The Visit Poem by jim hogg

I must photograph your gums
I’m sure I heard him say,
with a hundred million pixels
of the latest insight into
the tissue of a universe in decay.
Remember the selves we used to be -
he might have said; I might have dreamt –
white and upright, sharp as purpose,
I believe they may be clearly seen
in the stars of your mouth;
and the selves we hadn’t become
yet - I wonder about them sometimes,
estranged so far from that unitary
system we inhabited, in some other time -
which never knew alien sugar traps,
nebulae of conspicuous addiction
or orbiting temptations of various
galaxies that would swallow our lives,
or sly, unpoetic mishaps we’d have
to avoid like cavities! Looking now
into his images I imagine Higgs
Boson particulae lurking,
colliding perhaps with illusion
in deep darkness at the root
of a tooth fixed in the jaw of
a history of crushing matter
that won’t be denied - a future
that bites back
but keeps on breaking down
the elements of Newton’s notions,
under photons from even the moon,
tiring, but busy at this moment,
dragging long compulsive slicks
of saliva into inconclusive entropy
where “mouth” is an empty concept,
drilled out bit by infinite bit.