We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.
/

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.
    Purchasable with gift card

      name your price

     

  • Buy the Full Digital Album

about

Prose poem written for Paul Richmond

lyrics

INFINITE DENSITY


Paul couldn’t understand what was happening to him. Each day he woke up a little shorter. I must be shrinking, Paul thought. He knew this happened to old people, but he was far too young to be an old person. Then the day came when Paul couldn’t see over the kitchen counter or reach doorknobs, not even on his tippy-toes. He’d have nightmares—running endless fields of shag carpet, chased by a brontosaurus-sized mouse.

As Paul grew smaller, frustration swelled within his body. “The most tedious disappearing act,” he’d say to his pet water bear. He had become a speck of memory to family and friends. Only his mother would visit him, her eyelashes sweeping a microscope lens the closest she came to touching him.

The dwindling increased until Paul reduced to infinite density. Precipitously, he exploded, spreading incalculable atoms throughout the space-time continuum, generating planets, solar systems, galaxies—an entire universe created out of Paul-dust.

Amoebas formed, then fish. Then the fish walked out of oceans, and bumbling two-legged creatures hunted monstrous beasts with spears. All owe their existence to Paul. The more advanced species gather to tell tales of his greatness and sing praise. They raise their eyes and hearts toward the nightly tundra and call to him, their shadows gesticulating wildly in campfire light.

credits

from All This Living: Selected Recorded Poems, released February 26, 2023

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Joshua Michael Stewart image

Joshua Michael Stewart Massachusetts

Joshua Michael Stewart is a poet and musician living in Western Massachusetts.

contact / help

Contact Joshua Michael Stewart

Streaming and
Download help

Report this track or account

If you like Joshua Michael Stewart, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featuring interviews with LA music scene pillar Kamasi Washington, and new London-based duo Mrcy.

listen now