Strung Together

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Strung Together

• A collage poem constructed from sampled bits of
  the original poems published in the new book
  Riffing on Strings Creative Writing Inspired by
  String Theory, published by Scriblerus Press,
  2008.

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She couldnt fall asleep had watched a program
on PBS about string theories, membranes, parallel
universes, gravity
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But maybe she just couldnt knit.
4
Air is full of mistaken stars the wiggly
half-zeroes stripes make when folded into fabric
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and in no time we started to
unravel we spent the oddest days
searching for our ends.
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We were budding physicists we were
burnouts trying to get comfortable with mystery
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To verify the absolute minimum something, a
shadow of a spasming string, of what else to call
it but god?
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Frequencies configuring space and time numerating
our senses our skins our desires
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Flat in singularity with our undone
strings until were less than puff, slit by
passing planets into branes
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Strongly tied
a galaxy held
equations knit
a symmetry of Nature
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Matter and its opposite hiccup gulped in the big
lipped, ink-black hole
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under swimming the eleven strings of a space they
will never enter
through eleven curled membranes they can never
imagine
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But what is it? what noun placed next to what
verb modified by what adverb holds the secret?
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Dark matter evidently holds a key to
communicating across dimensions
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dimensions beyond the three up and down side
to side back and forth
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Dimensions pulled like taffy strings
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At least one of these dimensions blurs at the
speed of a plucked guitar string, becomes
uniformly invisible and able to inhabit more
space than it ought
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I am so tiny science has not figured out a way to
define me
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And yet my thread is real?
How am I so unreal
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Begin with a line, remove the middle third.
Remove the middle third of the segments. Do it
again and so on. Only a dust of points remains
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clutch quanta catch thread make bed of messy
everything
but the numbers will tell
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The physics of living tangles the common
there is another Universe filled with old
rubber bands
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Let me finger their eurhythmytic.
And youll see Im self-thought
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The undulating lines of pure thought that
describe the theory of everything
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Broken strings littered the floors of physics
departments everywhere
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Rolled hems stiffening in the wind, strung out
upon a sagging stretch of line
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Only their orbital keeps them from falling into
recurring dreams.
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To this day there is still nothing to prove.
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Many strings compared to one
when the universe shrinks into a dot
the strings end has frayed into ten
strands, which themselves can be unwound into
26.
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String Theory posits no events when it isnt
metaphor, donut twists in matter 10 to the
minus 33 cm
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And in the toy chest of infinities
both larger and smaller sets can be found side
by side
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On the other hand, silly string may underpin
much of the universe
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string thats super symmetric particles
passing through your house and body
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(Im picking up super vibrations from my GUT to
my TOE)
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A maddening locomotion imperatives
imbuing shimmering
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Angels wracking their branes to tune the
superstrings of their harps fundamentals
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remember that all motion is trying to be
perfected, to be still
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to loop and loop in wavicles of joy that
make me matter
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How many possible routes, how many maps rolled
into tubes, tubes pulled taught into
strings folding into points?
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Trying to calculate Horizon, the line
strong between water and night
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the whirl of charmed quarks
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Extra dimensions, parallel universes, the whole
over-loaded wagon held together with tiny bits of
string
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those fickers which are returnally reprodictive
of themselves
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we cant renounce the invisible, the fluid
foundation
of the solidly seen. We can only imagine
and speak in shrinking untruths
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the ordering will come the tight weave will
expose its structure and dimensions will blink
our eyes
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Wobbly fibres coaxed from eternity
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You were unraveled in childhood until you were
everything.
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Strung Together

• Contributors to this collage poem Cecilia Vicuña
  and James OHern, Colette Inez, Dave Morrison,
  Joseph Radke, Kathleen M. Heideman, Bruce Holland
  Rogers, Michelle Morgan, Robert Borski, Sandy
  Beck, Elaine Terranova, Diane Shipley DeCillis,
  Lauren Gunderson, Cherryl E. Garner, Deborah P.
  Kolodji, Mary Margaret Serpento, ushi, oino
  sakai, assu, and Lucinda Borkenhagen, Michael
  Ricciardi, David Hurst, Brenda Hillman, Jeff P.
  Jones, Heather Holliger, Linda Nemec Foster,
  Susan Zwinger, Wendy Vardaman, Christine
  Klocek-Lim, Cleo Fellers Kocol, Beret
  Skorpen-Tifft. Also James Joyce (Finnegans Wake)
• Collaged poem by M. Ricciardi
• Riffing on Strings Creative Writing Inspired by
  String Theory
• was edited by Sean Miller and Shveta Verma, and
  published by Scriblerus Press, 2008