Galaxy Novenas

Forced words like blood through ventricles
The power of the mind
To function without consciousness
Like the heart, like the lungs
The body transmits its many necessities without my permission
Where I dream that I may be
That existence is this intentional effort
I progress without any intention of my own
Seeking control over that which I have none.

Days alight by a sun beyond my reach
Nights descend with a darkness I cannot grasp
I react without intention
I succumb to instinct without meditation
Stars that shoot across a sky
Are no more real to me than nightmares
Wishes that beset my experience
No more actual than solar winds
Like the passage of time at the bottom of a black hole.

Answers are found less in intention than in action
The cosmic truth is far more permanent than my own
Planetary rings and bottomless wells of gravity
Far greater testaments to time and God
Where the nothingness of science is everything
My own certainty of existence a flickering fleck
Pockmarked on the skin of the earth
A particle of dust spread across a weary rock
Deep beyond my own breaths.

Where the functions of the universe
Move as motley as my own existence
The blood of physics pounds
Rules against bodies bound for brutal endings
Incalculable outcomes for which they have no concern
The irrationalities and insecurities about which I worry
Fractions of consciousness contrasted
Against the million movements within me
Over which I have no control.