Gravitas

Gravitas

The tower of Babel was a mere 300 feet,

the Liverpool Cathedral ascends to just over 330 feet

and remains the longest cathedral

ever constructed by man

by geographical area.

**Nimrod (curiously notes)**

What have we learned from imitating mountains

and pushing our rocks uphill

in order to better gain a view of heaven,

perhaps catch a glimpse of what lies further beyond

what can be seen from the lowly human range?

It goes without saying…

there are no words of ours

that work like keys unlocking the holy gates,

unlocking the treasure chest of the universe,

it is sealed in strata for all eternity

as the sword is swallowed by the stone.

In the 21^st century it is time we ask the question(s):

How far have we ascended up the Ivory tower of Babel with our 600 and more tongues being spoken all around the globe still today?

What have we learned about conveying meaning?

Has progress been made toward the land of understanding?

Excluding the household or familial dialect,

if these forged and folded words as concepts

stand alone, each forged an edge-ward step,

the myriad of these systems lead us

to very different plateaus

called under-standing.

Have letters dissipated into dreams,

the things we cannot grasp or approach

without the total evaporation of the original conception?

As if communication had fallen out of favor as a preferred method of thought to thing,

as if definition itself had plummeted out of a too large window and flown away with the lines of knowledge,

we treat these utterances as hollow sounds,

as if communication were an old custom that bored people entertained themselves with like humming and chit chat instead of rolling up ones sleeves,

taking a deep breath full of intention and exhaling the verse in converse, letting its high notes linger over the heads of scavengers rooting their noses in the mud for the dregs of evidence that something foul took place,

something sinister is underfoot.

The weight of the words were sinking,

holding us down,

adding volume to our being

and resisting movement or ascent through feeling

and not needing to say,

the same discreet way the angels do with waves, light, thought,

and as heat pass through these bodies by breath and through chemical realms unimpeded,

we watch and take notes, proclaiming a miracle has taken place,

what matters is not longer solid.

These matters make up ones soul,

filling in empty spaces where words have not recognized themselves in truth,

words have tried on concepts like robes and fail to cloak such protrusions as shape and presence.

And inside, the light was absent, the air damp, the space left vacant for a new dawn, a thin spectral line that never existed between this and that,

meaning you and your meaning.

I apologize for making such an exasperated and dejected claim,

as if my meek voice would be elevated off the page,

as if sand were more gold than coal,

I was initially thinking of the inadequacy in so many ways to say the same thing that never equals the same thing or the thing itself.

With such little effort put forth in understanding something so wholly different from our own conception of real, it seems not surprising that there is no bridge or codex for mutual understanding,

a natural willingness to stand on another’s side,

to peer out from their shoulders is non-existent, unrecognizable, unfathomable utopia...

Why bother?

The intent toward comprehension, like fishing, not catching, the line lays limp,

the line falls flat

and plummets in a spiral of disbelief,

not knowing how deep and dark one may go into the abyss,

this is when none care to know

about the existence of others,

all is echo, your own shadow.

A change of view,

a decision to move

from one soft rock to a precipice

where life teeters with possibility and fear,

but steady,

a glance around gives direction

a point to focus on.

Below,

you know,

one is listening,

someone else hears your mutterings and is making out the words,

is carving the granite slab to find your mouth and has taken a chisel,

desperately trying to give death a shape,

to give crystals back their light

and to make shadows with movement

in opposition of time.

Etched, scrolled, craved,

these stories did not use you as a character,

the words do not ring true

and there is no recognition of relevance.

Why go on...

how often the endings change in the mouths of the mutes,

overtime these scratches on the skin and gashes,

called valleys,

carve the ways and means

the giants needed to pass through the slog

and trod over crumbled

mountains like ant hills.

Now,

only time is in our dark corner

where the light is too exhausted to reach our impenetrable body-

where has the mind ventured without tether,

taken by wind and covered in clouds,

the soft weight of water,

a blanket that stops the shivering,

disrobed, disarmed, distracted

left to wilt and curl in the careless air.

And nothing moves forward

but I can feel our relentless spin,

I can see the avocado tree that is in bloom

as it alternates its energies from yin to yang

and I sang this body electrically,

flowers stretching toward the dawning sun,

alternating currents and histories

such as plagiarism and innovation,

insanity and productivity,

everything has been said before…

now

if ones listens inside the white noise,

the hum of everything not saying anything,

thick as fog soaking the pores and short of conducting all things that may carry meaning or purpose or goodwill, a life, a rock, a word, gets buried under the alphabet called grain, silt, quarry, and mud,

seeks its own to level with.  

Image credits in order of appearance:

Photo By Jebulon (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Art By Reginald Gray (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Photo By Jebulon (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Photo By Fryslan0109 at English Wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.