“‘What goes up, must come down’ and other laws of the universe”

Art by Vicky Wang

Newton discovered the words for gravity in quarantine.

Today, we all keep on finding new things to pick up and clean.

Anchoring ourselves in

“The world hasn’t died, it’s just closing its eyes.”

Humanity sleeps with heavy eyelids that are oil-tinged skies,

Mankind is a massive, modern machine living after its rise.

Within its metal arms, little cogs rotate and hum,

We, the people, churn and run the post-kingdom.

The common men have such grand schemes,

Look at us, living an utopia without kings and queens.

We worship one god, its name is The Economy

That’s why none of us can sit unless its for productivity

We’re workers existing for activity.

What is a human, but a commodity?

But, when the world stops, and the smokestacks stagger…

What is left, but what matters?

Our fleeting touch

Our flickering love

Humanity is titanical, tyrannical, and never quite invincible

For every great empire has been extinguished.

Rome fell, Constantinople collapsed,

And Mesopotamia never whispered from her grave.

Every time, one last fatal shout went out under a cave

Like the last candle on a birthday cake

The mountains clapped and nudged the plates,

Another year went by and the Earth still waits.

I go to bed earlier than I ever have

Then I watch the clocks flicker for hours

Each night shorter than the last,

Wake me when the morning comes.

I see my thoughts in a pale pink glow

That echoes like the sunset right outside the window,

The one that I’m already missing.

I don’t want to spend my adulthood wishing

That I knew my father better.

I’ve listened and I’ve watched and I’ve learned,

That there is never enough time.

When this is all over, I promise I’ll always remember

And I’ll take every chance to take you to watch a rose sunset.

The early sky pours itself over the earth,

Like drizzled, rose-colored oil served forth.

I nudge the bolts into the dawn

And throw myself past the overgrown lawns.

The highway past the trees

And under the overpass is achingly empty.

But, the birds are louder than they’ve ever been,

Or maybe I didn’t listen then.

What else have I missed?

We’re born obsessed with ourselves and die obsessed.

the earth will take me, but will it be

after I’ve seen her

clearly?

liquid mornings have doused the sound of people moving in a blur

and when the cars with their busy little lives don’t speed past,

Was the movement of time ever meant to last?

“What goes up, must come down”

Another word for fate is gravity

And in the time it takes for one of us to breathe...

It’s like we were never even there.

#quarantine #covid #coronavirus #philosophical #time #mankind #humanity #poetry #technology