[Newspoetry] The Possibilities of Hell

[DL Emerick]

Questions That (pay) Interest Me.
(ac)Counting in family numbers
Numbering family (ac)counts
I shall not pretend to have an analytic of this.

I shall talk about one.
Later, I may talk about another.
The series may have no end.

If the series has an end,
I want to see whether it occurs
Naturally because of me,
as when I might (for instance)
lose interest or become distracted
or outrun the grounds on which I stand.

Or else, I want to see if the series
Could be sustained indefinitely,
Even when I lack something that
Would allow me (possibly)
To go on, to continue, to carry over.

No one thinks, for instance, of us as odd,
to place our numbers in columns
(as if this thing were a laundry list).
or that we add down this list,
with a "carry-over" to be posted,
eventually,
at the top of the next sub-column,
the next higher magnitude,
the next powers of ten column.
That we do this, again, and again,
until we find that we come
up against an emptiness, a blank space.

Ah, ha!  Just the place to stick
all of the stuff that I was carrying over.
This place is ripe for development,
A place for me to pollute,
to dump this trash bag,
of the highest orders of carry-overs.

An abstract algebra, for instance,
might insist on the mutuality of closure
as the highest virtue of an arithmetic.
She says: Circle back, return to the fold!
Venture not into that infinity!

Why has algebra a feminine voice?
Because I am a male and I am writing?
Yes, I would be me.
That would be the highest proof that
Infinity seems to be out there.
So, mortals die; me mortal; me die.

Algebra is my mother.

But how does this species reproduce itself?
How do I, who am a mere number, a least value,
Come, ever, come back to being me?

Syllogism: substitute this for those
to obtain a possible fact.
Observation.  It is so ordered, or not.

I would speak in numbers,
but, when numbers have not yet happened,
then I may use words to talk of numbers.
Words are not bound to an algebra.

No one is married;
no one insists on this marriage;
It would not have been Heaven-made.
This "it" is the marriage;
"It" (itself) is not the ones
To whom a marriage would apply
As for a binding rule.

My son has told me that
"It" has an offensive quality.
"It" is a two-letter swear word.
Try forbidding "it" in your speech.
Root out every occurrence.
I suppose he means to eliminate
All of the "its", as well the "it".

Says he: Swear not by "it".
The "it" is a non-person of a non-thing,
An emptiness.
"It" has no proper antecedents.
"It" does not come back to "itself"
To close a discussion.
"It" opens the door to ambiguity
Or "it" fails to shut the door for certainty.

In telling me this,
My son gives me a gift --
One that is greater than mine to him.
He gives a me a method, perhaps.
Take the rule:
"Ban 'it' and 'its' representations".
Then generalize the rule.
"Ban 'X' and 'Xs' representations"
To talk about the unknown
To study and observe "it" or "X".
When you understand Substitution,
As Rules of a Syllogism,
Then the reign of "it" is over,
Yet another fatality of mortality.

My daughter sees this.
Says she, speaking of me:
"It's all about me;
Why, whatever else could I say?"

Are you there, Mom?
I want my mommy.

Dearest number,
do not forget me!
Remember ye now,
In the days of thy youth,
The primes that came before thee.
"Beget ye primes,"
and yet again, I say to ye, "Beget!
Remain ye a chosen people."

Does it add up?
Does it become me?
What a silly prime!
Is he prime, at all?

Mother: the big Zero.
Where is my father, the big One?
Am I one or none
Or two or more?
Am I cardinal or ordinal?

It's hard to talk (of) Father.
He leaves marks on Mother.
Father is non-algebraic.
I am not sure what that means
When I say that he is not.
I think that I hate him.
I know that I do.

Penis-envy?
Oh, please?
I was not the one who first knew
My father's first.
Leave that to Zero
As she stands next to One.

One has no curves,
Other does and zeroes herself.
Equal are they?
When zero takes the lead
Of a row of numbers.
You could put an infinite number of them
Right there, in front of some one
Or its family of ten resemblance.
A digit is a bit in a bigger house.
Leading zeroes count for nothing;
Trailing zeroes hold places
For Ones who have something.

One is a property, whenever I find it.
Zero is a property only when it follows.

I promised you infinity.
Have you got some of this series?
Yes, yes, go on and on.
I'm afraid that's not it.
Keep trying.

YES, YES, YES! That's it.
Infinity in a moment.
An ecstatic union of zero and one.
It becomes something else.
It begets itself as a genetic creation.
It lives, it lives, it lives.

Chorus speaks: Oh. 
Orifice of disaster,
Mouth of Hell,
Waiting to warn me.
Warning to wait
Weighing me down with care,
Telling me to stop.
Like Mom or Dad.
Be like Mom and Dad.
Be one or be nothing. 

There is no else to alternative.
One could not live in a wasteland,
Beyond the border of a one,
Even when you populate that place
That is no place,
That blank wilderness,
With imaginary zeroes
To hold, imaginarily,
A place for nothing itself. 

A zero by itself is nothing.
Forget that it is there.
It is the same as not being there.
It could not be otherwise.
Therefore, nothing follows it. 

Nothing follows nothing,
Nothing ever could.

Odd, this One that comes
After Nothing,
To bother her so much.
Why does one pursue nothing?
Would not this possibility,
That of bothering itself,
Bother you?

Heaven and Hell.
In Heaven no one bothers you.
Everyone bothers you in Hell.
And you are everyone else.
Equate the possibility
Of peace and war
Being the same state,
Alternating one,
To follow another,
To force fits of history
As a fitting history of force, itself.
Heaven's peace is never bothered.
Hell's war never stops bothering me. 

Heaven washes its hands of Hell.
Heaven is nothing, nothing much.
Hell is everything.
It's all or nothing, there.
An alternative that is not chosen
Could not be chosen.
It is not prime,
Nor is it prime time.

You did not hear me speaking.
I did not talk of this or that.
I said nothing,
I did nothing.
This series did not start
And thus it has no end.
I have no analytic for it
But I did not pretend
That I did have words for
Any imaginary number.

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