Global warming Returns

There was fire reflected in his eyes,

and though he had been so kind lately,

been treating me tenderly,

it all shattered 

in the calm evening 

after dinner was served and the dishes were done.

There was no wind but things carried. 

He screamed at me 

from the doorway, from deep in his diaphragm,

‘Get Out Now!’

And I thought he was angry at me 

for a flashing moment-I felt

enraged-by the tone.

I noticed, however,

his face was glowing-not from

the evening sunset.

My eyes went south-

east, thirty feet tall, 

a basket of burning serpents

squirmed atop a roof and were licking  the sky,

devouring a tree,

the roof next door is on fire! 

A black plume expands like dye in water,

like a volcano that erupts before projecting 

sound.

In the long hot silence, 

before the sirens in the distance, 

my heart

strains to find a steady rhythm amidst

the pops, cracks and snaps. 

The cats are hiding, children are 

lining the street filming,

hoses are flowing anemic,

I am frozen in place.

I think of how we just survived the flood.

When the fire finally died, 

we waited for the third

and last

good Friday before we may rise and shine

only to be born again

on Sunday. 

Painting by George Hitchcock c. 1904, 'Easter Sunday' in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Line by line

Life unfolds this way,

the face now resembles our grey matter

what is inside comes out.

The clouds will unravel again,

you can hear the wind 

moving them along.
I am done
telling others to listen.

Paper, then. My life. Drawn to fire.

All those the people carrying dead burdens
on their cracking lips.

They burned books
into their memories and cauterized the wounds

with chanting and invocations

shaped to sound like smoke rings

they read the signs.

As with people and colors
they gather but do not become,
one another,
as with clouds, the heaviest fall
and we say we needed rain.

In these conditions

the symbols bleed together

and it is red
Open.




Painting by Emile Claus, c. 1898, 'Ampelio, old fisherman of Bordighera', in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Scientific Methodology: Poetic Method

"Science should be poetry, and poetry science."

Para-phrased:

"Science is the organized, systematic enterprise that gathers knowledge about the world and condenses the knowledge into testable laws and principles,"

“Likewise with independent investigations, the same phenomenon is sought.”

1.) Fundamentally, to be known, trusted, retold and in order to be 

added as ammunition to the cannon, revolving on the poetic or scientific roster,

we need more than one (time), we need repetition (in science), practice and reproduction (imagination and readymades), and so on, and so on…

2.) the economy, indeed, it is most necessary.

I wholeheartedly agree, employing a simultaneity

of elegance and condensery-ing less into more, more or less...

(i.e. the largest amount of information with the least amount of effort)

Yes, go on.

3.) Strength, the virility, most importantly,

must be consistent in some-such-way,

creating a co-mensuration between 

not bang and emergence,

fourth, and forth.

4.) The spewing of more than we knew we had.

The best of which inspires the search for more.

And finally-fifthly

5.) Consilience, he says, is the one way to be

profound with words.

Experimental,

science and art shared the words

methodology and madness,

we have seen 

the singularity as abstract art. 

The weight 

of the line

was the same.
A ton of feathers
still won't fly without direction.

(based on the book ‘Consilience, The Unity of Knowledge’ by E.O. Wilson pg. 58)

Drawing By Wilson, E.O. (1985). "Ants From the Cretaceous and Eocene Amber of North America". Psyche: A Journal of Entomology 92 (2–3): 205–216. DOI:10.1155/1985/57604. (Psyche: A Journal of Entomology) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Saplings

Not a lack of empathy could turn us-

or the inability to love the ‘other’-
rationally,

we small rats.
It separates us.
A green miasma seeping up

from the loamy soil.
Familiar, like family, the smell of our
(grand) Father.
Toes curl and cringe and yet

we knew all about decomposition,

slanging dirt on white walls,
shit that flies and flows downhill.

We recognize, collectively
all information is absorbed,
the leaves in turn
throw shade.

Dark times don't always dictate
a Virgil. This time,
we were early.

It only takes a conceit to break
sacred ground.

All this diurnal mist adds up
and seeps in-
to crystal beads made for
costume jewellery
to be strung across
the sky.

There were stars
where pupils should be.

Scurrying mice and men gather

blind,
feeling their way away
from a threat that smelt like a fresh
grave.
All information is recreated
to be fertile today.

It stinks making fresh air.

Painting by Tom Roberts [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Mammalian

Gasping,
the weight of all worldy air
light enough to float
gathered together atop my chest,
paralyzing me in between states of consciousness.

Now,
I am not worried about dying. I am not suffocating
from this.
I can feel the sun sucking out all the moisture
I have accumulated solar radiation,
the evaporation sometimes itches,
crackling my skin.

I can hear the white waves crashing below me,
at my feet,
the atmosphere levitates between solid and vapor.

I can feel the displacement of the ground under my body
wedged between a million grains and cannot move
under this compression.

This thick skin has held too much inside.
Over time,
the walls between this and that breakdown-
ocean, air, lung and rib, my marrow margins.
Any body,
I dare
touch me, a moment before the explosion
feel how forms are all temporary.

*
It was just this thought
of a suicidal great whale. My morning, anxiousness.
Beached him or herself.
What is left of this shell?
The gastric juices digesting itself,
as if there was one final thing to
finish
breaking down.

Gravity does not let us change our mind
either,
I was about to explode
myself.

Image By Avenue (Own work), stranded Grey's beaked whale in New Zealand [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Choking objects

The ingestion of pain medicine enhances our sensitivity to this signal.
The ingestion of antibiotics reduces our resistance to infectious bodies.
The ingestion of alcohol makes us laugh at others, makes us cry for ourselves.
The ingestion of sugar boosts energy-depletion.

The resistance to opinions solidifies opposing positions into belief.
The fixation on a focal point drags momentum.
The five most commonly used senses are not enough and too much all together.

Climbers are all idealists trying to scale the marble stairs of personal justice,
we should rise to our occasion.
We have misjudged the floor based on sea levels.
We try to find ourselves and stop when there is a glimpse of one,
There are two, two systems, two selves, fast and slow, inside and outside, shallow and deep, which give and take responsibility, blame, onus. It was all on us, the two of us
just using our lips for consumption.





Artwork by By Sarah Stilwell Weber c. 1905 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Euclid’s Expertise

I’m no expert in subjects like geometry, people or what we call space,
but I am open to learning
about any thing
And I have discovered that even when nobody is looking
the sun will shine somewhere
and no body around will notice
the disarray.
No(round)body wants to believe that rounding up or down
is the same,
or that this terra Nuevo is solid and
stretches flat out
beyond sight.
It is easier to focus on what you know.

It is most difficult to sift dirt for gold nuggets
while wearing white gloves.
I wish I had known we needed phosphorus.

Look at the moon! Soak in the sun. between the two,
the eclipse begins.
From this angle the tone is clear.

Between an apple and an orange,
orchard and grove,
notch and needle, I cannot sew,
so I make more pi.

Good shoes, firmly planted, back then
we did not notice we were stuck.
We bury the dead, cover up our dreams, hide our private parts,
and keep our hands to ourselves without a second thought.
We skim across surfaces,
as if buoyancy was our gift,
it could be.

I am no biologist, but I insist on using my senses
to read lines
left in the sand
that glisten like gold and contain
everything we need to know about measuring up
to the given space
for a square peg on a plane.

We needed to make an
impression
that would resonate further than a single dimension.

Naturally, perfect shapes are quite rare
in nature.
Fractals occur nearly everywhere,
proving patterns are purely
people problems.




Painting by Jusepe de Ribero (1591-1692) in Getty Center [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

GDP

(Buy 1, Get 1)
Free (for all)
 dom of
ex-
com-
de-
(pression)

(care)
free (Bible, straws, ice, brochure, coffee, samples)
masons
-lancing

-thought-speech
Free* (*w/ purchase)
    wheeling
    radicals
Speeches-Thoughts

Form
Free
Form



Artwork by Wassily Kandinski, 'Improvisation Gorge' 1914 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Flox

The black sheep and black swan

Do not bother splitting hairs, as in, ungathering

Letting go, and making it

into something new 

by sheer luck-no gander

Bears resemblance by proximity. 

Image credited by Percy Benzie Abery [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Cold and hard like cash

Ha! What money? Don’t I look hungry-

Enough, with only skin and bones

The mother poet is simply a conduit

For care.( a.k.a.ATM), logistically

Someone had to buy the groceries 

and gasoline.

Of course, electricity must be paid and the internet

is always on, even with power bars,

despite attempts to unplug everything.

No money was any-

more than a thing to get another

thing or things.

Finally, detoxified and rehabilitated,

I breathe freely,

but it costs me my life.

There is no green growth in the wallet.

And every morning, there is money to be put in boxes,

sorted, split, and aggregated from valid sources.

So it was not me eating money or homework, or flesh, or words,

it was paper, fiber, DNA, dinero

And dang it-I remember having it

and not needing it. 

Painting by Wilhelm Gause, c. 1911 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Layman terms

A single handful
of random people
really
understand astrophysics-
particularly excluding women
that choose cosmetology
over cosmology-
when trying to turn back time.

Look inside the steeple,
only this many people
read poetry.
They gather to create volume-
mass,
in order to absorb the familiar
echoes of shared words-
also known by
Belief.

Nobody reads anymore
between the lines,
along the marginalia,
the mean matches the median,
rounded to zero.

At least there seems to be
never enough
Time
to explore other dimensions
completely
and related matters
in(di)visible as a (w)hole.





Artwork by Charles Demuth [No restrictions or Public domain], 'Roofs and steeple' c. 1921 via Wikimedia Commons.

“Beam me up, Scottie!”

He was changed

in more ways than they will say.

A year away will do that to a man.

Genes are the conditions we share,

more than hand me down denim.

It seems seven is a stellar symbol

to mark the rate of change.

(Inspired by forthcoming study and official announcement by NASA)

Photo credit By NASA/Robert Markowitz [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Concerning: Generic Water

In 1986,
we could drink out of the tap

and it was considered barbaric

               (well water as it was)

but it was so good.

That was there, this is now

that everyone drinks in disposable 

pervasive clear canteens.

In 2018,
there was mass poisoning by the sterilizing-

worst case scenario-better safe than sorry so 

saturated with leachating preservatives 

used as a precaution.

Inevitably,

pieces dissolved, as they tend to do

(entropy) 

         in manufactured self-containment-

well, people and plastics became one,

bonded.

In the eighties,

I remember walking home, wading in the creek.

My musty Vans tied by their laces to my backpack strap

after school, Genius, I thought, 

bottled water, readymades, ant farms, crystal gardens,

pet rocks, canned air, and jarred fireflies sealed with a kiss.

I ingest the red woods and taste bliss.

In 1978,
at the grocery store,

the generic brand of anything 

was white or yellow, the basic packaging.

It was good enough, cheaper even

to not say everything.

Also, 

my mother told me I always wanted a toy

and I would toddle up to strange men,
                      (also grocery shopping) 

and ask them if they were my daddy.

Today,
I still return from the grocery store without
everything I need.

My kids asked about the Mexican men posted up

outside Home Depot(s), 

I told them about outside labor

          (fathers on back-order) and say

if Toy’s R Us had this (for lazy parents),

they would still be in business.

Nine-tenths of the time,

poverty and water obey the laws
of thermodynamics.
Both are
Being and Event. 

In 2018,
I am grateful for everything that I never had.

She oft-quoted Nietzsche with knowing

where it came from or

it made me stronger.

I cannot see everything my body does for me, thankfully.

It would be terribly distracting to have transparent packaging,

I believe this would make everyone less appealing.

In 1989, 

I can clearly see my naked feet under the flowing water

of the Little Bear Creek,

rippled sun rolls over the enlarged mole
atop my left foot,

my soles are both slippery, I notice

how the liquid moves in a cool hurry

                 but only I move the stones.

Yesterday

I thought of all the Springs passed,

and my own mothering nearer to

reaching the sea, it has dawned on me
finally,

we are all temporarily employed

Here 

with our shoes, our guns, our molded plastics,

plain packaging

we call watertight-

forgetting this too

is subject to corrosion. 

Artwork: Лесной ручей. Весной. 1890, холст, масло, 75х56 Forest creek. Spring. 1890 {{Creator:Grigorij Grigorjewitsch Mjassojedow}} {{PD-art}} From http://lj.rossia.org/users/john_petrov/96740.html

Professor

He spoke of the same humbling
Revelation
As if he had just learned it
himself
forgetting he had said this
every time I met him-

The first time
it was
news (to me)
Now, he says
it as Truth.

It may be so
fascinating, even true, however,
there are reasons
it is
he will never know.



Image credit by Metropolitan Museum of Art [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

The world in a puddle

Shiny onyx paved streets that shine 

like oil

kaleidoscope reflections of topaz gems

yellow lamplights tossed from windows

makes me warm

inside.

Lullaby metronomes count water

droplets, clepsydra down the side of the house,

this eave, my gutter

fills, pours this bass beads across paving stones

reminiscent of a game of puddle hop-scotch

I count the treble, 

it answers the hydraulophone

inside me.

That musty smoke that lingers like dye

in the sky, leaking out of rooftop chimneys,

house pipes blow and issue

a rescue signal, 

for those inside.

Countless poets have captured this in smaller 

rain barrels commonly called buckets.

We lost some along the way,

which accounts for the change in overall volume,

by composition, ice is also vaporous. 

Drops do both ways.

Nobody cared,

these were not the ideal conditions for thirst 

or poetry,

water was everywhere, like supply versus demand

as far as they could see, 

there was no end

to verses. 

Image credit By English: thesandiegomuseumofartcollection (Flickr) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

S(h)ervant

I have served between eight and twenty-five 

thousand meals for my family,

I make coffee for them more than once per day,

equating to tens of thousands of perky hot pots.

I have given away my last dollar countless times,

I have shared the best bite, held my breath,

I have waited eternities all the while diluting myself,

watering patience back to life in the long afternoon heat. Thirsted for a moment.

I have dried tears, kissed scrapes, wiped milk, picked up,

and cheered up others, all while crawling on my hands and knees.

Does it count?

How many socks have I matched or single-handedly lost?

How many squares of cloth have I folded in nice ninety-degree angles?

How many circles have I Venn in?

How many bubbles have I burst?

How many sides have I taken

down only to expose what was hollow inside?

I have said the three words 'I love you'

and they have not all come back around 

on any one or two

ellipse-this is

proof of expansion or an open Universe, 

no place like Home.

My hands are callused, my feet are blistered and tender,

my eyes are faded and brittle, my skin gets heavier day by day,

and my hair glistens faintly like brass,

my cartilage collapses and all my salt sloughs off.

What is left to make of this? 

I have forgetten how freedom is one-sided and furthermore I have failed 

to recall my name when I am most lost, 

when I am too busy, when the last course

is done, when the words, 'my pleasure' meant motive,

when advantage was a taken

and Time 

was given.

What will be said about what is done?

I put this here, so someday they may say,

Her sentence had served her well. 

Painting by Jules Lefebvre, 'Servant' c. 1880 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Ilk-some

He was the kind of guy that would say,
                   my pleasure,
and from that point forward
add interest.
He was the kind of guy that held resentment
tenderly in his palm
                   while revealing a warm smile.

A gentleman does not tell
who he calls Beautiful
                   all the time
He was a kind and gentle man it would seem
to many
too many women.

He was the kind of guy that liked to drive
and scare his passengers.
He was the go to guy,
the kind that goes to extremes.

You know the kind of passionate man
who projects his desires outward,
the type that wants women
to reflect this same desire,
his wants and those wanting him-only
at his fingertips...

On his lips
                   lies more than truth.

The kind of guy who mouths one thing
but means two,
who denies what he does not remember,
repeats what he hears,
who walks with an air
                   he thinks doubles as a smoke screen.

He is the breed of human who has been;
in love
dishonest
rebellious
covetous
oblivious
                   to having lost all trust
when he wasn't looking
and subsequently stopped earning interest.

Day after day, a toll is taken, and then again
I hear him say, I have to go
                   and yet I stay,
waiting in kind for a different guy.



Portrait by Vincent Rodes c. 1820, located in Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Savage souls

Awaking in an angry state is akin to acting the part
of an apparition among the living,
all fume and red plumes of frightening doom.
Gloom radiates an aura, blue inside under dark ceilings and
thunder changes nothing permanently,
Just as the tree that falls alone
grows moss, grows quiet, and softer,
it is still a tree.
I am left pondering the source of this bitter acid
that arises, ferments, builds pressure
and makes fissures up to the surface-
Yet, I feel 
I must
already know
the signs of arson.

There was a day when I was a child
that I wished I could end it all. I tried to die,
I ate the poison apple
and failed to fall asleep for the
happy ending.
I then became enraged
at having been
the subject of someone else’s destructive desire
to fail. I did not disappoint
myself.

We have all been told often enough,
‘Patience is a Virtue’, this equals that,
and yet, this is short of equi-valency.
Silence does not speak a word
about solutions, nor does forgiveness map
alternative paths
to higher ground.
Believing is seeing hindsight
with foresight, evidently,
possession is one-tenth free will,
anymore is often less
than enough to kill you.

It was not meant to be
Today-
I live to hear the words;
fragmented, at-best, good luck, hard to grasp,
Not the right fit-
And I do not quit

because this
is for me.
And this
finds me
looking happy to have survived,
and finding
anger was a phase of letting go.