I was told of a fellow named *Russell one day,
who apparently died (well sort of) in May,
then returned from a coma of thirty-nine nights
to declare that all matter is… crystallised lights?
.
Now I’m no philosopher, truthfully, friend,
I’m the sort who forgets how a sentence should end!
So imagine my panic when asked to convey
what a polymath feasts on for his cosmic buffet.
.
He claimed he had accessed “the source of all knowing,”
which frankly just sounds like my brain when it’s snowing.
He scribbled and scribbled in feverish fits,
while I struggle with bits and bobs, commas and shopping lists!
.
He mailed his big book to the geniuses then
five hundred or so of the highest of men
and they said, “He’s bonkers!” (which I’m tempted to agree),
but Tesla said, “Seal it for a thousand years – the world just ain’t ready.”
.
A thousand years hidden? Well bugger me!
I can’t keep a secret till quarter past three!!
But Tesla insisted the world stay asnooze
Was it him or me who was the more confused?
.
For Russell declared that the universe thinks,
that time is a spiral of inter-hinged links;
that death is just light being gently uncompressed,
I confess I am stressed. Deeply, thoroughly stressed.
.
He spoke of existence in cycles of breath.
Expansion, contraction; no life, nor death;
and good versus evil? Illusions, he said.
I nodded along as my confidence bled.
.
Electricity is living? Space – vibrant and healing?
By this point my eyebrows were climbing the ceiling.
He said health is rhythm and sickness mis-time
my rhythm’s outta step, I trip up when I rhyme.
.
But here is the rub, though ignored in his age,
his ideas now glimmer on science’s stage;
and I, though bewildered, can’t fully deny
I’ll have cosmic confusions til the day I die!
.
So forgive me, dear reader, I’ve done what I ought,
I’ve relayed the whole theory, or at least what I caught.
If it’s true that all matter is just thought in disguise…
then in God’s name – what’s going on behind my eyes?
*Walter Russell
The words of Peter Akinwunmi (Peter Ak'i) 