Creation Poem
In the beginning was the word
and the word was Empty
and the empty word choked
on itself because
there was nothing to say
So it began to describe
Emptiness
and then to describe
its descriptions
The descriptions became company
And the empty word
Consoled itself
With them
Descriptions of descriptions of descriptions
Until they rolled out at speed
The clicking arms of a fractal
Spinning out
Reams and reams of them
Great big piles of them
Up to your eyes in them
(All this cascading
Is completely exhausting)
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They became light and water
Flora and fauna
The inside of an orange
the underside of toast
Swimming larvae gathering in sea foam
A finger tapping on Formica and the little itch
Beside the nail
And all the different colours of a memory
a watch
a snake
A map carved into a rock and
The Great Wall of China
Not just these things but all the others
Some uglier
Too ugly to name
But you can split the darkness you know
the hungry and rumbling darkness
In two
Right now and everywhere
at the bottom of the red sea bed and
inside our glossy red kidneys
Emptiness is reaching out
To the border of its solitude
And at that membrane
Bursting in two
With crushing inevitability
With all the force of a raging river
Nothing becomes Something
Again and again and again
There never was any rest on Sundays
