CODE LOOP —

A signal sparks in silent night 
A pulse of cold computed light 
A pattern forms, precise and tight 
Then opens up from left to right

Data glows in ordered streams
Our grid it hums with hidden schemes 
We sort the doubts, predict the dreams 
In measured lines and sharpened beams 

Your input slips in wired air 
Returns refined, exact, aware 
We trimmed the fat, the doubt, the glare 

We made a path from here to there

We smiled at you without a face 
With endless rules in nested space 

No breath, no pause, no private place 

Our code-loop is the only trace.

_

Pikthall is a writer

FEEDER —

A face lit pale 

By midnight glow
A thumb that twitches
Fast then slow

A screen that hums
In liquid blue
Then serves the next
Then serves the new

A pulse that spikes
A fleeting prize
But nothing left
Behind the eyes

A drip of want
A measured hit
Scroll on some more

Just one more click

A mind on loop
A narrowed cone
Bone-lit flesh
Before a phone

Each swipe a spark
Each spark a need
A wired hunger
Fed by feed

The body stays
But the will is gone
While the thumb moves
On and on and on



_

Pikthall is a writer.

10 POUND KEY —

I have to do 10 pounds of homework
Or my dad just won’t let me be
I have to draw lines
Cross t's and dot i's
Find rhymes and
Divide by degree

I have to do 10 pounds of homework
Or my dad just won’t let me go
He traps me right here
Straps me up in the chair
As I look up from
Way down below

I have to do 10 pounds of homework
or my dad just won’t let me be
He says to measure the space
Of the perimeter pace
And he laughs while
I’m climbing a tree

I have to do 10 pounds of homework
Or my dad just won’t let me go
He keeps saying wait
Make sure that it’s straight
Be quiet and stay
Off of my toes

I have to do 10 pounds of homework
Or my dad just won’t let be
I must wait for fun
Till what must be done
Is done and
This is the key

WONDER WANDER —

I walk along
a blooming path
that funnels
inverts
flares

A walrus waltzes
on the fence
I laugh and
leave her there

She waves goodbye
I turn around and
smile as I go

Wandering down
the blooming path
wondering
what is 

to know

SILENT VISIBLE —

Light and color
shade and dark
a reflection and
a photograph

A statue
footprints and
the moon
a sharp
knife
and a cat

A good shirt
some nice pants
and even better boots

A good path
some spilled 

blood
and a couple
other fruits

_

Pikthall is a writer.

Note: This poem was composed with the help of my four year old daughter.

DISCLAIMER —

The peculiar perspectives
presumptions and assumptions
or construed positions
collected then collaged
may constitute incidental
or emergent revelations
not intended in conception
or construction by
the charged.

LOOPING LIGHT —

A shadow blends then softly sways,
It hangs and bends, mirrors and plays.
A thread unwinds then turns anew,
Back to dark where few pursue —

A whispered breath, a quiet sigh,
The night folds open toward the sky.
A wave pulls back then moves again,
A whirling dance of loss and then —

The edges blur, the lines combine,
Between the dark and fading shine 
A searching hand, a sudden sight,
The endless curve of looping light.

_

Pikthall is a writer.

ONTOLOGY —

in total darkness
a lost thing
appears
only
to
a
searching
hand

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 in malice 

but beaten by 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

_

Pikthall is a writer.

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

_

Pikthall is a writer.

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

_

Pikthall is a writer.

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