The Big Empty

By Philip Jason

photo by Adam Gonzales

Schrodinger said the cat exists in the space
between two states, but there is a third state
where you open the box and find only yourself
-Plato

The butterfly in October was not supposed to be there.
In October, the butterflies
live in our dreams. Nonetheless, I saw it
where it was, and decided I’d lost the taste
for whining about the human condition.

This is us, I said. We are on a course to meet
the fiends we are becoming. The soul
cannot survive on amusement alone,
but all the good fields
have been planted through with soap
because someone thought it funny.

This is what I find funny: When Schrodinger
put the cat in the box, I don’t think he realized
just how narcissistic we could be, how dangerous
it is to fill a world filled with us with things
that need the attention of other things to make them real.

And this is my prediction:
One day, God will return home from vacation
and see that we’ve broken all the favorite things.
She and He will try to punish us
but we will think only of ourselves
and there will be no God.

In the meantime, October continues
and somewhere there’s a butterfly.
Somewhere else, there’s a dream
that needs one more butterfly.
We are just now starting to notice
that our tomatoes taste like bubble bath.
This, I think, is our karma.
Or maybe this is our rage.

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