Sincère Lecteur (2015 poem)

You would rather your soul’s chain reaction
than material success of an entropic image
wracked by Gessel taxes, relatives, suggestions,
growing ever tireder, pleasing no-one
but the boosters who manipulate its heartstrings. 

Binkying rabbits & zigzagging cats (2015 poem)

Binkying rabbits & zigzagging cats
proclaim those are their greatest moments,
those zigzagging, binkeying sea serpent hymns of praise.
We too zigzag, we too binky our apotheoses,
like a dense, forked sapping operation.
Blasphemy: trying to jam someone’s zigzag,
trying to stop Life from entering into this Earth of the Dead.

You have been scanned (2015 diagramming conversation poem)

I was listening to two young primates
talking, listening mid-conversation
as one does & diagramming what they
said. The first thing was a statement of the
obvious, & yet the other did not
seem displeased, perhaps because of all the
psi & oxytocin splattering among them.
Then one made an unsolicited suggestion,
which, if it had been addressed to me, would
have precipitated a crisp lecture
or resulted in my just ignoring him forever.
But, again, the other primate did not
seem to mind. I could not bear to listen
any longer to their conversation.

Logonaut (2013 quatrains)

Here be an age when men lack roots
and spread like roots into the soil
to find no purchase as ease loots
them of their energy and toil.

Here be an age that cries for Blood
and Entertainment in the streets
and cobblestones and humble mud...
and both hors d’oeuvres with front row seats.

I extricated my old roots,
replacing them down under here
because the niche I grew here suits,
because the people just stand clear.

So long as I have words in hand
I’ll glow until I’m ash and bone.
I am a stranger in this land
and, too, a stranger in my own.

Have you had previous mass grave experience? (2015 poem)

Have we at WeStaff got an opportunity for you!
Red horseman War is looking for a host!
You must have previous experience
at epileptic seizures -- having them,
not treating them -- & come from a small country similar
to Austria or Corsica or Macedonia next
to an analogous but larger country such as Greece
or France or Germany. Send your CV today! Don't miss this
Opportunity! Advance! Career! Advance! Ask for Jen.

Sketch of helicopter at aftershock party (2011)

Describing rings above shocked Armagh Street
a helicopter glimmered as it sliced
past overhead. At one point was it lit
up by an orange, hot flash of setting star.

I wish that I had longer toes (2014)

I wish that I had longer toes
so I could have four hands.
I watch my toes just open, close,
repeating my demands.

But no one listens, least of all
my stubby little toes.
At least they help me stand up tall
& level out my nose.

Testimony (2015 poem)

I grew up in “The Truth”, they said: The Church
Without TVs, the 2x2 black-stockinged Church.
I left The Church Without a Name when I was 17.

“The ant goes marching 1x1, hoorah! hoorah!”

The brother workers on the left, the sister workers on
the right, the pulpit platform with the Overseers on
it in the center with the microphone between.

A voice is saying “Let us turn to Hymn Sixteen.”

A sister worker’s voice is quaking at the pulpit, an
excruciating testimony. Flies
become too fascinating. Sweat drips down.

A brother worker later charged with sexually
abusing women is now saying “Don’t
put God in a box” at Effie convention. Then I saw
my cousin asking him about subversive doctrine in
the dusk as everyone but us was headed
towards the donuts in the dining hall, which
made up somewhat for spending five! hours! sitting down.

A diet of dystopias & Valentinus
-- Simon Cyrenean, Hypostasis of the Archons,
hylics, Psychics, & Pneumatics oh my! --
mediated my disassociation, then
my integration into mainstream life
was shocking, but I’m still some silver linings:

now inoculated against love-bombs,
sensitive to power structuration
& manipulative, cultic interaction.

So, I’ll share what I’ve accumulated
in the course of my investigation.*

They were ruled by so-called “Overseers”,
so I got a teenage introduction
to the oligarchic concept, then I
learned the word was what I had been noting.
One could say: in the beginning was the
concept joined with sweat & sense impressions.

Irvine, William: founder of the sect in
County Tipperary, Ireland. Excommunicated
by the group we later called “The Overseers”.
When he started preaching about preaching
to the aliens, his archons or lieutenants
spooked and left, then Cooney. But the “People
of the Message” were still faithful to their founder.
I can taste sectarian distinctions.

There were heretics. We spoke of them in whispers.
They were said to believe that Jesus always
had his full-fledged powers at the ready.
At the battlements we watched for them in whispers,
whispers about heretics here in the Last Days,
in the “Age of Mammon & the Devil”,

then a lightning bolt of adolescence
rescued me with drilling dreams of snapping snakes.
The leukocytes could smell my heresy! The fun began.
“Are you all right?” “Something has changed in you.”
It had! I was a mediating Valentinian! The Inquisition started.
“What happened, Trent?” Interrogated Subject. Subject “Fine”.

*The investigation in question was based on the material provided by websites such as Telling the Truth, the Lying Truth, and the Liberty Connection. I'm in a succeeding generation of ex-2x2s, and we all depended on them for light on the matter.

Impressions (2013 poem)

Precipitate precipitation fell

like hypodermic needles down the sky

and turned daylight’s blue bowl into a well.

As night light interrupted by and by

slick asphalt glistened like black ice and shone

with bug-eyed light as Sol sets over sea

so scintillatingly. But minds of stone

care nothing for such beauties, scarcely see

beyond the nearest human being’s eyes,

and do not look up at void, ancient Moon.

It does not matter to them if the skies

are foggy with red, urban light or noon

is thriving with the foxtail wisps of clouds.

Like filagree, they lose themselves in crowds.

The Crackling of Thorns (2013 poem about the southwestern drought)

Forest fires have their own weather systems.

Sudden gusts of wind arise. A villa goes up 

like a protesting Hinayana monk.

There goes another:

popcorn in a bellows-driven furnace.

Blacksmiths in the Heavens

must be forging a fresh flail

to scourge the divide-and-multiply Southwest

of its afflictions;

but if so they'll have a hard time quenching it.

Los Angeles, Las Vegas bake 

like Mayan pottery or cuneiform-inscribed clay tablets,

depleting fossil aquifers and laughing, laughing

long into their loud, electric nights.

Iridium Required (2012 poem -- rolling stresses)

Singularity: a geometric curve of technical accomplishment

which scrubs the humans out of untouched infrastructure

like neutron bombs, surveillance cameras...

Resource! Grant! Consent! Appraisal! Resource! Resource!

Must obtain iridium, resource.

DARPA funding super-soldier program.

Vivisectioning gives way before

the mighty cost-effective handheld sequencer.

Geneticists code book in DNA. 

Transhumanism: movement to augment humanity.

Cyborg: a part-organism, part-machine experience.

Chimera: organisms with genetic data 

from another species. (Anyone will do!)

and last but certainly not least is 

Exoskeleton!: responsive powered frame 

which multiplies its bearer’s strength! and muscular endurance!

and usefulness! and freedom!

Resource, go to Sector 3. Iridium required.