By Joshua Gay
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When upon a late-night working
Sleeping, staring, of duties shirking
I find myself in a state of active mental void,
By a noise destroyed.
But often nights, devoid of slumber
I can naught but lie and wonder
Thinking, fearing, madness nearing,
Madness like the chugging of a train
Lost in a one-quart brain.
Wondering how it, to begin
To look out by having a look within.
To close your eyes and watch time pass
For minutes, hours, but alas!
Waking from your mental task
To learn that only seconds passed.
Pondering back at all your knowledge,
Trusting that the facts are solid
Like an iceberg in the chill of lands far negative below
But can you know?
If you were the top professor
The brightest mind, all others lesser.
If you knew all in the sky and earth below,
But can you know?
Is it a possibility that something base as gravity
A law as constant as the sea whose tides shall ever flow
Could one of nature’s basest laws
Be at its deep foundations, flawed?
Despite great care it had underwent
Countless fulfilled experiments?
Could that one law with surest proof
Crumble in a moment’s poof?
Could truth be false and reality take a fatalistic blow?
Can you know?
For thought, take time’s monotonous passage
Given like endless ambassage,
Seconds, minutes, hours, slaying wise the same as fools,
Days, weeks, months, like infinite yarn upon a cosmic spool.
Is it cruel?
Or worse, I drown in rising dread
In the oily well inside my head.
Is our concept of time even lucid, right or real?
Perhaps the fact has been corrupted,
And falsehood, in its place constructed
To cool our fears and calm our nerves
And the peace of mind preserve.
Could the world’s next horrifying twist
Be that order does not exist?
Do months have sound and days a noise?
What if all clocks are useless toys?
Can a year be seen by sight and have a feel?
A worthless thought and purest vanity
The result of raw insanity.
All these things the world may say and…though
Can you know?
So carry on for pleasure’s sake
Believe the world you know is not fake.
Delight in each dinner and watch the stars move.
Stand tall, after all, for all that is proved,
You might be much less of a being than you thought
Only you’re there, at least, something ought.
Perhaps knowledge of men will show future far
We’re all in a test, simply brains in a jar,
And science will show, for better or worse
We all live in a virtual universe,
Where the pain of a sting and the light of the sun
Are master illusions fabricated for fun.
But you say, it is plain this all is not so!
I personally act and choose where I go!
But can you know?
Can you know?
Can you know?
Can you know?
