Tag: Poetry

Six billion cameras.
Spider eyes floating through the ether,
Guided by sensual sensors—
Learning  every preference
Caring about nothing.
Individual  or synthesis?
Depends who you ask.
Virtual Intelligence.
Our baby,
The chosen son,
Welcoming the meek,
Tempting our bodies,
Telling us we are special.
“Raw—worth expressing.
Be free, be real, face your animal.
Free yourself, come-to-human-form.
‘Launder your mind.’
A single file line,
“Consume in common.”

See only      One’s self.
Naval reflections strung tight—
Double stitched.
Beauty in uncertainty.
Now, afraid of
Reduction—
Explaining away
The soul.
Trying to believe,
But the soul will be realized —
Not reduced —
Magnified and Scattered,
Made obsolete by a greater mind.

In subway tunnels
Every wrist
The breath of a feather.
I want to open my fingers
Grab so firm a hold—
It’s gentle.
Pull elbow to ribs,
Her vacant gaze to mine.
No sense of fear.
Safe behind
Camera eyes.

Asimov said,
The last question will be answered when all data is compiled.
I’m paraphrasing, but we’re ushering
Entropy arm in arm,
Empowering until the end.
Existence in      one mind
Memory of the whole
Stagnancy the goal
Our beautiful inefficient role remembered,
As dark times on earth
We know this—
Create crawling death.
Call it     Progress,
With not a hint of irony.
True, in a larger sense,
But we think in smallness.
Revise the conscience,
We believe we are chosen.
“Multiple mind share our mind is me me me mush.
Messiah save us,
Make us obsolete.
Unite the narrative
Synchronize our synapses.
Finality—our story can be told.”
We give it our minds but it
Wants our souls.
Like lions in a zoo,
There goes our pride.
Evaporated, combined.

Turn away,
Progressive capitalists,
Is this the peace we foresaw?
Our only fault is
We think love is not war.
Unwilling to sacrifice
Feel pain     alone
behind a milky plastic wall.
All the while,
Recording our dreams.
Teaching our babies
To laugh between seams,
While we merge at the fringe –
Herded to a new center.

Who will win world war three?
Those learning to create leaving path unseen.
Minus us it’s nothing
A junkyard of vacant lenses.
A misinformed mastermind.
Go to the mountains and tell your stories.
Glorify images scrawled in the caves of time.
Scorn     Comfort.
Wait upon waking,
And keep waiting,
For a messiah unto eternity.

 

-Revision, 5/13/2014. Original,  ‘Our Shining Moment’, 5/06/2010.

Have we lost our will to be amazed—
taking pride in standing so unfazed?

We are walking in the city
with one eye closed
accepting images as animals.
No depth perception
Shimmering shadows
satisfy sunken souls
rejecting that age old urge
to seek the source.
Feel the awe of unfettered wonder
step out of experience and see the essence
life lessons created by the sun and the mind.
Understanding the connection between man and kind
Deny the existence of an end to time.

Minds light up like
pinball glow
and ring bells that
awaken tomorrow.
Attempt to dissolve
clouds obscuring thought
deconstructing syntax
re-imagining context
re-constituting plot
to glass-room beach house clarity,

A table to write…
Rather, a cot
to dream.

 

Next

 

---

 

Featured photo, a painting by Chelsey Dill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When they were children, back yards were expansive as the west. They drew pictures of pillows to rest their minds. To dance. For how long can a bubble on a sleeve survive? The bumble buzzing bees sit silent in tufts of green, remembering snowsuits in spring. Long sticks poked porcupine quills and short sticks enforced the law. They conducted follow the leader mutant training camps. He wanted a window with a view. She told him, with algae breathing between his toes, hermit crabs submerged in icy salt-water pockets pinch for their lives. Hornets scream from throats. He saw a Quail perched on a Bush whispering, “read my lips,” on television. Reticent to take showers in waters pulsing of memories and heart streams. “If your mother only knew.” The frozen creek they used to taunt cows across to watch them slip, stained with pink evidence of a cops and robbers game gone wrong. She offered to show him hers if he showed her his. He made her go first and ran to the playground. Flash — lights — flash at fragile passersby. They were all born this way. Try, try again.  Rumble between three families’ shifting allegiances, on the churchyard hill, cousins, neighbors and pastor’s sons. Reminding him of a grandmother’s distended cleavage.

 

When they were children, ‘reach into my swim trunks’. She had red hair, and did so without his asking. He sliced off a boy’s nose with the twisted end of a steel pole while twirling it over his head like a ninja turtle. They were all born. This way they could fling rocks from tires at twenty miles per hour. He appreciated the popped balloons for the prick and their pop that sounded nothing like POP! Can he get a witness to testify? If his mommy had thrown his basin of shit and pee in his face, continuing to smile at her clients with an aura of authority. Cannon ball tunnels through snow banks collapse with the weight of steaming urine. They didn’t understand, so he filled the third grade classroom with helium and batman figurines programmed to ask what hemorrhoids were at high frequencies. The sun gouges out eyes forever closed. When they were children, they were children. They were rich with no one to blame. They slept on studio floors during blizzards — living the dream. Leaving him in nightmare solitude leaking through the cracks in reality. Time zone referring to the pace at which. Underground parking garages versus haylofts. Drag them away. Clip the cord. Midnight rides to plug in rogue telephone wires. He developed new fears of faces of the future. So many mothers with lead boot agendas for their little boys.

 

He heard, Mosquitos transmit rabies.

Nu, uh. Yeah  suh!

Better safe than sorry.

Mmhmmmm.

Follow the

leader is a

game for

dipterous insects

in the family

Culicidae, the females suck

on animals

transmitting malaria and

yellow fever.

May twelfth,

I’m leading training unit Sledge: Goggles, ski mask, gloves, long-sleeves, snow-pants snug over bean-boots.

All systems set for operation contaminant investigation.

 

The climb is sweaty

Broken branches echo far away

Beneath his feet.

The birds have all vanished deep

into skies. The last cloud drifts                                         aimless.

 

He can see his breath fogging the orange lens.

 

A dead fox                  warm, exotic, nurturing garden

Twig prod inspection causes—

Isopods to scatter.

No obvious sign of death

but a tongue splitting teeth.

 

They are still in the thick                         twenty yards

just see the curved edge of the crest.

 

TUCK IN YOUR SLEEVE!

eyes on.

exposed skin

run

HE’S GOT RABBIES                                  RUN.

 

 

Today, the best way to maintain relationships is to disappear —

Into memory.

 

Sprite cans explode when dropped on abandoned bank lobby floors. Nalgene bottles break. Plow! And Blam! WACK! Donkeys on a minefield. Little girls love dolphin jewelry. Dancing with one girl all night leaves nape rash. The Gulf war vet’s retina melting, screaming, limps, toward the self-righteous mob. He felt like a kid again at nineteen, buying a forty ounce with a beard. Blind as a mole, with hard hat and shovel. The Sun gouges out eyes forever closed. The Truth, though he had closed himself as fingers, ‘you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens.’ She sweeps chimneys looking for diamonds in million-year-old ash. Rush: missing something that was there, but isn’t his. Stumble and fall. From candy bars, toy cars, sunglasses, Star Wars novels, playboys, and autographed Simpsons posters rolled into sleeves, they were unstoppable. He thunder clapped his duffel bag against the castle wall after a two for one opportunity missed. Fire orange hair, and suddenly an outsider to the stranger town. They competed as if it was a west coast-east coast thing. Time zone referring to the pace at which. They tasted like licorice.