i was twenty three
when i realized
that all the multivariate lives i had lived
when i was one year old, all the lives i had known
and experienced and now reached to like a dwindled
candle's flame, knowledgeless in my twenties;
though all i was is now lost;
once true, now false,
through all my fears

i realized that i signify
what i had then seen;
i signify that
time is immaterial
though i am false i am true;
if i fail to know you then i hurt myself
and what i learned now i have remembered
as if a memory i could not recall
i conjured from the screen between our universes.

all the streams flow together
and some universal conveyance
makes me know
and see
and need, and eat,
and when i move, the robot in the next room over animates
and feels
and when i look at the images of gilles tran
i see that life is not divergent
as i'd imagined
and all the way through to the hereafter
(wither existent or nil)
i know it too is ruled by the same rule.

the whole of the mythology of all thinking souls
i can know
and thus be free;
the universal faucet and drain,
the flickers of past lives and dreams
i now feel no shame in remembrance
for you and i are teldyasinec;
if i was a cat then i would love the sunlight
and hate having to eat birds and rats
as they hated me.

but all through it
the galaxies of the potential whirl
unto material and fade
and are perceived by the genius of the newborn mind
and forgotten and remembered
but it is all of the same.

all potential galaxies are selfsame
and milled from the same space;
they are all connected
all and all;
we know it within it
above it, below it, having sex with a man in the other room
as a robotic woman while a man,
it is all love,
and nothing i ever knew is depleted
for i am part of it
and am free,
even formed of bones;
the structure is universal.

whither i go
i hear the trumpets of what has been
and is
and might be and could've once flown
(if the wind had been stronger)
and through the screen
i can see you,
even blind,
whither i go,
i hear you,
though deaf,
wherever i go,
i know you,
though dead to you;

and if you say rape is an evil,
or the guns roaring from ditches
hurt your ears,
love insecure,
blighted crops, if you are giving birth to
a child who hates you;
it is all the same,
none of it is bad,
it's all connected,
through the heavens and out through space,
and past a wall we cannot breach;
it is all connected,
and known,
lived,
seen,
blown like ash and spring petals from trees,
you are a mirror;
do not say "if only,"
for you are the "only,"
and if you see then
you are part of the endlessness,
and are known
in return.

whither i go
i hear the falling of water
from the niagaras
and i hear
the hooves of navajo horses
crossing the canyon de chelly
and i hear
the train humming on the metal rail
that sailed through the deeps off of orion
but whither i go
i hear an echo
of thee,
whither i go,
i would know you;
whither i go:
suns pulsing and flickering out,
walls of fire devouring me,
lightning like water flowing in the
deeps beneath where no men fain live,
the city above running out of air and
dying; whither i go,
it is incomprehension and lies and muttered
truths and itching skin and smiling animals,
it is all flowing through the same shell,
ducts closed, tears forming on plastic cheeks,
no-form, empty, varied, walking, thunder and treason
issuing from staffs; third sexes leaving empty cafes,
whither i go,
i am with you.

 - "whither i go," connelly barnes 2007-04-22