poem

 Consciousness Explained

Consciousness is measurement.

Nothing more than that

Dials and gauges

Balances and scales 

Awareness is the language of laboratory—

Volume and height

Length and size

Hardness

Hotness 

Charmless 

Love letters that ramble on for 8 pages 

The 37 shades of blue

Radioactivity

The brilliance of your crescent smile 

The melancholy of the moon

The sharpness of the knife

And the pain of the hidden wound.

The number of days until all this is done.

Megawatts. Nanohertz.

The voltage of your touch.

My boiling point in degrees Celsius

Even emotions are merely measuring.

Sorrow is the great distance

While happiness retains absolute proximity.

Anxiety is thinking every tiny little thing must be weighed 

Boredom’s finding out everything’s already in the ledger

Mirth is realizing the instruments are actually broken 

And rage is totally forgetting how to measure.

What is love, then, in this realm of pure calculation?

Love is a ruler that gives the same value

No matter where you are, relative to me. 

It needs no calibration—

In my arms or trapped in thought bubbles

On the other side of the universe,

The answer shows no variation.

I always know exactly where you are 

A distance that never alters 

You’re always this far away from me—

The measurable limit

For as close as you can be

11/7/24