To Write

I told her. She said something like,

yeah, your writing's recursive, you're smart but

you let ideas ferment and mix until they're incomprehensible,

and I said something like,

yeah, I wish I could write directly,

transect the black hole of singular density

that my writing has become,

instead of glancing off

tangent to my point. Everything refers

back to itself, and only I have the

keys.

I want to let you see. I want to

open the gallery of my ideas,

let you admire or revile the architecture,

the backbone superstructure of my philosophy. I want

to let you criticize or prize the décor

and the rooms dripping with gold

and black oil and peacock feathers.

I want you to say,

yeah, that's pretentious, yeah,

that's gorgeous.

I want to let you

wander through the labyrinthine corridors that double back on themselves

like recursion.

But here we stand, the two of us. If

this gallery were real,

we'd be shivering together just outside the brick entrance

grey clouds blurring the sky,

city lined with cherry blossoms not yet crumpled pink

against streets. I would say to her,

shit, and then I'd check my pockets.

Swirl of overcoat around my hips,

no keys.

All is not lost, I'd tell her.

(For this is true.)

(For there are means of translation. For I can

demolish the gallery and salvage glass from rubble,

for I can press new bleeding veins of ore into keys,

or lock the whole dilapidated wreck away, to grow into

itself, let vines and aerosol spray overtake fractal beauty.)

April rain lingers between us. I told her, and she said

my consciousness was insular.

So here I stand, hands in empty pockets. Let me explain myself.

I want you to see.

Around a black hole, virtual particles burn into existence,

and evaporate. The annihilated information, contained in the shells

of these particles, cannot be destroyed without violating the

tenets of quantum theory. Stay with me, okay? I am giving you

the keys.

Complementarity states that the same information continues, inside and outside

the black hole, two parallel sets of data observable to those within

and those

locked out.