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When Hadrons Collide


by Jamal H. Iqbal


When hadrons collide they're not always Swiss. They may be cheese or neutral but that isn't of my concern.


When hadrons collide we hear them. I do in the back of my head a little and the fan does and so do you.


Listen.


Now keep that going in the back of your head just as it does in mine. For that's the sound of when hadrons collide. And when hadrons collide it snows.


It snows on the little peak of the tall toupee of the pyramid in Giza. The wolf boy doesn't see the snow. Just like the wolf boy in Gazza. The wolf boy continues his acrobat (and don't lose the sound…the sound of when hadrons collide) the wolf boy continues the acrobat act bottle after bottle of vodka-induced trance as he tries to forget the blood stained under the toupeed top of the pyramid where his mother's A-type lies. He doesn't hear her song, ‘fakraouni'. His snowy eyes matching the same freak of nature he has become as he keeps the tears away and continues to tub thump krump as on the silk youssifova sways.


While the hadrons…the hadrons collide.


The hadrons collide. Do you still hear them? Hear them at the back of your heart, a little gliss at a time. The hadrons in the beat of your heart, just with a slight murmur.


The hiss of hadrons collide when they collide on the street cafe where lovers meet. “Me haw! Shei shei!” gives way to your selfie and mine. Camera clicking a picture of her making faces as she clicks a picture of him clicking a picture of her making faces as she clicks — shutter flirt — oblivious to the compact Fuji's Xeiss, blue his, purple hers, "cux mama don't dig pink".


The hadrons collide a little faster and a little more as first the lenses kiss then the spectacles and finally the braces…gliss.


A rickety old man chomping on a cheeseburger gives a wry grin. Then kisses her and him, on a whim, 30 years ago he had doppleganged this glide, in the Quebecois snow where hadrons collide.


And hadrons do collide.


And if you slow them down you can feel the rhythm sway. Feel it and flinch away and move and away. Steady. rhythmic.


The whirring hadrons collided as the needle etched skin. Black and gray just under the epidermis that was all blue. They spoke as his wrists moved. One stopped the other wrote. One drew the other grooved. Intricate, both their ink. Of the mother who wanted the permanent black eye. Said it brought her good luck, hey wish she'd just stuck to a ___buck. And the little man with biceps of Shiva who wanted Christ entwined. On the wanking hand so he would not pine. Cellulite thighs that wanted gore. Evil eye galore, as the dynamo would roar.


The subject wrote.


He wrote of the woman in white as she sipped her jager. Meister was fine she said. Hunting, reeking of brine. Skin deep. Aware of matters skin deep where it peeled. Layer after layer, carefully constructed only to be wiped with spirit, despirited away.


They took shape, long into the night. Phoenix met a six-pack, anatomically defined. Defiled, Icarus pined.


And hadrons, hadrons they formed the acriflavine. Colliding over the canvas once blistered now defined.


Look at them, touch them, feel them, the quirks of the antiquarks, masonic mesons, baron baryon.


Nay then again you won't. Not unless you enter the Swiss tube but AS I STATED that's not my concern.

 

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