Poetry

I. We Are

We Are - is written for and dedicated to all my early researchers, and to early researchers everywhere. The musical interpretation and arrangement to this poem is done by Sophie Paulette Jupillat.

Here we are

In the zone

Between yesterday and tomorrow,

Past, future, old testaments and supernova

Our fears, our hopes, apprehension and sweet discovery

But

We’re not too young to see tomorrow

We’re not too young to feel its massless pulse

We’re not too young to wonder at its mysteries

We’re not too young to know

We’re going in, that’s how we roll

We are the prophecy unfurled

This passion drives our curious hearts, our mortal coils

Beyond trembling hands and quivering lips,

Beyond first frost, we kiss the dark

Tomorrow lights the way, we dare not hold

We go for broke at the eternal river’s edge

That’s really all that matters now

For you and me, our story and our tales

Of space and time and energy

Before we feel the cold call of destiny

Inevitable entropy

Between sunrise and sunset, entanglements and tectonic shifts

We fade from light to black, big bang to silent wisps

But not before we leave our mark

But not before we see tomorrow

But not before we are laid bare, scarred and naked

In poetry and equations, beauty and sweet suspicions

We hold dreams in our heart, our soul, our hands

We are tomorrow; we are change

And in our zone, we’ve finally come

It must be seen, it must be written, it must be done

Once gone, twill never more return

In time, cause never follows effect

Eyes turned to skies, the universe inside

We push beyond horizons

We are tomorrow.

II. Synthesis

Awaken by organic ideas

Falling like autumn leaves

From curiosity and imagination

Not as poetry or melody

But stick figures of molecules

Reacting on yellow notepads

Revealing something new,

A fresh draft, virgin thoughts

I haven’t seen before,

I haven’t felt before,

Ain’t been there before

In my mind a simmering of

Molecules, anagrams of atoms

A different process, new experiments

Thermodynamic or kinetic

Unplanned by AI or MapQuest

Open destinations, unseen applications

May go somewhere or arrive nowhere

Through broken bonds and rearranged atoms

Electrons move like clouds of swarming gnats

I am maestro of this molar mystery

Green and atom efficient orchestration

Ideas flow like rivers meandering

Through, around, about, in, over, under

New scenery, new territory, new stick figures

Of molecules prodding forward unbothered

To glory or oblivion, power or problem

Conservation or redemption.

The soul of chemistry creates

Tomorrow’s world like nature,

Ceaseless, ad infinitum.

III. Spectroscopy

Light fingering dark matter

Like a maestro on a Spanish guitar

Revealing deep structure

Invisible to my ‘sensuality’

Revealing my limitations

Invisible thru my vanity

Light of the world:

Only in your presence, I come to know my soul

Vanity on hold

Measuring dimensions of time and space

With love and justice, mercy and grace

In the midst of my limitations

Stands the colors of Your face.

IV. Conscious

We are the universe

Knowing itself, seeing itself, feelin’ itself

Aware and curious of itself

We wonder and worship

We pray and praise

We know beauty and blues, justice and sin

Unlike carbon or gold, light or darkness

We look without and within.

Does a candle know its flame?

Does the flame feel its burn?

Does a bee know its busy?

Or a flower admire its beauty?

Does a grain of sand write its history?

Is the moonlight slayed by its romance?

Does the tree ponder its shadow?

Or the ocean applaud its wave?

Does an electron know when its bound or free?

Does it know its magnetism or its electricity?

Does the universe dance hallelujah to its gravitational waves?

Does a horse measure its gallop or dance to its beat?

Does silence know it gives pleasure, rhythm and rhyme?

Does the sunset take selfies of itself?

Or does a robin record its song?

Does life know it’s living without you or me?

Or does death even know about dying and the grave?

We are the universe

Knowing itself, seeing itself, feelin’ itself

Aware and curious of itself

We wonder and worship

We pray and praise

We know beauty and blues, justice and sin

Unlike carbon or gold, light or darkness

We look without and within.

V. Entropy

Must all our Paradises perish?

Must all our Eden’s come to dust?

Must Adam’s pregnant rib become Ezekiel’s wasting bones?

Must Euphrates always hear our sorrow songs?

Must hope turn rancid into hurt?

Must expectations always succor disappointment?

Must bright stars become black holes?

Must nature always take this course?

Entropy? Inevitability? Apocalypse?

VI. The Seasons

Spring’s morning mist came like Carmina Burana

She kissed life into a waiting wanting earth

Resurrection feels wet like wine on tongue

Like surf foaming on brown Caribbean sand

A baptism of life upon your feet

Never quite ready for summer’s drench to have its’ way

But she insists, like boss

Relenting only to autumn’s explosion of color and nuance

Before the cold white lament of winter’s full moon

A slow eternal march to Spring again, kiss again, smile again

Resurrection and life again.

VII. Margins

We live on the margins

Where sea meets sky

Horizons whistle lullabies

Hooves kiss earth into sorrow songs

Water quarrels with river stones

Fireflies rise up from the greens

Blues is life and life is blue

We play the hell out of it ‘til heaven comes

Struggle is strife

Strife is life’s best symphony

Beauty is the beast

Silence is the loudest sound

Righteousness and revenge look the same

In the mirrors and cameras of the coliseum

Freedom song beats wrong

Fades to black’s brief interlude

Life is a trumpet’s note, a whirl of blue,

A lover’s kiss, dawn rising just for you,

Between the silence of before and after

Between atom and molecule

Quantum and a baby’s smile

Inanimate DNA and poetry

Where dawn is a setting sun

Whimpers mark the spot

And oceans fume with apocalyptic dreams

Is death the vanity of life?

Without newborn breath or sweet climax

Where everything and nothing co-exists

In our soul forever

The universe resides

Beyond the sun’s last ray

Beyond spring’s last day.

VIII. Human

We stand at water’s edge

Soul endless as the thirsty sky

We breathe at once requiem and lullaby

In our silences and our songs

Between a bang and a whimper

We are at once end and endless

Bloom and its perfume

Giver and the gift

At once here and everywhere

You are song of my silence, silence of my songs

Seeker and the sought

Legacy breaks like Spring

From anonymity

We are at once

Silhouette and light

In the middle

At the edge

Of love and night.

IX. A Million More

A robin’s song is not the only praise

The only way to pray

The only song God hears

He hears the Trini kiskadee

Your prose, my poetry

Some look to Mecca, I got eyes for Calvary

You play violin, I beat tenor pan

He hears you and me, Marley and Chopin

The crickets chirp, the bellows of a whale

The babble of my brook, the rumble of your sea

Our prayers ascend with morning mist

Our moans rise like water in giant Immortelles

Hope offerings of another rising dawn

He feels our tears that no one sees

Volcanic churnings deep inside

Our joy, our pain, our fears, our happiness:

Smoke signals of our weariness,

Incense of His abode, prelude to forgiveness

He knows true love that comes anew

In a drunkard’s cry, a prostitute’s sigh

Teardrops of a laden sky; maiden to our hopes

The RnB of faith remixed in immigrant feet

Peace that comes and goes like Atlantic tides

He hears you, he hears me

Our beauty curdles into sour milk

Warm rain turns into icicles of pain

Our lives lay naked to His wary eyes

We go round n round in orbits of solitary guilt

Knowing better but forever broken, fallin’

Prostrate in regrets’ alluvial silt

We have a thousand songs

We have a thousand songs

God hears a million more

He hears your funk, your jazz, my reggae and calypso

Steelpan in the Vatican, Crucifix etched into a vagrant’s palm

Organ in a maestro's hand, drums of a lowly band

Vigils for our aching screams, silent cadence of our dreams

His Grace assembles in us like dew on tips of leaves

Love goes viral through our broken parts

We have a thousand songs

God gives a million more

God gives a million more.

X. Mountains

Scientific fact:

Mountains grow from the bottom up.

A pregnant rise of history, hope and greatness

Earth pushing up; soul pushing out

Out of pain and past

Creaking crushing sliding slipping

Motion of colliding, emotion of emancipation

Matter with energy and purpose

Yearning to breathe like Lady Liberty

Violently wanting the embrace of

Cold altitude, blue sea and morning mist

Exodus of rock and crust

From earth’s hot and living manger

Forever seething with geology and memory

Urgently seeking the company of green leaves

Of dewdrops shattering sunlight into color

Of the scent of lilies in deep valleys

Young birds trying on their song

Chorus of insects in natural abundance

Cool caress of a river’s touch

Muse for poets and mountaineers

Meditations for pulpit and pew

Entanglements of life with you

Mountains grow from the bottom up.

X1. Waxwing Requiem

 This morning I saw a waxwing die
It's last gasping heaving cry 
Wide open mouth, eyes barely open
Before my eyes
A needless death of innocence
By head first thud into cold lifeless glass
There she lay upside down, feet curled tight 
Black head, yellow-tipped tail
Wings on wet concrete
Eyes shut looking upwards to heaven
This morning I saw a waxwing die
My heart cries a trail of tears
For the ignorant saying we do not impact the environment
For the callous that do not care
For those who theorize about creation
It has a name 
Waxwing Requiem
I saw a waxwing's last breath
It's last prayer to heaven