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Too Much A Risk Not To

In the beginning, there was CHAOS.
the crazy ole big bang happened
(or maybe didn’t)
and atoms and molecules and particles
went buzzing around, full of amazing cosmic megatomic energy
bumping into each other faster than we could eventually blink
equally and oppositely reacting
sending each other farther and faster out into the reaches of yet unrealized space
to crash into more particles and more particles and more particles
generating heat
and
STATIC ELECTRICITY
until some of those particles
stopped bumping into and repelling one another
but instead
began to CLING to one another
conglomerating and coalescing
throughout hundreds and thousands and millions billions of years
until their collective mass reached such GARGANTUAN SIZES
like planets and stars and galaxies and OORT CLOUDS
and their combined static electricity became “gravity”
and everything pulled on everything else in the universe with a force proportional
to their mass and the relative distance between themselves and any other stellar object
moons orbited and suns exploded and milky ways swirled and the universe
fell into order
or
at least
did PERCEIVABLY so
I mean, we can measure the reliable movement of the stars in our own sky, right?
but the chaos still exists.
we feel it.
we feel it always.
we feel it when we wake up late for work.
we feel it when someone runs a red light and almost hits the car in front of us.
we feel it in housing market crashes and government coups and bailouts and save the starving
children commercials
in the wars we watch on tiny mobile app screens
when a president gasses his own people
and another president decides whether or not to gas HIM
and in births and deaths and bombings and abortions and weddings and murders
floodings
school shootings
rim fires
ROYAL.
BABIES.
we feel the chaos and we feel it deeply.
and it seems all too much for the wonderful machine that is the human mind to comprehend.
does.
not.
compute.
so all we can do.
is reach out
and harness that ever-present ever-arching
horrible wonderful chaos
and twist and bend and push and pull and pipe and squeeze and sew and hammer and smear
and draw and scribble and write and scream and shout
until a LITTLE BIT of that chaos
is conquered
and culled
and made our own.
this is what we do.
we do this because we can.
we do this because we must.
we do this because within the next thousand years when that big ole space rock
comes SMASHING INTO US
(let’s face it
there ain’t gonna be no bruce willis
singin aerosmith to save us all
with the push of a button)
and I mean SMASHING INTO US DESTROYING ALL THERE EVER IS AND ALL WE EVER
KNOW OF MAN
maybe a far-off space-faring race of extraterrestrials
will fly through the debris field,
find a recording of this little idea right here and think,
“THEY
CREATED
SOMETHING.”

It’s worth a shot.
So
we humbly ask
and also note
your implicit witness and participation
in
creating something
tonight.

because if you think of the odds,
it’s too much of a risk not to.

Let’s start the countdown.