There's a formula

for everything these days,

and I can prove more

things than I can understand,

And I can fact check

the stars, number the sand,

and I know that there is an Iceland,

even if I've never been.

 

I  battle with the variables

in the language that we wrote

our reason, inherent in the universe:

 

How is all of this?

 

Remember when we were kids

and we thought Pluto was a planet and a pup?

Then that moment when

"cuz Mom said so"

wasn't good enough?

When the toothfairy and God and iceberg lettuce

became one giant ball of "I believe"

pressed into the palms of my hands

and squeezed dry into the blackhole

where forgotten "I believes" go?

 

I look now at a concrete world

because I'm an adult and we believe in such things.

You know the universe is expanding,

space approaching infinity.

What's concrete about that?

 

This all exists in the flicker of a paradox—

Infinite possibilities, and yet

we still think we can think

in numbers. We've numbered

so much out

with charts of stilted graphs

to calculate the laughs

we've had and should be having

but we're not.

 

And there's a science to happiness,

chemicals and sabbaticals

top ten do's and don'ts presented

by the radicals who have translated our

statistics into the logistics of behavior,

habits of happiness—

memorizing how to live

instead

of

just

living.

 

And don't get me wrong,

I doubt with you

as I think I can substitute

intellectualism for skepticism.

And I chart and I chart,

and my charts don't fall apart,

but their lines turn to art,

And I number my graphs,

but,  we wrote the rules to math,

and aren't we all just starving artists

scraping the world for purpose

finding only empty numbers telling us how

but never why.

 

Why is all of this?

 

The second question

not inherent in the universe,

but breathed into its nostrils.