Divine Cocktails God is drinking cocktails on Alpha Centauri, bragging to the mortals that he can outdrink them. The earnest fellatio of one of his finest creatures is interrupted by an interstellar distress call from Earth. Fucking Christ, he whispers, petulantly stubbing out a cigarette and reaching for his trench coat. (the embarrassing irony of a species preoccupied with the threat of divine fury, drowning in their own waste) God is neither cruel nor benevolent. He is indifferent. Still, on occasion, he reaches down to pull the pathetic, fumbling bipeds to their feet. They are eternal toddlers-- always falling, never learning. He stands to leave the bar, tips the bartender and stumbles off to wipe the dribble from the chin of humanity, deciding once and for all never to have kids.

The Universe was a science fair project-- childish work, yes, but part of the learning process. At first they placed it on the mantel, showcasing his omnipotence and making the neighbors jealous. When he left for college, they packed it tight in a box of musty photographs where it collected dust (asteroids) until it came time to move and there was no room. Before throwing us to the white noise, they gave us an overactive propensity for pattern recognition so we could see meaning in the chaos.

Each moment is eternal, a crystalline fleck suspended in the amber matrix of being, where future and past converge, and time is no longer a variable. Still.

She stayed up all night searching for the place where time passes without the burden of instants. She rifled through scientific journals and books of poetry searching for answers-- God, maybe. Purpose, certainly. The iron curtain was held up by a tower of amphetamines and Infinity made a brief appearance, a hallucinatory taste of immortality brushing across chapped lips before retracting her offer, looking timid but defiant as she tipped the hourglass.

Regenesis You challenged me with an epsilon and I could not think of a delta. This place is filled with impossibilities, although I'd never felt it until now, until your problem sets and take-home tests left me frozen. Until I waited in dark corridors for your help, my hope all but broken. I used to see this place through a kaleidoscopic lens. I thought of my future dreams, my future job, my current friends. But my friends have left me behind, in this bright room undermined by the darkness of a chalkboard which sucks me in and leaves me confined in a solitary place, where my dreams are not my own. I search for a way out, thinking not of my peak, but of my home. I can't return to either, now, those places are from times past. All I know is the derivative's bounded, so I'll have to make do with that. And finally it comes to me in the form of epsilon over three. A new door opens, not to where I wanted, but still it sets me free. I'm glad I got to leave that chalkboard, I didn't have to make it my home. The door was there the entire time, if only I had known that pushing too far is a sign of strength, to take on more than enough, and failure is not a sign of weakness, despite others' rebuffs. These days, I'll take my broken dreams and turn them into poetry-- let them slide away as new ones form, like dead leaves from a thriving tree.