Once upon a time there was no time
and god was like every other god: 
all of them fine, and any and every was divine.
Being was just Be.

No thing but hum. Every one keen.

Then god who was not God in no time at all
felt a ripple in his firmament.
– no, wait: he imagined this: a small wound in his world.
A quaver in his quiver.
Something new was born as Something New.

And in it he thought he heard hosanna, and felt high.

He wavered over the quaver: should I?
– and tilted.
And so was made the first fell note.

He concentrated with singular purpose on a singularity and
boom!
He saw the light.

Spin was born. 

Up was born. Up rebounded, and Down was born.  

He shrugged, and made room, and Space was born. 

 Next: Time began. He knew time, and then he knew it anew.
Difference, and more difference.

Increase! said everything. "Word" said the god. 

He felt expansive, and pride was born.
Runaway pride, runaway gas, runaway expansion.
It all became too much, 
and the god became, well, God. 

God ran out of verbs.  
God ran out of adjectives.   
He lost control over 
the description of color, 
the modifiers of shape, 
the phrases of sound. 

Gone was the hum and keen of all gods.
Alltimeandallspace fled before
the supremacy of Time, and Space, 
and God was alone.

Mean while:

Everything was change.
Everything was new.
Everything ran from everything else, 
and everything ran from God.

And God knew
he was alone.
And God knew
forever.

Alone,
God knew angry hydrogen and blue oxygen.
He knew black cold and white heat.
He knew whiz and whirl, 
over and over, 
around and around, 
burn, explode, collapse; 
without purpose, hollow, in his name.

God went mad
listening to the hiss. 
Waiting, hoping for hosanna.

He longed for hum. He pined for keen.
He hated his desire. 
And forever became Forever and Ever,
worlds without end, amen.
God was lost in the void, 
in a wound of his own creation, 

a fletcher  
sighting and straightening and pinching the feathered
arrow of time, with no visible target, 
as it flies and carries away   
worlds without end, aimless.

After Forever and Ever, God forgot. 
He forgot who He was, why He waited, 
what He wanted, how to be. 
He rode dark energy, 
negative and ultraviolet, 
pulsing along the filaments, ranging
from dust to dust, 
his hoary head a nebula 
his hands blazing comets 
his stride turning upon upon radiative pillars and
jetting from compressed nothing, 
jetting from the poles of his devouring and empty heart.

Then: after
more Forever  and more Forever and more Forever

Something stirred. Something, somewhere, teemed.

God thought
– his first new thought since Forever –
hosanna?

The echo of hum.
The urge to keen.

Life. 

Us.

And God moved. He found his Way 
with deliberation, from star to milky star, 
saving, as he moved over the void, the fragments of carbon; 
correcting the courses, preserving the positions 
of all his new and hopeful offspring. 
Protecting us, his children. 
Urging us to sing, 
to multiply and sing,
to praise his folly,
to love him like no Other, 
to be One, one hum, one keen 
and everlasting music,
like before.

God failed.

On every world
life, us, we insisted on pre-posterous. 
We made other notes, 
used other sounds,
refused to hum along; 
refused his sharp keen
in favor of our own dull invention, 
in favor of new upon new  

– and new wounds, 
always new wounds.
Like god who would be God, we love our wounds.  

He felt us yearn to be gone, 
far gone, to the edge all Forevers, beyond His reach,
and to take with us all the new notes,
to change what never changes,  
to warp and spin and whir and raise hell
among the gods themselves.

He hated life, hated us, 
because life inherits his God disease, 
his love of restless disruption, 
his need for many notes, strange notes, false and beautiful notes. 
God knew us. 
We hate as he hates the stagnation of harmony. 
The desire for desire curses all who follow God  
– and life wants space, more space, all space possible
in this, 
the holy horror of Time.

God wept. 

God gave up. 
God lost the last of his Words, 
lost his language, and all meaning.
Without words God could not describe himself. 
He, too, dissolved into bits.

Time slowed.

When the last part that was God winked out, 
God was no more. God died.

After a Forever of Forevers,  
in the cold and empty dark, 
the gods returned 
and eveything was as no thing. 
Again was alltimeandallspace, 
and, as before, the hum and keen 
unchanging 

on and on and on and on