The Universe’s Velocity Poem by Hakeem Rahim

The Universe’s velocity doubts nothing

The doors open,
A woman in an orange dress enters the train car.
The air is musty and mute
The tracks are laid against wood and steel
I question everything,
My words exhale from my lungs
My breath singes my left collar,
My brow furrows,
The train shifts
A man with a newspaper stands up.
Arts stand still on pages
Dancers are caught by a photographer’s lens,
The phone takes a picture.

I recall an hour ago, where I was certain
For a few seconds, I stood still,
On a planet too old to care,
Too heavy to weight,
Too fast to stop.

The Earth waits for no one.
Not even a train running forty minutes late,

There is a bus that I am late for;
It will leave if I am not there.

God.

My eulogy will be danced,
As is art.
Art in heaven
Holy is a name,
If danced, or painted,
Drawn from emotions.

I am a being of feelings
I constantly feel the sadness,
Of a piano played by an orphan;
she learned right from wrong
Between strokes
she can see her future when she looks at her sister,
She forgot how to be scared of lightning,
And the dark
And today,
She listens to my poems as though they made sense,
As though the universe cared about
Any of the letters that I write on this page
Or soon.

The Earth mediates in preparation for soon,
Leaving well enough alone,
In a corner to care for sometime.

God, the Universe and Me
Collaborating for one poem,
Just this once,
Asking heaven, space and now
To care about my words,
Not predicating good enough on
Metaphors, or bliss on a blossom,

A tree is only so if named by Adam,
Tomorrow I will name something.
Tonight I may leave this poem untitled,

I will trust the universe to slow,
Or not, I may trust the universe for something,
Certainty, for now, is fallible,1000 years ago was true
And tonight,

I will pray prostrate,
My hands to cup the air
As if the sounds from my mouth
Were as pliable as the very questions that I asked
God.