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John 3:16
(Stephen Colbert sticker poem V*)

On that day, the five dozen volunteers
walked over the edge of the precipice,
stopped for a moment, huddled in front
of it, then, as directed by the first in line,
moved forward, following him, one by one,
into and completely through the massive
oval of ancient rock that had been sacred
to the planet’s inhabitants ever since as
far back as their recorded history, and
no one knew how long before that.
But no one, at least in recorded history,
had ever dared to go where no Vulcan had
knowingly gone before; as far as Vulcanity
knew, no one had ever passed through the
Sacred Portal on the Great Precipice. The
line of individuals making their way to and
through the Great Portal were each volun-
teers, mostly made up of academic veterans
of research along with a few of the eccentrics
who lived further up the mountain upon which
the precipice and its “portal” stood. Each indi-
vidual who passed through the chute made of
sheer rock (which burned a bright shade of
bronze on clears days such as this one, which
was due to an admixture of heavy metal along
with the planet’s dusty mantle), once on the
other side, found that they had entered a void
filled with nearly blinding solid white—not quite
light—that was thicker than it could possibly be;
in fact, it was so dense that as each of the travel-
ers looked back to observe the side of the portal
from a perspective that, to their knowledge, no
Vulcan had ever seen, no trace of it could be seen.
There was nothing but the intense bright white.
Each Vulcan learns at a very young age that,
even with ardent and open-minded, steady
non-stop focus in one direction or at one thing
for any significant duration of time, any con-
clusions implied by logic about what was seen
might be about as far from the reality as imagin-
able. In other words, logic does not always win.
There is and will always be the inexplicable, the
unexplainable; illogic. Nevertheless, what with
imagination being one of any typical Vulcan’s
weakest link: what does one use to make any
progress with a subject encountered that with
standard logic is only misunderstood, inappropriate-
ly managed or dealt with, or worse, is an udefeat-
able enemy to civilization and harmony. Vulcans
become both palpably disturbed and very curious
when they encountered this sort of oddity. So, by the
time the seventy explorers had each passed through
the sacred, hollow rock and paused long enough to
glance back toward where they at least believed
they were moments earlier, the thick white non-
fog had in an instant become a seemingly imperm-
meable hue of pink. A Vulcan bathed entirely in a
sea of pink is a sight to behold (reference for example,
the master swimmers in the T'Paul Sea in the late spring).
It is the color for love, pink; and their color for grief.
And to immerse oneself in it is to encounter within
oneself the dichotomy, that primary conflict which the
proud race had all but successfully quelled for as far back
as the established historical record goes. When bathed
in this present pink light, each individual experience was
deep and unrelenting, it was pure emotion. And emotions
are illogical. To express them, to even allow them even
sparingly into consciousness was lowbrow, if you will. Yet
oddly, it was the primary ritual, catalyzed by walking into
the hallowed caverns where inside nothing existed except
a vivid pink intensity which could somehow, upon being
temporarily sealed (in an airtight manner) allowed move-
ment and breath within. Each Vulcan father would ex-
perience for a day, a night, and another day until dusk,
directly after the birth of his first-born. Several of today’s
volunteer explorers had never even experienced this
ritual, this rollercoaster through heartbreak and ecstasy
and everything in between. A few hours after being
lowered into one of these pink caverns, there was what
was termed in Vulcan something that, roughly translated,
was the reversal, a moment when all of the passion-inflict

ing rosy light began to subside and then slowly disappear
altogether. Nothing is left. Perception is momentarily
eradicated. Nothing is perceived – by either of the seven
Vulcan hypersenses. There is no negativity, no positivity.
There is no love, no vengeance; neither pain nor joy.
There is only the nothingness through which the trajectory
of the genesis of life soars to its culmination, to its inevitable
extinction. The drop, sheer as it was, wasn’t actually a
drop at all. What was perceived as precipice was rather
the mere top of what might best be described as a swarm
of poisonous green blood that co-existed with the mighty
pulse of existence, the unusual longevity of a race that had
always evolved, and swiftly, toward some ideal. The swarm,
however, had also pre-existed, and had moved beyond ideal.
And it would outlive the pulse. There was no sensation, to
be sure. There was “I know who you know” and there was
“I feel what you feel.” Representative of the entire race,
these explorers had grasped, in unison, that which was to be
normally quelled and yet experienced unto numbness only in
proximity with life’s most precious and poignant moments,

which, when combined with each like experience, was the 

summation of every Vulcan’s ritualistic journey from everything

into nothing. Their thoughts, as the beings each flew or fell
into the nothing of all nothings, were melded with those of
the green swarm. And all that remains of the event are im-
permeable notions. Love defies and denies logic. No love,
except that which extends indefinitely, exists. There is no
existence. There is an irrevocably pure, fathomable simpli-
city that is and will always be toppled by duplicity, or un-
being. These notions are held true by millions of hollow
words in thousands of fictive languages. The green
swarm always bleeds to death. The expanse of
altruism is a boiling vengeance. I see what you see.
I feel what you feel. And how would either of us ever
know any of this or even throw a wrench into the enor-
mous machine that creates and then contains and then
perpetuates these notions, when we each choose no-
thing but to keep swimming desperately just off the
shore of hope, in the dark confounding sea of denial?

*(the title of this poem is from a page from Stephen Colbert’s
  I Am America And So Can You which has a set of “STICKERS,”
  each with a phrase which he recommends using to show that
  you are the “man in charge” or that “you’ve got it all under
  control” – I assume to be used especially when the man-reader
  actually has no clue, or simply isn’t interested or even paying
  attention)