A gun fires and something living
falls into the mud, expels oxygen,
is swallowed by molecules,
but is still separate. Separated.
It’s no different from an equation
whose answer makes you uneasy.
It’s the separation that vexes me.
Or when missiles fly renegade
down onto a hospital and separate duty
from common sense, and the Cambodian girl
whose face was separated from her skull
by a Pol Pot mine, or how blood
diffuses in water.
It’s not a problem of physics.
And is not cosmic theory, though may
want to be. But something beyond Atman.
Look, as the sky bends, beyond the centrifuge,
past the blue screen juggernauts,
can you see them?
Where smoke furrows on mud and piss
Can you hear the fissures snaking?
