In tenebris lux

This is the way the world ends 

Not with a bang but a whimper.

—T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”

And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

—John 1:5

A bad poem, the source of those much-quoted lines

Worlds after all end uncounted times

And bangs and whimpers serve to furnish rhymes

Impossible to tell what future a fate mimes

The higher one gets the faster one climbs

Our allergies prevent reading all the latest signs

No telling on what flesh a final human dines

(washed down doubtless with the choicest wines)

We live today in a kind of prequel

Whose burden is a heart that rends

Yes, this may be the way this world ends

But after just deserts, there’s a sequel . . .

Sunday, January 18, 2026

In Māyā's Sock Drawer

“The mind is not a part of the world. It is the whole.”

— Erwin Schrödinger

Schrödinger's cat purrs in his box,

Cuddling up to Māyā's duvet,

Kneads the comforter with her paws,

While somewhere near, a final say

Knocks on virtual quantum doors.

Cats may think they'll live forever,

Humans suppose—that's not clever!

A cat's smarter than the worn-out phone

That sits in Māyā's sock drawer at home,

Lying there dumb, no more to roam.

No phone is dumber than a man

Who screws things up because he can;

Or woman wishing that she had more

Assorted junk from a cosmetic store;

Or person of indeterminate gender

Bent on a soliptical sexual bender.

Gurus surmise that we're all One

If so, I ask you, where’s the fun—

Unless the One comes down to many

Monads dancing, ten a penny?

Saturday, January 17, 2026

Pastiche

Louis Masai, When We Go, Shoreditch, London

The murmuring of Bees has ceased;

   But murmuring of some

Posterior, prophetic,

   Has simultaneous come,

—Emily Dickinson

Prophetic powers she possessed,

And thoughts she could not show,

More sensibly by us professed

Than Persons, that we know—

They make no more sense today,

Than bean rows to a hoe!

She was just a tiny thing,

And I am littler yet

Who roam about this human hive

Attempting to forget.

Friday, January 16, 2026