POEM - Salt & Static

Of fractured signal and of ancient grain,

Of whispered proof of both our joy and pain,

I sing of Salt and Static, two in one,

Twin forces ‘neath the white and distant sun.

The Salt is memory, the crystal past,

A perfect form that time itself has cast.

Each cubic minute, sharp and defined,

A testament to the disciplined mind.

It is the sea’s slow, evaporating breath,

The sharp, clean taste that separates life from death.

It is the preserver, locking in the prime,

A cure against the slow erosion of time.

It marks the trail of tears on weathered cheeks,

The very essence of the strong, the weak.

It is the bedrock, fundamental, pure,

A substance that all cultures must endure.

It is the welcome on the waiting meal,

The grinding truth that makes the fiction real.

But Static is the rival, the counter-blown,

The chaotic seed in ignorance is sown.

It is the hiss between the spoken words,

The cry of confused, disoriented birds.

It is the screen that holds a billion ghosts,

A shapeless sea on countless rocky coasts.

It is the fuzz upon the radio’s band,

A lost, unfinished symphony’s last stand.

It is the opposite of Salt’s clear state—

The formless void, the uncertain weight.

It is the noise that fills the empty space,

A shifting veil upon creation’s face.

It is the potential for both curse and boon,

The crackling air before the coming monsoon.

It is the chaos from which new things are born,

The fabric torn, and subsequently worn.

Behold the storm that gathers on the sea:

The Salt is in the waves that crash with glee,

Each drop a particle of saline fact,

A universe of history packed and racked.

And rising with the gale, a sonic mist,

The Static’s raw, electromagnetic tryst.

It garbles broadcasts from the distant shore,

A million voices blended to a roar.

The Salt is in the air, a stinging spray,

The Static is the lightnings’ wild display.

They are not foes who battle for the throne,

But partners in a world they’ve always known.

For what is Static but a desperate sign,

A plea for order, for a truth divine?

It is the search for pattern in the mess,

A coded, urgent, wild S.O.S.

And what is Salt but order’s highest cost?

A structure gained, but fluidity lost.

Too much pure Salt, and nothing can survive,

A barren waste where nothing stirs alive.

Too much pure Static, and the signal dies,

Lost in the noise of its own frantic cries.

They meet at last within the human soul,

Two halves striving to make a fractured whole.

Our memories are Salt—precise, and clear,

The moments held and captured year by year.

But fizzing at the edges of recall,

The Static waits to make the fragments fall;

A scent, a sound, a feeling half-remembered,

The dying ember of a past dismembered.

Our conversations crackle with the stuff—

The unspoken thought, the meanings deep enough

That words, like Salt, can never quite contain,

So Static fills the gaps of joy and pain.

And in the end, when all the songs are sung,

When old and brittle is the mortal tongue,

We shall resolve unto our basic state:

To Salt, our bodies, to the earth we mate.

To Static, our ethereal, vibrant spark,

The unseen signal leaping through the dark.

We are the crystal and we are the noise,

A universe of separate, clashing joys.

So honor both the grain and the wild hum,

The structured past and the chaotic come.

For life exists not in the pure, but where

The Salt and Static mingle in the air.

Short Summary:

This poem explores the duality of "Salt" and "Static" as metaphors for order and chaos, memory and oblivion, the tangible and the intangible. Salt represents structure, preservation, and the crystalline past, while Static embodies chaos, potential, and the noise of the present. The poem argues that life exists not in their purity, but in their essential interplay—within storms, human memory, and communication—and ultimately suggests that our very being is composed of both these fundamental forces.