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I Be of Stars
Floating I be bound to the sky,
Jostled by others and embraced in the arms
Of two electron stealers, who and where I am
And where I'm going next must you divine.
Suddenly everything turns green and huge
And I find myself passing through two doors,
Curved with arched lips and atrium around me soars,
The air with paired electron stealers rich.
Then there is a maze of leviathans within this world
For I know not what to call this place.
It glistens of green and clear, this maze
To which, I am jostled, pushed then hurled.
To the surface of a Leviathan I come where sing
My kind in rings of sixes bound end to end
Braided then in fibers, all fibers bend
A wall of cables, from time to time openings revealing.
From these stream paired electron stealers,
While go my kind through the openings
All from something thin and wet heaving,
That seems with blue to ripple and waver,
And there I'm drawn suddenly to find myself
In twisting bumbling mass of grey
Creatures, around which waters jumble and wait,
Creatures at first seeming to be my kind,
But at their base a blue growth that faces
Other blue growth attached to more grey
Creatures, jostling, humping, a swirling wave,
Through which I slide and pop into the most strange of places,
Behemoths everywhere lumbering through fine mesh of beads.
But as I approach I see that fineness is relative.
Each bead is big, the helices active,
Constantly being torn down and rebuilt, how I cannot see.
I find myself drawn to a leviathan within the leviathan,
It is clear with stacks of flat sacs, the masses connected
To each other, the sacs green and to each appressed,
And I am drawn there knowing I will enter in.
There is brightness there, electrons each with an escort
Stream from the surface of the stacks, singing
And then they are drawn into circles churning.
From the circles trios of my kind come and exhort,
(Or so it seems) behemoths to join them, pull
Them together to make groups of six that away
Go to many parts of the world, Oh to the circle I sway
Around; six of my kind then three joined in a lull
To electrons and their proton escort we are singing;
The song of green, flashes gold and green all around,
Then I am joined to an other group. Oh the sound!
And then there is a crunch, the whole world tossing,
Churning. Behemoths everywhere; they touch me not.
Then I am a world, our group of six by a behemoth parted,
Prodded, regroup now into a group of five, by behemoth led
To a site where we the ring are to another set of rings locked,
After a blue head joins my ring we're pulled at by behemoth
And then to another who says: "I am the maker of the helix,
See your place, prepared for you. With luck you will be fixed
For a long time in a daughter of the helix so with you off."
The behemoth leaves me in this place like a lain stone
Except the place writhes and coils there are behemoths
Everywhere, like clouds. Filled with wonder are my thoughts,
As the ring twists on a string of blue heads, glowing cold.
From in the thread I hear a quiet singing rise,
Behemoths landing and leaving, strings like this one
But only one blue backbone, pull away and are gone
From this place through holes of various size.
The thread I'm in one day splits in two; across from me
I see another set of rings comfortably embraced,
And it seems as if the whole world's entranced
Leaving just one imperative; frenzied activity.
Then the whole scene slows and behemoths curl
The singing and the thumping of the threads stops,
Everything collapses together, bundled props.
Then a big still green: nothing anymore whirls,
Yes there is heat and light from the sun, there is seething
Activity below my world, waves, and banging, rearrangements,
This goes one for many cycles, below, as if I am in the firmament.
Then everything turns clear around me and I see something.
Now below me, red and black shapes move under my sight
I feel the world around me breathing and expanded,
Harder, and then the world is rent and I see it as suspended
This black and red world and everything else glistens in the light,
World exploding into galaxy, of red and black and white,
Growing larger and larger shaking the clear substance
Where I am, light flickering and then on occasion I glance
This writhing black tube coiling, uncoiling, coiling tight.
How I long to be in that space, suddenly there is a lurch
And then another and the whole thing is away
Leaving my clear chamber in the wind, a-sway.
I am alone. Something uses the chamber for a perch.
On occasion, some sort of brown contraption, gleaming
In the sun lands; the two tubes, brown and elbowed ,
At one end they vibrate furiously; The chamber is bowed
Under its weight and I find myself to the shadows falling.
It is dim. I hear the singing of my kind bound to each other
In huge chains making up the grooved worlds I see
Rising to out of sight, the light mixed of gold and cream
Below, the universe with many dark sounds stirs.
Suddenly all is dark, something flashes above.
There is something moving, no falling
And then another, and a whole rush down tumbling,
The remnants of my chamber carried off
Far from where it started. Then come slow splashes
The whole universe with drops and drops falling from
Distant shapes. it is getting darker still, run
Shapes by me, first one then several then many lashes
The remnants of my chamber take, then it is carried off
In between two pointed pinchers, How wondrous!
For all around these twelve and fourteen of my kind rush
And then are swept into openings in the tubes, you scoff
But it is true, the tubes are held low to the ground
At the elbows bend and the tube beyond has thousands of
Curved pins and pits and when the twelve and fourteen are aloft.
They are swept to these pits and the whole thing turns around.
I know you scoff at this adventure but maybe you wouldn't
If you could figure where I've been and where I am,
Then you would simply be amazed at the wonders, without plan
But just by happenstance, but of course planning an atom oughtn't
Contemplate being really powerless to change the game
So dear person, you must come with me to see the wonders
I encounter on my journey. Now My chamber's torn asunder
In a new place with many, tube worlds, non quite the same.
There are white monsters here with wrinkled sides, curved
And with no openings. No wait the piece I'm in, is to it
Proffered to one end where an opening seems to sit,
There is liquid inside and we're mashed, inside served
Up to leviathans and this whole thing is painfully familiar,
But wait, I'm taken not to other parts of the white monster,
Instead, I find myself at the far end of the monster in sequester
Where nothing moves, what is the point of this dark lair?
For about a week I stay in this black pit at the monster's end.
And the mass out of the monster is pushed out,
Taken out by the machines that brought me to this spot,
And dumped to a heap of jumbled dead things spent.
There are machines here that seem quite big but then
How big is big when everything is so much bigger than I
Almost seems irrelevant which explains my inattention to size
Even the smallest machines or worlds is big in the time I spend
Inside. So let me recount the machines that are here,
White six tube machines some with a long projection
Underneath that springs down with a snap and action
That sends the six-tube machine up and it lands there
Behind the boulders strewn among the many masses.
So this place is not quite dead but is full of movement
though the things doing the movement are pale and bent
Or pale, long and round, wave from side to side to progress.
The are not stealthy like others are. And there are machines
Like those that put me in this place only smaller, yellow.
They poke and prod all the things in this place, enter from below
From some dark place, they come alone or in teams.
I lie there until repeated drops of water break apart
The black shape that's been my home into pieces
And so the parts scatter to many places
Some come to rest nearby, others getting a start
To some distant place in the universe where I have never been.
I remain until the day when came the brown ringed cylinder
That contracts and expands regions separately from each other.
Oh what feat of engineering, but before the maker, praise we spend
We must remember all are atoms which cannot plan their path,
Yet they come together from below and form behemoths, Spectacular
Machines without guidance from a maker, they come together
As an act of basic law over which no control do they have.
And then I am inside this wonderful cylinder! There are behemoths
Everywhere, and boulders, carbon compounds and large machines.
Feel them brushing me around, stirring the water , taking gleanings
From inside this cylinder. There is a rolling motion that stuffs
Everything together keeps it moving, but though I would
Love a part of this machine to be, though I cannot,
For eventually what's left is sent out and end in a clot
Of boulders, and my kind with escorts in a knot.
Now the particle that I'm in is to small for gather
By the big machines. It is wet here and there are worlds
Undivided, crawling, or swimming by making the water whorled
With thin flexible tubes placed on the surface, a pattern regular
When one brushes by too close I see the tubes edge on,
And get a look at the machinations and realize this is so familiar.
For what I see are helices of beads twisting, nine sets circular
I think ,but never did I see them long enough the number to reckon.
Now I look and realise the small world where I am
Has become attractive to many non-black forms that hide
In pits that this world is covered, they sit and move aside
To make room for as many more as will in each one jam.
Also nested here are oval worlds, they must be small
But how small relative to others is not known
For as you suspect or know by now everything is grown.
So once a certain size is reached for me tall is tall.
So I look up my world and realize its basically my kind,
Black of deepest black not many other kinds except
The pits. The fulgent colour jogs memories that slept
For long that I had forgotten I could find.
Here I am surrounded by machines and worlds seeing
White tubes grow and retreat and with tubed monster,
Wiggling by leaving the machines on my world astir,
And I have this idea the keeps me with interest seething.
Namely there is something out there white and hot,
Something beyond the universe of these machines
Where everything is either white or black, so it seems
There's a bright flash and I find myself flying unsought.
Then occurs a thought, that though I cannot presume to alter,
The scheme of things and the path I will take and though,
For Now I'm in the tiniest world of my kind and it seems slow,
This thought keeps coming back and is so very clear.
This thought that says to me that there is something larger
Than this universe here, something beyond the universe far,
Something that is white and home and called a star,
And my paths around the universe will one day take me back.
For I be star and to star shall one day return.
Paul Decelles Copyright © 1996, 1999
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