Twelve Amps, John..

I feel like that one guy from Apollo 13. There's the scene where they're all in the planning room, and the flight director is taking suggestions as to what to do with the ship to get it back to earth. All of a sudden, this guys stands up and makes it known that they have to cut back on power usage immediately in order to keep the command module working for reentry. Even though everybody hates the idea, they know he's right. Barring a conspiracy, Apollo 13 made it back home.

I'm on the U.S.S. Western World. With our current way of making music, we are going to run out of new songs far before we splashdown. We need to turn almost everything off. LPs should be illegalised, and EPs should me limited to 2 songs, maximum. Artists must be limited to releasing one of these every two years at the most. Otherwise, we're going to, like, blow up in space or something.

Twenty-Six Letters...

Animals are not gears. One may not simply perfect one and move on to another. Also, animals are not perfect.

'We have a tendency towards entropy.'

And all of a sudden I could feel my feet being pulled down beneath the sand, millions of troglodytes and billions of neophytes lapping at the wind and there was no one there to die along with me.

'We kill alone, we die alone, we are born alone.'

There is your name, your name in lights, your name in pixels. Your mouth is foreign, whether or not it is smiling.

'We would trade our eyes for chocolate.'

My only weapons left are the scythe, because it draws its power from vocabulary, and the scimitar, because it is there.

'We sing out of key, and yet the door still unlocks.'

You haven't ignited your face in days.

'We slurp your hair and sip your saliva.'

I can't hold this portal open much longer, and I need you to go through it now, before they come through that door.

'We are tall and mathematical to the point of literature.'

Animals are not animals. One may not simply treat them as such. Also, animals are not treats.

'We sense your keyboard and locate you.'

If I could have said something, I would have, but I didn't know... I just didn't know...

'We have working screens working vicariously, working wills and the will to work.'

I love you. There, I said it.

'We watch watches.'

I love you.

'We knead your want into edible logic pie.'

I love you.

'We siphon your organs into what can and cannot be used.'

I love you.

'We are the shallow shadows.'

I love you.

'We are the next generation.'

I love you.

'We are the choreographers and authors and chefs and engineers and writers.'

I love you.

'We do not need you.'

I love you.

'We do not.'

I love you.

I love you.

'We are flying over cities and signing contracts and singing compacts and citing contacts. We need nothing and we desire nothing and yet everything is ours. We need everything, we desire everything, of course, of course. We are transportation and communication. We are your sisters. Nothing is evitable under us, nothing is rainy under our sky.'

You are rain.

Maturation Axiom..

As one becomes less cloistered,
the world becomes less oystered.

There's a Sphere Hovering Over the Arctic.

Why, I have the blues. In all fairness, I also have some reds, greens, and a turquoise. But of course I have the blues.

Why, I think I need to take it easier. Maybe I should listen to bluegrass and skip out on the soft drinks for awhile and cut back on the pace. Eli couldn't get away from any of it, and look what happened to him...

Why? Everybody wants something. Everything is conflict. Death through inaction is sounding strikingly appealing about now; that is, not letting other people walk all over me to the point of a gruesome expiration, but rather everyone lying down in the middles of streets and rooms and just dying. Calm... calm... calm. Calm.

Why, yes.

Why I Try to Avoid Deep Arguments These Days..

Where is the fun in climbing into a catapult to be shot into a gargantuan void of striped blackness and whiteness where there is neither an exit nor a window and within which there is no way of deducing the answers of the questions that the void compels one to answer for no real reason other than pride or instinct, and after all of this one ends up materialising at the exact same location days later in time from the departure point and knowing paradoxically less than when one left?

Flight of the Albatross.

What person, place, or thing was silent now?
With Earth ending, what reason did exist
to remain quiet, scruples adhered to?

And in the streets were humans wearing masks
to keep the toxins separate from their lungs,
their dogs expired, lying in the streets
and decomposing into nothing new.
The last surviving men cavorted ‘round
parading, driving, slaughtering their kin,
raping former wives of friends and foes.
Tomorrow, none of this would be intact.

And woman also killed her fellow kind
with knives and other weapons free to grab
now that the world was surely doomed to roast.
They cracked the necks of children to prevent
the cries of pain from adding to the din,
then trampled off to find spontan’ous sex.

And yet there still remained a hint of mind
in vari’us individu’ls here and there…
they talked infrequently about the sights,
the helicopters planted in the sky,
the winds constantly blowing gale-force gusts,
the crimsons mixed with oranges in cascades
that fell along the skyline and were lost.
Always, more helicopters on the scene.

And countless rotors never stopped their spin,
they levitated choppers as to fly
across terrain and drop a payload which
was unknown to the oldest of pilots
and in all likelihood unknown to all.
The copters, tens of thousands up above,
refused to stop their cycling blades for God
machine, physics, philosophy, or man.
They coldly peppered black the warmish sky.

And Agatha was watching this unfold
as it had done for weeks on end so far,
commented on by pundits on viewscreens
and politicians, if they existed.
Her bluish eyes contrasted with the reds
that shaded the apocalyptic sky;
her hair of red contrasted with her eyes
that looked forlornly at the foreign scene
and tried to figure out what this day meant.

And while she sighed and waited for her time,
the mural through the window lumbered on,
unfolding as a movie or a dream.
All matter was collapsing on her spot.
In a matter of hours, all’d be gone.
What mattered anymore? Why even think?
It would be minutes now… perhaps seconds…

And at that very moment, with such force
the ceiling disappeared and in its place,
the roof now gone and only sky above,
an Albatross! With eyes of brightest green
and wings of purest white spread out in span
that must have, tip to tip, been fifty feet.
This bird was marvelously present tense
and looked expectantly into the eyes
of Agatha, who understood and knew
her ride had come and it was time to fly.

And with fervor, confusion, and the like
she climbed on back of Albatross and rose
above the hoards of logical zombies
and into scarlet skies across the bay.

And Agatha looked back towards the land
before she vanished into backwards time
which manifested as a bright blue light
inducing nostalgia in travelers.
Someday she would arrive back at this time,
the Albatross returns eventually…

Julius, Caesura.

I've found my place in history--it comes
with breathing room and seething room. So how,
then, plastered with enjambment (still prepared,
amenitied, sanitised) could I fail?
I request! a book, a scribe, a pen:
amanuensis, write me down. Also, in
learning from the past (for safety's sake)
all of my rivals shall be slaughtered. Hail!

Translations..

I cannot understand
a word of Polish, though
all that I have to know
relating to the land
is that what I can hear
was written by a man
in languages he can
relate to his career.
If he can write them well
in stanzas, words, and lines
of mortals and divines,
it rings a sylla-bell...
this is the poet's role.
Thus, anyone's a Pole.

The Mephistophelic Manifesto..

I've grown taller with people, the people in my age group. Together we heightened and widened and lengthened, we learned to drive and to derive, we walked. Some changed their hair colour, some changed their ideas, most altered. No one, of course, had any idea what we were doing, but somewhere along the line one of us got the impression that our parents were different than us, that the entire earth didn't exist except for a small slice that we had been born into and were presently surviving within. The USSR was a name in a book and nothing more; the eastern hemisphere itself was a conspiracy. Now that we realise, though, that we are not special or powerful or at all separate from our parents (and some have yet to come to this, even), our eyes roll back into our skulls and we it is decided for us that we shall float with no control through adulthood, creating children of our own and deploying signs and snares for them in the style of our own experiences.

We are not to this point yet, however. Now I and my fellows are in the university setting, and we know now that picturing ancient Egypt as anything more than stylised hieroglyphics is tantamount to containing the entire universe in a box within the mind. No one can be blamed, of course. It's not our fault and we had no choice in the matter.

And at this moment in space I am picturing a girl I know, knew, will know. She is growing as I am; I see her at intervals where the paths of our patterns (represented as weighted red lines) curve around each other and occasionally collide. The slivers are enough to show me her progressions and yet far enough apart to keep her transgressions hidden... no matter. All I am able to think about is our past and our future, how it is carpeted all around us and how she will grow older and more beautiful and a tad taller and how I am depressingly happy that I have the chance to decompose into adulthood with her and her shifting, static image.

9:00 I.

Lovely in your mind, in your mouth
Coming from your alphabet
Flight! Don't tel me you're uncoloured
because you aren't! (although you might be)
Flying forward somehow, isn't it unfair
how you force me to be an albatross
birds are certainly fun though
My name is, my name is... albatross

(away from me...

Nuclear Smash!

Only This… Lifetime…

Happening gladly I watch as it looms
over tree tops and banks making shade in their rooms
and explicity we understand that we’re safe
of course that’s a fallacy quite wont to chafe;
nitrogen flows from the cracks in the wall
where I failed to apply enough nuclear caulk
and my love is next door just like all yesterday
while we wait for the half-life to stop the decay.

Postwλr Pλrenting


Alpha-Particle Rhyme Time

Dream of U-238 split?
Postponement of nucleus reduction?
Fusion machine powering a farmer’s vehicle?
Bomb-induced avian navigational abnormality?
Group around a ‘fungal’ detonation sight?
Word meaning ‘within a nuclear holocaust’?
Fissionable material from a skull?
Chaos caused by fissionable material?

The Philosophy

If the world was to go to war again, I think it might as well be nuclear. We have the technology, we have the will, we have the strategy. I would say it is fitting for the human race in its madness to end up destroying itself via the same technology it used to build itself up to the level it is currently at, though that’s too easy; in actuality, it would probably be more fitting if the entire species and the planet that serves it just kept on building and building into pseudo-eternity with no end in sight. The universe is boring enough for such an unhappy nonending. At least with nuclear detonation we would arrive at some kind of finite finishing, a definite closing to complement the definite beginning. If offered the choice to live forever any sane person would (unless there is an argument I am unaware of) decine said option, though to have the opportunity to live for a ridiculously long increment of time would be a significantly potential plus (providing the long increment is both short enough not to be reasonably compared with the insanity-inducing eternity of the previous option and spent in the company of enough continuing culture to keep oneself occupied). Perhaps the same is true of a species. For us to live forever, somehow, insanity would have to enter into the equation at some point because those equations would simply keep adding up forever and ever until the humans of the far future would hold in their polymered hands a jumbled mess of unintelligible math-mush. And my grandchild would be born, he would learn to learn and count until, when he was my age, he would look back and say the exact same things and look forward and say the exact same things—at the same time, the organism created when we all act our parts as neurons in the grand species-brain would be moaning in sickness and senselessly crying over the prospects and past years it had been alive. Were it able to think, it would say it could not accurately describe its status as ‘alive’, and since it would not be able to think its speculated speculation would be correct. Time and time and time and time and time and thousands of times and time and time over will kill anything. Or maybe give the universe fifteen billion years and whatever makes its home inside it will have adapted to a safe life length: long enough to live and accomplish some objectiveless task yet short enough to retain one’s marbles.

If the world was to go to war again, I think it should be nuclear. It’d be unpredictably fashionable and would please the nonexistent celestial spectators for its value as a plot twist.

3:30 pm..

Today is Saturday and I have
spite in my cart,
light in my art,
flight on a chart,
night from Descartes,
and pyrite in my heart.

MINISTRY OF RELATIONS ADDRESSES 'ALL TAKEN' RUMOURS, MANY RESPOND.

BLOOMINGTON, IN, Oct. 10--The Ministry of Relations today, in response to claims of the availability of wild type females in the general population suitable for long-term relationships with, released a statement confirming, more or less, what had been circulating. 'We are neither confirming nor denying the presence of girls that are both (1) wonderful and (2) not already in a relationship, however the science has so far indicated a much higher probability of such parameters being mutually exclusive than not,' the briefing stated. Officials are, nonetheless, shocked that the MR has taken such a public position on the issue; at the same time, few are fazed by the research. Zoë Llovt, noted psychiatrist and frontwoman of the post-post-rock band Zoë Llovt & the Sertralines, said that she was 'initially surprised. When I thought about it, though, yeah, you have those people that're going to be angry by the official comment and yeah, there are going to be mistakes made. But I think it's a good thing and high time that the Ministry publish this. The sooner everyone comes to some kind of consensus on this the sooner we can figure out what to go or where to do next.' MR administrators themselves were, as expected, unavailable for comment. The Minister of Forecasting, Rev. Schtarmza B. Komen, held a press conference on the impact such a public frame of thought might have on the way the MFC performs its jobs. When asked whether or not the MFC would seriously consider scientific speculation (alongside the regular methods of runecasting, time travel, et al) into its predictions regarding the odds Eliia as a whole enters into a relationship any time soon, Rev. Komen commented, 'Well, I'm sure it will factor in somehow or other. The MFC is always looking for new, innovative thoughts and all, but science... how much can science truly say about love?' It is likely this story will progress further as the Minister of Biology has scheduled a rare 'fireside chat' to be broadcast at 9:00 pm EST today. Undoubtedly the subject of available women will be brought up and it will be interesting to see how the Minister tackles this issue.

Wavelengths at Midnight, the height of her Hair...

My digital clock displayed two forty-five
in spite of the naturalist argument that
although said display said the time, it was not,
and whether that meant our small earth was forlorn
or simply that I owned a clock that was wrong,
?
I'm coloured in rainbows that lighten my skin
you're shaded with charcoal that frightens my cat
she's tinted by tachometer jactitations
?
ABC DEF
colour me treble clef
GHI JKL
shade me Emmanuel
MNO PQR
tint me to leave a scar
STV V... V, um...

and what an absolute pest you are sometimes, Anna.

Coreolic Fire.

LEIF
Pardon me, but isn't this,
atom bombs exploding in
deathly clouds of hazy sin,
finally the denouement
planet Earth's been waiting for?

MĒSHA
Out the window, plenty more
death spheres make their way to ground.
Orchestra of sweet relief
following the toxic reef?
Playing to the soft brigade
Sunday comes and Sunday leaves,
darkening all Christmas Eves.
Maybe, friend, you are correct.
Terra Prime is at its close.

LEIF
Toss me, then, into the throes.

Architecture & Furnishings..

Happy Birthday Sputnik; Goodnight, Moon..

Many years ago there was a man and there was a woman.

They walked the earth together in harmony, talking to each other, singing the same songs at the same times. They watched flowers grow, trees lose their leaves in winter, animals run and die and play. When they looked into each other's eyes they saw their own reflection, and below the reflection, the truth of the other.

Over time massive walls erupted from the earth. Buildings nine miles high and twice as long and four times as wide grew from the bedrock of the earth in uncontrollable swarms so awful and fantastic at the same time. Water stopped flowing through brooks and in its place bolts of electricity and information traversed the rivers of the world.

The man and the woman were, for the first time, separated. Somehow they had found themselves in different locations, both surrounded by unfamiliar sights and a despair brought on by being alone in the staggeringly endless crowd of humans. He did not know where she was, and she did not know where he was.

And so the man called out to God: 'I cannot find rhythm anymore--these houses and roads are molding with no rhyme or reason! Where is my love? Has she died with everyone else?'

And the woman likewise: 'My love has vanished across the plains, he has evaporated into the stillness of the din and without him I cannot hear myself think or love or cry!'

And the Lord understood the pain of the couple. He walked along the planes of dimensions higher than human numbers have the power to express and from the finest quarry in heaven moulded a sphere. He hung it in the heavens, closer to earth than any other object in the entire cosmos, lit by the same light as that of the earth.

When the man and the woman saw the orb glimmering from its position in space, they knew they were looking into the eyes of their companion, for in spite of the horribly spliced mix of culture and humanity separating them, they were individually identical and knew exactly where they were.

And God said that it was marvelous.

Sixteen Dimensions..

What Does Prematurity Feel Like?

(excerpted from The Story of Dynamo Pullman)

When the guard pulled the trigger, there was no sound. Despite the firearm having caused an immense ripple through the air in the chamber, however, time had stopped and there was no way for it to be recognised. At the exact same moment, the bullet had left the barrel, passed through skin, bone, organs, skin again, then air, disintegrating into the fabric of nothingness. Zückerman lurched once, ever so slightly, and yet this too, this cacophonic convulsion of his doomed body, was completed in no time whatsoever. He was dying, but in that moment such trivialities were indistinguishable. All stopped.

Though Dynamo was able to think in the temporally crystallised wisp of nothing they were trapped in, the threads of his thought remained perfectly still. He was aware of himself only through the irreverent repetition. Millions of lines ran through a single point in spacetime; airplanes and trains collided, attempting to occupy the same space at the same time.

Zückerman's eyes were perfectly centered, as if they both were endeavoring to say something and, having discovered that the eyes is not a mechanism for narration, were screaming as loud as possible in the only ways they knew how. All of him was trying to pour out nonsensical amounts of information, an entire life's worth! A childhood, adolescence, adulthood amounting to this eternity? Whatever natural laws that govern the physics of Earth were hard at work. Repairing an eternity's cache of illogic in a period of not time whatsoever... and everything would have broken down into unintelligible static if there had existed time to do so.

A mass deletion of memory and future caused by an infintesimally small trajectory collapsed to a point. This never ended. Somewhere we are all locked in this stasis...

Then with ridiculous colour and realistic immensity, the room rocketed back into place, and Wolfgang A. Zückerman collapsed to the chilled floor of the cell, dead.

Stop deluding myself. (the nest is Guernica.)*

At eight I was brilliant with my body
destroying birds and stealing and crying
palindromic numbers fascinated me and I used paper liberally.
Physical items forming connections through my darling continuum
so I can travel, or could travel
and the figure of God materialized in front of my eyes and physical items

I came here because I was god in my own right.
I am raw power and untamed creativity
Or at least I was, or at least I was told so.
Wave hand colour erupt death squeal smash.
Coordinates, flying bears, dancing bears in doorways.
I am the ultimate authority on rhymes and circles and airplanes, or I was.
Perhaps I was just drawing pictures
But I destroyed birds, and now the nest is Guernica, and that is a picture.

In Illinoise I was brilliant.
In Massachusetts I was brilliant.
And now I have that power developed
and now I will destroy birds for life, in real lives
I kill everything
I collapse my continuum
Alphabet soup disintegrates because of my commands shouted to the universe.
I kill everything.

*(This poem has been reviewed. I know it is confusing, smashed, mashed, and disconnected. If you are the one that reviewed this originally and are under the impression that I have shrugged off your suggestions and questions, I want you to know that such shrugging isn't my intention. To the rest of you, this piece is an exercise based on a poem by Gary Soto; please don't sue me, Gary, I'm giving you credit. Apologies if I have offended anyone, said apologies extending to the bounds of common sense.)

In The Meantimes..

&