It Was Nothing

by Dan Raphael

elvis sings “everything is less than zero”
but I’m not talking negative numbers
always taking away to who knows where

I’ve tried knowing nothing—casually, peripherally,
can you get intimate with nothing, intimidate nothing
cause something always comes up, usually not mine,
from neither right nor left field, or is it a pitch
unable to find home plate—nothing to eat, to throw,
nothing for gravity to bring back

not hinged, non-dependent, the opposite of the deep end
a glass of vacuum would shatter the glass
there’s not nothing in space, just things
we can’t define or name—dark matter still might matter
unless it’s math without numbers, algebra
with an alphabet of unknowns

nothing can’t add up but it can multiply
implying a border between nothing and everything
if there’s not a word for it we’ll make one up—
coin, mutate or portmanteau
I roll the dice and they go through the floor
I tear off the floor and see the earth’s ceiling
nothing can get through, nothing is never home

I’ll settle for something, some body, a sommelier of the void
a taste of nothing, when there’s no scent
but still not nothing, even silence takes effort

every door I open has something inside it
but somewhere there’s a locked door
with nothing behind it, no doors window or walls
no one has the key