Alan Chazaro
POETRY BY ALAN CHAZARO
WHAT SCIENTISTS KNOW ABOUT BLACK HOLES
A Quick Death
And I quote: gravity will drag you
toward the singularity at the speed of light
and ultimately spaghettify you.
You Need to Travel at Lightspeed to Escape an Event Horizon
Prior to your terrible ending,
would a part of you want to celebrate?
Would a part of you want to smile?
Astronomers Estimate that Our Galaxy Harbors Approximately 100 Million Black Holes
And what if I told you that the spiral of your being
could pull me into an unknown? You can take this
literally or you can take it as metaphor.
Like Planets and Stars, There Are Both Big and Small Black Holes. You Will Die Regardless of What Size of Black Hole You Enter
This conveniently loops me back to #1: if you fuck
around hard enough you might just
never come back. Lesson being
there is a limit to this body, to this skin,
to this politic. Keep your hands where I can see them
in America.
How to Trap Light
Hold your hands around me. The way you would
while choking. The way you would the loss
of yourself. Let go when you’ve tasted the salt
of adrenaline leave your fingers.
When You Only See Darkness, Then You’ll Know You’re Inside a Black Hole
Because the darker the center the deeper
the truth reminds me of when Pac said
the darker the berry the sweeter
the juice. Because all along we’ve been thinking
Pac’s been in Cuba but maybe he got lost
inside the blackest hole in America.
Physics Break Down
Not break down like hip hop but break down
like hoopty, like the first car I ever bought
was a black Honda with tinted windows and
black rims. Like the time I was pulled over
in New Orleans for making a legal right
turn. Like how the police made me step
out of my car and exit myself. Like their hands feeling
everything about me except how I was feeling.
Like when back up arrived with more undercover
threats, more cold
accusations. Like how I was just
a boy driving my car in a broke down neighborhood
on a Tuesday afternoon. Like how they said they’d take me
to jail that day. Like how they couldn’t because I wasn’t
in the wrong. Like how they made me turn
against myself. Like the way it must feel for those
who must live in the darkest shades of their skin
every hour.
You Might Never Come Back
You don’t need an astrophysicist to tell you
when you might not come back.
There is no mathematics for the loss of a life.
These days things haven’t been adding up. These
days I’ve been feeling subtracted and divided.
I’ve curled into a sunken space
but I am relearning how light
explodes brightest in the dark.