do you care?

dark star
o’er all horizons
my every thought of you
comes from you
each memory a facsimile
cloned from your immanence
impassioned indifference
to Difference bearing witness
enlightenment without gain
when each wondrous epiphany
offers its own special reward

checkered sequence
of absence and presence
ancient algorithms forged
from forgotten dreams &
fractal mood swings
skimming pond scum to
reveal water lilies aglow
with iridescent tadpoles
calling me, talking to me
beckoning a reckoning
beyond the valley of veils

gold standard of all currency
base metal of narrative alchemy
your fiction - my Real
genesis of time portals
centrifuge for gone pasts
& now futures
parallax views entangled
superpositions contracted
waves broken and collapsing
unending with no beginning
yet always, already asking
are you aware?
do you not care?
asked & answered
in the ebb and flow
of life’s tidal motions

Kevin James is a retired New York City firefighter and arson investigator who participated in Columbia University’s 9/11 Oral History Project and later graduated from Columbia Law School. He was one of several Muslim Americans profiled in the PBS documentary "Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet". His poetry has appeared in Into the Void, the Tahoma Literary Review, the Black Mountain Press, Griffel, Moonstone Arts Center, Beyond Words Literary, Rigorous, Prometheus Dreaming, Vermilion, and The Dewdrop. His published works may be accessed at https://agnostic-dialectics.com/