If I do not remember something then how am I to say it occurred?
If I think of something how am I to say that it is not a memory?
If something may be a memory how am I to say it didn’t happen?
Imagine with me a starless sky
A planet not without shape but not entirely with one either
The black sky broken in the nothingness by a crimson ocean
But we cannot see the red of the still sea from our spot on the beach
We can only see outlines in this darkness
Outlines of onyx pillars scraping the oblivion
Shadows of fields of grass
Not grass but the memory of grass
Cresting oceans of dust and debris, red in the darkness
Like a brooding hate in a love affair
The rumor of footprints of creatures that have yet to be or maybe never will
Smelling of not rot and death
But of quiet tears and forgotten coffee
We smell not decay and putrid
But the sweet smell of fruit turning to soil
The steam from wood chips on a summer morning after a night of rain
We hear the echoes of emptiness
An assaulting warble that we feel more than hear
Behind this echo we hear a slow thumping
The thumping steps of Time as a back beat for the cacophony of void
A slow march, yes, but faster than you imagine
This paced rhythm leading to the crescendo of demise is the only familiar thing here
Dare and taste this black planet
We have tasted the fruit of the fields
An amorphous thought that tasted of neither love nor regret
We have tasted the wind off the pillars
A cool sugar cube grazed in dream and set to the tune of the death of a loved one
Taste is the least familiar here, and what makes us the most uneasy
Reach out and touch the world
We feel the beach between our toes
A collection of strewn food stamps
We feel the lap of the sea
Hot to the memory but lukewarm to the lips
We feel the gaze of the pillars
A gaze full of disappointment and lemon rind
We feel the pressure of time, it’s hands firmly on our neck as it wrings out the possibilities
We have imagined a world and now will delve deep into its core.
Come face to face with its possible inhabitants and shake the hands of those we can picture
Dive with me from the cacophonous shores into the plasma ocean. Feel the dry heat consume us as we rise to the bottom.
Stand late in the center of the none and gaze past the beings.
These beings are learning to remember us.
Their bodies years tall and their wingspan a millennia.
Their joints creak as they imagine a tree
A tree born from the fires of this ocean
Each gifting an ornament to the collective hallucination
The tree grows from a wave of grief and torment
Drawing nutrients from currents of mania and storms of rage
Twisted and rotten it thrives in what shouldn’t be
The oxidized one raises a sword about us and casts us into the ashen poplar
Spinning we go deeper into the milky white eye of the orb.
The dark planet and all of its never was spinning around us as we are considered and pondered into oblivious obligation.
Consider with me the Concept of Creation
If imagining a memory is the same as forgetting the past
And those that think are in their own way gods
Then who are we to think at all?
Lest we stray too far into the Dark Planet
And lose ourselves in the ornaments of a tortured tree, never to be imagined.
