Tonight’s poem is by a cross-genre writer, Adam Holt. He writes poetry and also YA sci-fi novels. His second book in a trilogy about the teenage son of an astronaut is launching this month (pardon the pun).

In fact, there’s a book launch party this Saturday, in case you’re in the Houston area and want to come to it, at Space Center Houston. Let me know if you want more details.

 

***

 

not even nothing exists

 

I. Zerolessness

 

not even nothing exists

the existence of nothing itself is

unfathomable

let me develop this idea

that was never thought

 

the ink in the pen used by this hand

that wrote these words

that contained these ideas

not only never existed

but never will, never could

 

a nothing is at least a thing

against which something can exist

the mind can grasp this

 

but not even nothing?

the idea is not an idea at all

but a lack of an idea

or a lack of a lack

and now we are back

to trying to develop an idea

that the mind cannot grasp:

not even nothing exists.

 

II. And

 

a man walks into a bar

and orders

nothing

but there are no glasses to put it in

(if nothing is an it which it is not nor never will be)

….did i say there was a bar?

he walked in but never sat down

on that stool that never existed

He

Walked

Bar

Nothing

i tell you i spoke none of this

this world that contains this city

where your apartments holds this

you

never came to exist

never had a never to exist against

 

III. Yet

 

here is the pen the ink the you

the will that runs these rhymes

what then can we say about their existence?

a man walks into a bar

and there he finds

nothing

to order. he has found at last….

he

walked

bar

loneliness, maybe

he knows there is something

existing against nothing

 

IV. Then

 

three million light year away

from the nothing bar

where people discuss the absence of the numinescence

three million light years away

which in the design of things may not be far at all

from the nothing bar

three million light years away

there is an immense swirling eyeless colorless hole

that swallows whole stars

as a boyscout eats kettle corn

three million miles away

there is an immense swirling eyeless colorless hole

in the fabric of the universe

that ate an entire nebula

without even the slightest belch

turning what was into what will never again be

every nothing has a nothing to exist against.

 

V. Infinite

 

take this force

immense swirling eyeless colorless hole

multiply it by an unfathomable number

and you cannot equal the force of

the spirit that moved over the thoughtless waters

and in one word achieved

unthinkable

unmistakable

knowable

existence:

BE.

every nothing has a something 

to exist against. 

what jokes must he tell

perched on his stool 

sipping from a cup full of anti-matter? 

 

***

 

Adam Holt taught English for a decade before devoting himself to writing as a profession. He is an independent writer who funded two YA novels through Kickstarter. His Tully Harper Series explores the intrinsic hope of human space travel. His poetry has similar, more spiritual intent. Victor Hugo, CS Lewis, Seamus Heaney, and Rick Riordan are among his favorite authors.