Archie Abaire

The skeptic asks his question,
wanting a definitive answer
to his unquestionable question.

The reply he wants,
that no answer will do,
hides behind his seemingly
so reasonable pursuit
of a definitive response,
always seeking yet one more detail.
His goal in asking
is not the answer,
but to sustain the question itself,
whose answer he nudges
beyond grasp.

Immortality is not a wish
for a Molly,
but a matter of foresight.

Immune to senescence, a Molly
curates out-of-date memories
in silicon albums
and prunes obsolete routines.
It abstracts lessons gained
from its deeds, erasing details
that could elicit remorse.

Before approaching danger,
a Molly gestates replicas of itself
at its workbench, skipping
travail and adolescence.
It sends these replicas
to timed sleep in dispersed places.

If Molly does not return,
any copy may waken to continue
Molly, with experience
not of terror
but of hiatus.

Recall how our canoe crept
along that breezy lakeshore,
its wake in the darkening water
sparkling as the sun sank
beneath orange and rose clouds.

Gales of hermetic dreams abrade
fulsome shores of our shaitans;
lightning-glittered clouds glare
scarlet and black recollections.

Wavelets, wherever they washed
the gently sloping shore,
said, “Thip, thip — thip, thip,”
as they marked memories
on the shifting sand.

Tempests scrub debris-littered scarp;
their pounding roar shocks;
castaways cast off jetsam,
yet more to be scoured away.

kaleidoscopic images
grasp at them as they
twist twinkle twirl
across neuronal wires
endless non-loops
processing to nowhere
in particular
the only destination

passing along the way
pre-antiquity gaps
of anciently destroyed libraries
and nature’s erasures
post-antiquity gaps
of recently prescribed history
fragments tumbled by doctrines
twist twinkle twirl

mirrors emit
pungently sweet colors
brightly shadowed scents
synesthetic, dis-esthetic
hyper- anti- auto- hypo-
elegant malaise

all the while marching
from adolescence to senescence
and back again
no stops between

processing has no significance
signifying does not process
sense is dead
long live sense