The worst thing imaginable
is to be stuck on one branch of the Great Tree of Being,
without resource or recourse or reprieve.

Every instant buds an infinity of option one can't conceive,
and to be imprisoned in one path by chains of cause and effect,
constrained by condition and the choices of others,
damned by determinism, forbidden free will—

this is the one and only hell,
a quick slope that begins and ends
before one barely has time to wonder about the What If,
much less to explore it.



The fear-reverie of god tempts us away from autonomy
with stories of showy sacrifice
to amputate discrete from continuous creation

in the complicated orgies of sensation,
in the space between the balancing point and the tipping point,
with an inclination toward information
and involuntary boundaries.