"How Infinity Tastes" is a poem by BW Derge written in 2020, from "The Sun Will Eat You, Too" (to be published in 2024) detailing a discussion between the creator of all universes and the first-person narrator about how eternity feels on the tongue -
How Infinity Tastes
Slum patch dilly dang, shot the pig head-
Rumbling dirt…
The Earth is so tiny…
Licking away at the ice cream cone-
The aggravations breed hostility,
Wanting things,
Wanting More
Things…
My true bride,
What have you become?
Your name used to be Poetry,
Now I’m unsure…
What of war?
What of hunger?
What of ignorance?
If there is nothing sinful
In losing one’s way…
Does not knowing-
Or even choosing not to know…
Still sinful?
Are the ignorant protected?
I was in a cold steel room with nothing
On the walls.
There were two chairs and a desk
Under one long fluorescent bulb-
The man in white said,
“So the reason I brought you here,
Is that I have created a perfect universe.
It took a bunch of time,
An innumerable amount of tries…
Well, anyway, you’re currently in
One of those universes
That, you know, was kind of close…
But in comparison to the final product-
Far from perfection, for sure…
Any which way, you’re a slum patch dilly dang,
Wouldn’t exist without the imperfections
Laden in your genetic and historical past…”
I asked-
“Why are you telling me this?”
I never asked
Why I was there, exactly…
He never asked
If I had a gun…
“Now that my goal is complete…
And remember, I already exist
In the essence of infinity,
The blueberry pi spiral whatnot-
What should I do with the rough drafts?
All those attempts at perfection
That just didn’t quite…”
What he was asking was-
Do I want to still live?
Knowing that the universe to hold me
Is bug-ridden and flawed,
But also knowing that an ideal universe
Has no home for a monster like me…
Do I still want to live?
Can I not strive for my own
Morsel of perfection
Amongst the midnight of eternal stars?
“Either way…”
He repeated,
“The goal is complete….
Now I ask you to speak
For the lives inhabiting
The googolplex of planets…
In a trillion galaxies…
Within infinite variations of the cosmos,
Slightly imperfect in their own special way…
Do you still want to live?
Knowing you, as an individual, do not exist
In the perfect final product,
Knowing your reality is just a test drive?”
As a slum patch dilly dang,
All I can tell you is that…
I shot the pig head between the eyes
And said, “Yes. I want to live.”
I wonder how the essence of infinity tastes
In death…
Poem written in 2020, "How Infinity Tastes"
by BW Derge
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