Forgive us, Father, for we're trained to sin (sonnet)

Forgive us Father, for we’re trained to sin 
against your statutes long before we know
quite what is going on, deafened by din
& interaction, reaping what we sow.

We slumbered deeper towards the pit,
and many were the snares we did not see.
So many were the traps we would not get.
So many ways to kill a human flea

defile & thereby steal your gift of time;
& down here this has all been normalized,
or nearly all, as what was once a crime
becomes first normative then formalized. 

Forgive us, Father, for we grope around
& cannot even trust this shifting ground.

Big Father is Watching You (alexandrines)

But in the meantime, everything we do is watched
& everything Big Brother touches ends up botched
like Libya or all those spikes in rates
of cancer all humanity has on their filling plates.
The birds are dying & the fishes in the sea,
& Man cannot fix any of this by decree
nor world-state nor syncretic ideology,
nor yet by cybernetics & technology. 
SIN trashed the fertile paradise God gave our kind!
One in ten thousand people even seems to mind.
It couldn’t be coincidence when I discerned
the ‘loss of Heaven’s mandate’ in world histories, learned
an index of this X & Y & realized it was real. 
Sin really does dry up the land, & too the commonweal. 

Ah, Mrs. Moon! So nice of you to join us (hexameter sonnet)

Pale rose moon rose into first blue then purple sky
then changed into an evening dress of shining bone
as spangled Port Hills lurched from white sarcophagi. 
As one admired it, one realised: I'm not alone!

No, not alone, & they weren’t looking at the moon
but at yours truly. Please have better things to do
when moons are full than staring at one’s blissful swoon,
or anyone’s! Their stares distracted me askew.

I watched my interface. What does one even say 
to people who blurt, oh, a couple hundred words,
a dozen prefab lines, stage Earth's most boring play?
They are as differentiated to me as the birds

because they give no thoughtful traction for one’s wheels
& will not speak their living minds or go on spiels.  

2nd Heaven combat simulation (scifi blank verse)

“Though Babylon should mount up to heaven, and though she should fortify the height of her strength, yet from me shall spoilers come unto her, saith the LORD.” -- Jeremiah 51:53

Lasers decommissioned most space stations
first, debris from which would take down
several hundred satellites in slow motion,

"We aren't armed, we're here for research pur-!"

eventually depressurizing the 
last greenhouse-lab where taikonauts
had managed not just to survive but keep
the scheduled observations coming... Then, 
a lethal piece of human femur pierced
first bulkhead wall then taikonaut, & last,
but certainly not least, their oxygen

supply.
какой кошмар 

After the destruction of the fighter-
interceptor shuttles Nautilus &
Rabbit in the Moon, the gift kept giving

valued customers
dead zones
真糟糕

as satellite upon satellite shook & sheared:
AT&T & Telecom lost 4 
& 9 respectively as bits of steel,
glass, bone, & composite whizzed past, zikked through
computers, cameras, sensors, & -- of course --
those solar panels, sending still more clouds
still more directions in the course of days.

Then, in the course of weeks & months, a North 
Korean spy satellite went down -- or, more
precisely, upside down & all around -- 
which took a NASA magnetometer out
of commission, plus a European
weather satellite in the bargain. Hundreds more
streaked down like burning brains. Though EMP

pulse weaponry might have prevented this
abrupt, unsettling end to orbital 
traditions, if it had been generally
deployed, the military brass still thought
in terms of operatic smithereens.

Besides, the EMP emitters were
to be alongside the torpedo bays --
a bike next to a thousand SUVs,
a tidal turbine next to nuclear
reactors -- so we know how that turns out.

The post-War Soyuz capsule with Jane
Kennedy & Evgenia Boroshin 
that was supposed to represent Peace/Mir
as usual didn’t make it through the cloud.

How did we manage to blockade ourselves?
Although we had unlimited expense
accounts made out of malnutrition, bridge
collapses, even gravel roads, it all
went wrong! The moral of this blank verse is
the first Star War would likely be the last.

Moths sprang round at Linwood Cemetery

A coil of tussock grassland moths sprang round
Linwood Cemetery. Although sharp wind
sliced through their ranks, 8? straightaway snapped back,
a hornet’s nest of angry rubber bands. 
The meander of a single moth or pair 
go by ago as two months coil up
two moths amid that marbled blue we breathe
in, then one saw that entire squadron sproing
past crosses toppled & upright then boing
off hills off stage.

The atemporal Godhead thought of time

So many flourishes, wild whorls, winged cherubim & horns
festoon the Lord God, our Creator’s, work of timely art,
His panoply of giants, penitence & unicorns
that one can scarcely wrap one’s head around it, for a start.

The Lord is atemporal, yet He thought up time & space!
This is the very benchmark of originality:
We couldn’t do that even if our milling minds should race.
One sees the restless artist in His personality:

He tells Hosea to go find a harlot & get hitched,
but also tells the prophet Jeremiah not to marry
(this quite vividly). The narratives were switched
around like swords, a process that one finds, at times, quite scary.

But one is resigned to be calligraphy & scribble;
thanks Him for the scenery, the free will & the kibble.

Antebellum (2011 couplets)

The ongoing spread of antimissile installations
indicates that there may soon be strife between great nations,
that these years are, for all intents & purposes, pre-War,
an Age when -- not “Democracy”! -- but Big Lies flourish, ‘soar
on wings of eagles’, set the bloody Middle East afire
with overt bombs and sneaking Earnest Voices both. Earth's pyre
is yet unlit, awaiting some Gavrilo Princip’s shot
when BAM! an undeclared “Cold” War clicks suddenly to “Hot”.

Jesus' General Amnesty > your retirement plan (couplets)

But one is even as a Shaker chair
dwarfed by galaxies that rotate there
& superclusters of the same as stars
arranged in constellations. Beyond Mars
gas giants do their duty, organelles...  

Meanwhile, most go for that which strokes & sells
& ye shall know them by this sign: they say
“retirement” “mortgage” “practical” all day.
But “practical” is just the sepulcher 
dressed up in alabaster, splashed with myrrh.

One is not better off than on the dole
if one has not done more than heaping coal.

Shockwaves from the Crucifixion (couplets)

As rain drops fall within the sky,

so even joy enfolds a cry;
so bubbles rise within the sea,
foot-dragging shirks behind decree,
a prince of evil swamped by Love;
so doth the hand fit to the glove;
so Intercessor named "Guan Yin";
so interplay of Yang & Yin;
so Jesus Sutras reach the East
with the Nestorians, at least;
Sidharthaism--> Ancient Greece
(great white expanse as Golden Fleece).
A Nameless Dream & Hidden Voice!
In which nor both should one rejoice?
For one converted this Wild West,
the firstborn that Far East at best.

Song of the Kingdom (2015 quatrains) (Beginning of "A.D." cycle)

Mid violet golden lights of early morn

It's near to sing this still small sequence. Here

It is! because the veil has richly torn.

This is the closest It has come all year

along the stages of this still small proof.

Each threshold of inductive proof is clear

after the leap at first, up through the roof;

& as It wakes us, shows us how to steer,

we sense without a need for further leaps.

Desires that are not needful turn to ash.

The stakes are high, the game is played for keeps,

& what I used to be was just a gash!

an open wound! a birthday manimal!

a dying fallen bundle of desires

It gives the coup de grace. My animal

is quite reluctant to give back Its fires

as lights & wide open expanse of height

of presence near, & joy among the briars!

But It decided it would be so, sight

unseen: the Inmost Sunlight which inspires. 

Epistle to the Solitaries (2015 blank verse) (End of B.C. cycle)

The apparitional psychology
 of solitaries, like a particle,
accelerator, stills the willing wilds
so that the miniscule but extent stands 
out in the sharpest of reliefs, as
monkishly apparent as a ghost,
red-flagged among the primate gestural
vocabularies filling other cracks
in their collection of stalactites: we
are just too autonomic day to day
to pass unnoticed, live in hidden heights,
experience emotions they don’t have
which don’t have names. We praise an Inner Sun
& are not isolated humanoids.
We sequence emanations that 
they do not even know are possible!
among their cubicles & mortgages.
We flourish carefully, refining our
proportions, watch The World with wide bright eyes.

Cast Abroad Rage Alpha Sector Roger (2015 couplets)

I can feel recalibration coming
like a burning plastic bottle, thrumming
somewhere in their building, building up
to something, overspilling up a cup.
I feel crescendo in their willing distance,
putting up a token of resistance,
jutting out into abyss, down!-going
down! down! down! the rapids of their rowing.

Astride an Ape (2015 couplets)

To shape my ape up to the finish line
I planned & tweaked, came up with a design
which broke the norms of my society
in all alertness & sobriety
of purpose, conscious of the full support
of something greater, grander than my access port,
my terminal & lightning rod on legs
which has no purpose but to lay its eggs.
What norms, you ask? Oh, just the usual ones:
no fossil fuel use & no hot cross buns;
no buns on seats all day at any price!
& rather than their fast food, oats & rice.
More norms: no birthday / parties, little drink.
I find that both just jam the way I think.
I believe it is our birthright to be glad,
astride an ape between the hebdomad,
a way out of the wailing wall of souls,
becoming, being more than great ape roles.

Transfixion: Otautahi-Christchurch (2015)

I’ve successfully amalgamated 

intellectuality with manual

labour -- which is something that the Marxists

seem not to have bothered with -- so as to 

bring about humane alignments, not just

of the body & the mind but of the 

concept & the practice. This is natural:

some trees just have further trees inside them,

even if the counting magpies see not,

for these trees on trees transfix my silence.

I am transfixed on Yggdrasil, I am

turning in the wind among raw helixes of birds, bred

among my hours to this consummation.

Lightning streams into extremities, demanding a strong vessel,

breaking many a strong vessel. Praise it

without names far from coordinates & hours.

Jubilee: a call for the cancellation of every debt worldwide (2015 couplets)

A jubilee for every debt worldwide
gives fictive numbers nowhere else to hide
& would not kill skilled hands nor bulldoze plants
nor blow up railroad ties nor *rip your pants.
A sort of magic lantern show just stops
& the collective jawbone drops.
I think our jubilee a worthy goal,
especially of countries in the hole.
Geometric, twilit curves of debt
are like unto a broken hammer. Fret
not & just throw a hammer such as that away.
We then continue going on our way.
Let’s reset, replace the broken hammer
though it raise a tumult & a clamor. 
Burst, lance, rip apart the pimple
that will someday pop itself. It’s simple. 

* Health Warning: The bit about "ripping your pants" is more than a bit optimistic.

Walpurgisnacht: (2015 "a law of conservation of" in human history)

It seems Walpurgisnacht
can neither be created nor destroyed;
for scarcely had the Knights returned from Palestine
when Inquisition and then Witch Trials 

started torturing confessions     
“Yea, I flew my broom to Sabbath Night!
The Lord of Darkness was an he goat!”
(emphasis on ex!clam!a!tion)
out of writhing innocents

& then burning them alive,
(which they would never do to pigs or chickens,
which is known as “overcooking”).
They were practicing a form of human sacrifice 
known as “burnt offering”.

It smelled like sweet & sour pork 
before it smelled like charcoal...
It was Hell on Earth!
The mob was chittering like imps.

Then, when the courts began to get suspicious,
colonies took up the slack.
They drained off chaff & wheat alike abroad
to leer self-righteously at Temples of the Sun.

Descendants of Witchfinder Generals
are still paranoid about those 
toxoplasma gondii-infected people,
but they give them toxic psychotropics
in their homes these days
instead of burning them alive in public.
        
The Crusades is now the War on Terror,
and the fractious Trinitarians are now climatologists.

  

White Sun (2009 poem)

Forking quietude, transversely bridging

Branches on the human category

Tree, aligns with veering vantage points of

Indices of synonyms & difference 

Between levels of the mind; that is, of

Thought this winding wind & whirling abode.

O white sun, bright white, fog-cloaked sun!

Light light far dissipating, perilous -- 

Through fogs of warfare, past Where Dragons Be --

Escapes mere wounded hours, fueling us

So briefly... Joy as deafening & still

As battle slumbers in axial points.

It is the number of men (2012 poem)

Intensifying resource exploitation tries

to save a currency before it dies

of faith, faith in the markets, faith in loan sharks

and their longhorn debtors, faith in shadowed sparks,

Faith! Faith! another era will not arise.

But I myself stare skeptically at all men

and their geometrically-abundant din

on Earth of boom and bust and wonder... how much

longer... How much longer can men do it, clutch

Rare Earths in primate talons, cold to the touch.

Metal Lightning (2015 quatrains)

Much like a yeast made out of light,
it moved as if it had a mind.
It pulsed across their line of sight
and made me wonder: of what kind?

And are there metal lightnings there
blue composites of living fire
arrayed in troupes across the air?
I visualize a sort of wire,

a sort of vacuum tube of air,
with a short circuit for a death
They stopped their BBQ to stare,
unconsciously to hold their breath.

Perhaps in troupes among the skies,
ball lightning sleeps, dreams, wakes, & glides
has children, lives as well as fries.
Perhaps a bigger mystery hides

among the clouds than discoid ships
whose grayish sailors with big heads 
sail vacuum on cow rustling trips
& kidnap people from their beds. 

Shaking Couplets (2015 couplets)

One sees so many categories in this light,
subcategories lighting dawn with height
of heath. One sees so many different lights
between one's mind’s eye & the sights.
It brightens up the very room I’m in
myself & shaking fumble for my pen.
Dictation is columnar fire & cloud.
The eidolon is at its best. The crowd
goes savage like a distant crash of waves,
a sort of scenery as at the raves.

Suspension of the givens (2014 poem)

There is no situation but can be
transfigured from within, herein
suspension of the givens
mid, among dilating weeks.
I’m involuting something sounder than a sign
at 1AM like blasting off
somewhere in time and space,
and whole wherever that is.
Yes, there is no turning back,
and wind is like a sculpture of the moon.

Midsummers Break (2014 poem)

There is a blue ring round the Moon,
& then a thicker bright cream ring,
and I am running round myself
for blue & bright cream rings
and tunneling through rich, dense air.

Endorphins, mobilize! Soul, strike like lightning!
For, I'm free!!

*Terms & Conditions apply.
One's freedom lasts a fortnight.
Invalid in the following non-WorldGov territories:
North Korea, Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba & Iran.

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.

Many Mansions (2015 poem)

Yin and Yang is Cain and Abel , sheep & fruit. I’m able 
and I’m keen, a good keen can catch-all can do here
on the fractured plates of  Aotearoa,
gift of active volcanoes, for in the shimm’ring distance 
hills are cloaked by their own clarity, 
clad in a state of mind above both thought 
& feeling. Almost could I be an animist among 
such objects. It is chryptochromin-activating dusk 
o’clock & all my thoughts have changed because
we have not even gotten used to fire
& light bulbs! What is more, there is a backdoor in 
the mind, but most go for dead coals that it has long departed,
rippling from the epicenter of a victory:
being in becoming’s sphere of axis, right suspension of the givens.

Hump Century (2011 quatrains)

(written in 2011, "the gods" changed to "Our Lord" in 2016)

...beamed down from satellites to TVs

plus nanonetworked smart dust plus deep packets oh I can't
perceive it all at once! Bound on a treadmill of CVs
& paying for our training's slant,

as well as its inherent use
to humankind, we must be more than splintered specialists
amongst the Google Earths & views,
we must be more than numbers on chill neatly indexed lists!

There must be a rebirth among the great apes armed with war
who scout the land & then report
on its munitions dumps, civilian population, spore
dispersion mediums, who kill for sport

from helicopters with high-powered rifles, yes there must
be renaissance among the apes
who wield the neutron bomb as they disturb the Terran crust.
Our Lord should take them by their napes.

Anomalistics (2014 poem)

As clouds lower, so do upper-atmospheric lightnings,
which accounts for some reported sightings. 

So we see them here as if they were alive:

on infrared or radar in the humming air they thrive.

Anomalies! Anomalies are beautiful, I feel. 

For just this sentiment see Devereux, Vallée, & Keel.

Ghost soldiers clomp stampeding stamp down shuttered shaking streets. 

Some are called elves, some are called sprites. They light this strange old sky 

of nights. And they bestir me with the holy question “WHY?!”

Ideological (2007 poem in sprung rhythm)

Spark Motes of dust float in the beam

Through canopy of bed and wood

Good

Of opened drawer and canopy

Of forest down on pioneer men

Inn

Rangers Beggars Merchants Speeches

In this floating world suspended

Hid

Like masters under canopy

And cover of a palanquin

Men

Straining lift with slavery or

Drunkenness of moon mating

Rutting

Simply, masters, servants, but no

Enoch's Enoch's Enoch's walk, no

Clue

Into the words that bury them

Drum

Mass graves' hundred millions where once

Tens of millions lived too, longing,

Stringing

Beads on rosaries and stringing

Up unnecessary man-shapes

Grapes

Exploding as high pressure lights

Imploding as they reel from heights

Wits

Lanternfish of riots, winters,

Shouts and dreams, exploding Tzar killed

Lulled

By propaganda teeming from

The crowd programmed by snore of sky

High

Daguerrotype (2015 blank verse)

Dickinson, who called Itself "Least Figure
on the Road", burnt out Its codependent
ape mind and continued on Its mission.
Those desiring further information
should see Schopenhauer's lifelong work on
the renunciation of the will.