The Universe That Hides Within Poem by Rogers Joseph Brown

I am the sum of all the ghosts
of billions of lives long since past.
My dreams seem eternally entombed
in this coffin of blood-soaked bones,
mummified in scarred pieces of tattered flesh.

I was birthed from the ashes and dust
of a billion trillion dying stars.
As the galactic core of my being takes form,
the stardust pumps through my veins.

My fingers are but countless broken pieces
of lightning bolts, scratching at the walls of infinite darkness.
My arms outstretched across the heavens,
to the ends of the universe and time.

The blinding light of a thousand stars
emanates from my eyes.
The pulsating shock waves from a neutron star
crashing into a magnetar—
as they are drawn to each other,
unstoppable and inevitable—
become the beating of my broken heart,
collapsing in upon itself.

And all the light inside my soul
is consumed by the black hole
that grows bigger every hour, every day.
But with no sun to revolve around,
time does not exist for me.

My life spans all eternity,
as I expand to infinity.
My soul hurtles blindly, forever,
through the oceans of never-ending space,
my destination unknown.

I am nothing but the whisper of dying light,
trying to break free from the cold clutches
of the black hole my heart has become.
My dreams become galaxies
that leave my mind at the speed of light,
racing through time and space,
running as fast as they can away from me,
to bring life to the farthest reaches of the universe,
only to explode and become a blood-red
cloud of iron dust,
turning to rust in the frozen, icy clutches
of never-ending darkness.

Everything is made from me,
and I am made from everything—
every force and element,
everything molten and all that is frozen,
all that is liquid and solid.

I am one within all things,
every atom of my being,
every particle of light that reflects in my eyes,
every photon that came into existence eons ago
and was blasted across the heavens
so that I may gaze upon them.

I am sublime and beautiful,
violent and dark.