainsake, are you?
Not my substance or my shadow
but projectile vomit, a noxious gas.
Donât be me, please donât be me,
says the adult, looking back into wormhole
as if jumping into foxhole.
Not me, never again: that terrible child
with the insufferable littlesoul
and bad mom and sameself sister,
and balky, stalky brother
and monotone uncle and messed-with cousins,
and letâs not even talk about the father,
the fater, pater, hated, fattened, late, latter dad.
Perhaps the Andromedans are such early
versions of us we canât hate yet, ghosts
or our pre-living selves, earliest babies.
Perhaps theyâre only life
like,
like
a robot cook or a motion detector,
not like a dog we love and know,
or claim to know,
who nonetheless attacks grandma
somehow. We say so, said so, toldya so.
Thatâs what you get for believing in aliens,
for replacing our earhorn of plenty
with a megaphone of corpsedust.
Listen, itâs moving closer, the Andromeda
Galaxy, this other us, this museum of mucus
and keyboards and keyboard fingertip records
that their governments are already optimized
to keep post-digitally. All of which looks
much more like a craps game to us, a hinky
life-filler, time-killer, the best selection of credit
card pill extensions with rapid-release hypo-air
no one but addicts can tolerate.
Only 2.5 million light-years away, lessening
daily, and thatâs collapsible
space, of course, made of light. Just flip
the switch and poof. Weâre there.
The space, then, the dog-run-sized length
between the golden retriever
and the Labrador retriever,
isnât so much space as time, and since time
is breathâ¦well. Take a deep one.
We have all day, as a matter of objective fact.
Slip on a glossy patch of antimatter
and Iâve inhaled my unutterable
opposite potential self, smeared out
the tracing of my nemesis: Olympic
gymnast teen me or seventh-grade best friend
Shannon, or the cricket-eating
self-sister with the spiny-belled name I dream
at night and call out but canât ever know
in this world. Such a thing is called a soul?
A personality? Sometimes diagnosed âpossessionâ?
Nemesis, namesake, nevermore.
O funny other self,
how I long to know you! You were ingested
so easily, absorbed like a lotion
in the desert. Even in the evening.
For there are no light years. Years are heavy.
There is only light. It never bends:
thatâs the property it mortgaged in order
to pick up speed. But parallel lines can meet
just like that if someone breaks the rules.
Some criminal sharing my name
or an alien name sharing my crime.
The rules are there are no rules.
Lingua franca.
Isnât the space between what is
and what coulda woulda Buddha been,
that same space between short skull
and long face, that oiled jaw hinged
for supple expression, for saying
and blaming and braying and allaying
and naming:
I this
not
I that,
tit not tat,
want not waste, and
yes
not
yes, butâ¦
What your mother
tells you over and over to shut,
to smile, first to not talk to strangers
and then be kind to them.
To sponsor the tail of another winnerâs
horse. To Go for It.
To become something in this life.
But once the gardenias
are floating in seawater for the themed gala
of your body, this special night,
they are dying,
The sun has its nemesis, evil twin star,
not its opposite but its spirit,
undead angel,
extra life. Another version.
The Andromeda Galaxy bears children
who become us, year after ancient,
ridiculous year. The children,
the alternatively filled selves unrecognizable
to our faeries, our animals and gods:
us utterly replaced.
The kids we were, rejected like organs
donated to the wrong body.
Why arenât they dear to us?
Why is that child least loved
by its own grown self?
If you arenât me then be banished from me,
weird orphan with limp and lisp.
Who, nameless brainsake, are you?
Not my substance or my shadow
but projectile vomit, a noxious gas.
Donât be me, please donât be me,
says the adult, looking back into wormhole
as if jumping into foxhole.
Not me, never again: that terrible child
with the insufferable littlesoul
and bad mom and sameself sister,
and balky, stalky brother
and monotone uncle and messed-with cousins,
and letâs not even talk about the father,
the fater, pater, hated, fattened, late, latter dad.
Perhaps the Andromedans are such early
versions of us we canât hate yet, ghosts
or our pre-living selves, earliest babies.
Perhaps theyâre only life
like,
like
a robot cook or a motion detector,
not like a dog we love and know,
or claim to know,
who nonetheless attacks grandma
somehow. We say so, said so, toldya so.
Thatâs what you get for believing in aliens,
for replacing our earhorn of plenty
with a megaphone of corpsedust.
Listen, itâs moving closer, the Andromeda
Galaxy, this other us, this museum of mucus
and keyboards and keyboard fingertip records
that their governments are already optimized
to keep post-digitally. All of which looks
much more like a craps game to us, a hinky
life-filler, time-killer, the best selection of credit
card pill extensions with rapid-release hypo-air
no one but addicts can tolerate.
Only 2.5 million light-years away, lessening
daily, and thatâs collapsible
space, of course, made of light. Just flip
the switch and poof. Weâre there.
The space, then, the dog-run-sized length
between the golden retriever
and the Labrador retriever,
isnât so much space as time, and since time
is breathâ¦well. Take a deep one.
We have all day, as a matter of objective fact.
Slip on a glossy patch of antimatter
and Iâve inhaled my unutterable
opposite potential self, smeared out
the tracing of my nemesis: Olympic
gymnast teen me or seventh-grade best friend
Shannon, or the cricket-eating
self-sister with the spiny-belled name I dream
at night and call out but canât ever know
in this world. Such a thing is called a soul?
A personality? Sometimes diagnosed âpossessionâ?
Nemesis, namesake, nevermore.
O funny other self,
how I long to know you! You were ingested
so easily, absorbed like a lotion
in the desert. Even in the evening.
For there are no light years. Years are heavy.
There is only light. It never bends:
thatâs the property it mortgaged in order
to pick up speed. But parallel lines can meet
just like that if someone breaks the rules.
Some criminal sharing my name
or an alien name sharing my crime.
The rules are there are no rules.
Lingua franca.
Isnât the space between what is
and what coulda woulda Buddha been,
that same space between short skull
and long face, that oiled jaw hinged
for supple expression, for saying
and blaming and braying and allaying
and naming:
I this
not
I that,
tit not tat,
want not waste, and
yes
not
yes, butâ¦
What your mother
tells you over and over to shut,
to smile, first to not talk to strangers
and then be kind to them.
To sponsor the tail of another winnerâs
horse. To Go for It.
To become something in this life.
But once the gardenias
are floating in seawater for the themed gala
of your body, this special night,
they are dying,
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