Showing posts with label Pikthall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pikthall. Show all posts

FOLDING SEQUENCE

God preserves 
in floods and quakes—
impacts thrash straits
without escape

No crown nor color
just landslide grace—
constructed collapse
a melted face

Not mauled by malice 
but beaten in time—
the seed agape
a muddy line

Cut deep by force
elegance and space—
what ends in ruin
becomes a place



PEOPLE CIRCLE OVERHEAD —

strange to be so quickly crushed

the forces of right and real and gone too soon

turning toward distress, despair, delirium.

broken by ordinary dreams while

staring at stars.


strange that yesterday arrives today, that

the plants and aphids change partners endlessly.

 

an old woman used to live in that house up there;

if an animal was on the road she’d run it down

with her Oldsmobile—she said it

was “bettah-forum.”


roads lead to common destinations.


and tonight a young man rides in the back of an

ambulance, five holes in his lonely chest,

body becoming cadaver as the

ambulance slows in pace,

turns off its lights.


strange that tomorrow arrives today, that

the plants and aphids change partners endlessly.

 

strange the resiliency of the last reprieve.

strange that the people circle overhead.


RESURRECTION THEME —

Mastodons wash slowly ashore,

atomized in miners’ gold-gravel


They arrive with no pretension to truth

alive in the visible form of disappearance

city-bound inside metal vectors


Annihilated by longitude and latitude

natural surroundings surrounded

surging forth, the mastodon confronts death again

in the grotesque picturesque of the lens

in the screaming reappearance of the screened


The state of the world in our absence

preserved for our presence, is a décor

dictated by decree and demanding irony --

like the fly, with its faceted eye and

broken line of flight

MARK OF THE BEAST —

An asymmetry

Unveiled for censure alone

Thrown, twinned and twisted

Ensnared by the white-mosquito

Or mile marker 11-44

Premonitions of tragedy

Everything

An act of

Willpower

WHEN THE INCARCERATED INCARCERATE EACHOTHER —

When systems dissuade themselves

Bodies coalesce and thrash about

Absorbed in energy of their opposites

Vengeance is confined to special effect

Revolutions to equilibrium

Devolving forward

Death unravels itself

In exquisite seduction

Dead hands reach backward

For the ellipsis

As carcasses collapse

Confused and convulsing

Caught flat-footed

On the crumbling

Foundation of things

PRIMITIVE PROGRAM —

one must find

ways of doing

layers linked to lines

called edges

a sequence of 0s and 1s

AND, OR and NOT


each enter from above

depending on

an array of gates

a circuit

appropriate according to

predetermined formats

languages

windows


a nightmare

resulting in number

in time

one way of one


LIFE EATS LIFE —

Roots traverse

The water table and the sky

Life eats life

Survival and violence

Grafted here in copulation

Convexed in a condition

Of pure exhibition 

82. RESPIRATORY SYSTEM —

as 

a precursor

a people

chamber the clefts

the apertures

the walls of

young gills

the primitive form

decomposed or burned

an unweaned child

taken into the lungs

then expelled

as man

VYGOTSKY'S RUSSIAN 1915 - 23 —

the tragedy of joy

will be published

in the lights

a poem on 

private archives 

the process

multiple


ON INTELLECTUALS —

Comforted only by the promise of

Successive approximations

A curious detail weaponized

And woven into the background

Jackals wallowing in

Other people's blood

PERSUASION —

the triumph of the desert

is geometric —

dictated by event

circumscribed

by geology —

self-liquidation on a hill

in the valley

SACRED GEOMETRY —

yourn eyes have seen the glory

of the coming of the lamb

war lines gorged in land

a corpse on a hillside

channeling the universe

HOW EVERYONE IS CONSERVATIVE (VIDEO) —

CONSUMMATION —

Roots bloom up into the sky
Where a life consumes a life
A spider weaves a violent thread
In mother's harsh delight
A husband's back
The touch of his wife
A mix of dark and light
No words need said
Slip into the bed
You know you've
Done alright 


















WOLF CRIES —

no one came to save her
but it wasn't the first time
she made threats

she was likable 
and persuasive
even talked me
off a ledge once
made me supper
at her place

but
no one came to save her
and she asked forgiveness
from God in her last words

i keep seeing her 
at the edge of the dock 
howling and wailing

waiting for someone 
to show up and 
help her fight

in the end though
no one came to save her
but three-hundred people 
cried at her wake

sang amazing grace

myself among them















































APPLICATION —

You become 

every moment

you become
 


























PRETTY DAMN GOOD —

2 young females sit on
my right and talk in a
soft urgent tone,
probably about
their love life

to my left is a couple
who stare continually into
each other's eyes and
laugh about everything
and nothing at all

the Vietnamese cooks are behind
me chattering loudly

I don't speak Vietnamese
so I tune them right out
like the buzz of
electric lights

others are everywhere
talking about this, that
and the other thing

they are angry, happy,
sad, in the middle,
unsure, and together

in the seat directly across 
from me sits no one

just a pair of ivory chopsticks

I know what must be done
and I dot it





THE WAY IT IS —

I understand nothing
except maybe

solitude
drunkenness
and loneliness

that looking
an angry man in the eyes
makes him more angry

that the factory men are
always better company

I am hardly real

and
there is no roof over
the mountains





















THE CORONER —

tables typically turn
too late
too gone

the warmth of wrath
replaced by distance
the light roots
held before
the dark

a procedure precisely
lacking
in time 


















_

DEAD AT 46 —

an apparent suicide
but I wasn't there when
she drowned in the lake

and I wasn't there
before that either

Kate was 25 when we met
funny, strong and sometimes
lovely she was hard to handle

I slept next to her once
she was hot and cold all night

pain and beauty in her wake

a tenacious
strong swimmer