A SINGLE SPECK OF STARDUST

by David James Olsen

inspired by the film The Theory of Everything and dedicated to Stephen Hawking ... "who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed." (Allen Ginsberg, "Howl")

what twists and turns create the burn that makes the heart’s intones?

what organizing force infuses courage in our bones?

what questions help us quest to truths of how we do exist?

what answers satisfy the dark allowing light, sun-kissed?

a single speck of stardust that comprised him from the start

gave Hawking humble genius-sparks endorsing his own chart

of new galactic concepts none before had dared to breach,

of how the seasons stretch in space defying standard speech.

and facing such a fatal future from an early age,

he forced himself to move his mind to think outside the cage

impounding human theories bound by knowledge found on Earth.

he broke the mold of sanctioned mass, thus causing a rebirth

inside the field of physics where professors marveled more

at how his bright endurance conquered paralyzing odds

than at his hot hypotheses that came at last to bore

through scientific lenses lacking stabilized tripods.

deteriorating muscle strength could hardly stop his flow

of fiery radiation-thoughts and populated spheres

outside our milky, wayward mindsets curbed by what we know,

of places past the brink of time, beyond our pointless fears.

determined, clear persistence reigned till, sev’nty-six, he passed,

his focus never quitting quantum gravity at all,

his wit most sharp, intact until his heartbeat played its last.

study his work for ages so his star shall never fall.

Author’s Note: This elegy is specifically structured with seven rhythmic feet per line and six stanzas so as to represent the awe-inspiring age of 76 to which Hawking lived.

David James Olsen’s iconoclastic and encrypted poetry has been published in various sources including Instigatorzine, The South Townsville micro poetry journal, and three previous times here on TheNewVerse.News. A New Yorker juggling myriad passions, he is currently most focused on intensive poetic study and writing while gracefully diving into increasing vegan activism.

PRISM DAY

by David James Olsen

written about and on 6-26-2015

I do declare this Prism Day,
for, finally, Americans as one
look up and round together,
seeing through a single prism
equally, resulting rainbows
viewed with reverence unified
by simple love, needing
nothing other than a national
acknowledgement to set the
global table, turning tides to
placid calm where all can
swim in matrimonial sanctity.


David James Olsen is a 32-year-old published poet/actor/singer/researcher living and thriving in New York City. Recently, he has volunteered with Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and PFLAG NYC, as well as filling the role of House Manager for The York Theatre Company. He aims to start his own specialized NY theatre company soon, wanting to learn from the best while laying the groundwork. Previously, his poetry has been published in The South Townsville micro poetry journal, Instigatorzine, and here in The New Verse News. Continuing to compose daily, he hopes to have much more of his work out there very soon.

TRISKAIDEKAPHOBIA

by David James Olsen

Image source: Share

dedicated to Alan Turing

numbers hold more fear than words for some people haunted by sad notions,
especially that dreaded thirteen, surely evil by nature and dark to the core:
it has led men to doom due to gloomy superstition quoting Capitol maidens,
crumbled psyches with barren rage hinting at a horrific end to their pulse,
and crept into many tales of terror read by children with chattering teeth-
though braver brains have dared indulge the qualm of it and other integers,
oh so big: Euclid, Euler, Gauss, Newton, Leibniz, Abel, Weyl, Turing, and Fib-
all tangled with enigmatic math in ways we now must admire and learn,
so maybe we fools need to follow their lead, leaving baktun foreboding behind;
yet if you review closely, calculating the lines and words of each line
within this odd clumping of lexemes lurking in lyric patterns on a page,
you will find that often fears are founded in precessional and seemingly puerile
print which hides eery numeric code- and perhaps it never happens by chance.


Author's note: There are exactly 13 words in each of the 13 lines of the poem. The word "enigmatic" is used to reference the Nazi code "Enigma" cracked by Alan Turing; the phrase "barren rage" is from Shakespeare's Sonnet 13; the shortened surname "Fib" is for Fibonacci, who introduced to Western Europe in 1202 A.D. the brilliant sequence of numbers including 13, though it had been described earlier in Indian mathematics; in the Mayan calendar, each cycle of 13 baktuns encompassed an Age, making many people believe the final baktun was bound to be apocalyptic; each full "precessional" cycle on Earth takes 26,000 years, perfectly divisible by 13, and amazingly, as if our most ancient predecessors knew this, it is slyly interlaced into almost every culture's oldest architecture and creation story/legend such as the number of maidens painted around George Washington on the ceiling of the Capitol dome in D.C.


David James Olsen has been published by Instigatorzine, The South Townsville micro poetry journal, and here in The New Verse News. He is currently submitting much of his recent poetry and writing fresh verse every day. Also rehearsing a uniquely conceptualized production of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, he looks forward to its New York run and subsequent tour to Milan, Italy. Though he enjoys the juggling involved in being an actor-singer-poet-researcher, he finds the most peace while gently gripping a pen.