Sorrow's Echo

PALINDROME 

mirror rim 
muse mask sum 
sore rose done 
node not on 
time spool 
gnostic attar 
a radio vale 
woven ozone 
vowel a void 
ararat tacit 
song loops 
emit no tone 
done nodes 
or eros 
musk same sum 
mirror rim 

Let Why = x (Streaming the Past)

ANAMNESIS

the thing as is

immediated meanwhile

adhesion frequencies

sequenced in

lesion burst

disquieting ruses

as much in dream

as in process this

shade upon a plane

surface made

a range of

displacement

stark raving denial

stiff with belief

bereft bacchanal

verbatim jubilation

ignition system

abundantly plumbed

according to

evening's ordinance

discharge incidence

post-romantic protocols

operative then

arms as branches

and fingers leaves

(or softness embellished)

rock blossom water sky

mirror neural coral

furnace diurnal

osprey nature

possible otter future

once autonomous entities

opposite arrayed

hyperbolic pop apocalypse

this objectionist remnant

thunder demeanour

deep echo depleted

transient data contagion

plaintive arraignment

of sediment impeccable

but utter meltwater

as if drift be glacial

glossal interstitial

clamour channel

adamant lamentation

tremor emulation but

what ravenous wormhole

within reason devours

mass anomalies

absolute surfeit music

of now synchronize(d) forever

warped portal

rampant parthenogenic

source delirium

temporal cognition switch

remote ovarian modem

swollen trill dwell

anticipates jaguar maize cabal

mutagenic folk mosaic

paleolithic kitchen

intermediary hagiography

subterranean hive mind

sang grail tunnels

impenetrable digital inevitable

mesh threshold perhaps

cortical splurge maintain

germ-plasm devotion

depict archetypal

pattern recognition device

as per turbulent

hermetic intervention

intuit longitudinal

retrograde emotion

bicameral over

neural network

ostensible metastatic

clinamen premonition

sage protection lately

come clumsily undone

plunged to some

sumptuous assumption

telemental sciatica

lash attribute

press ganglial fortress

occipital bandwidth occupation

vermilion shimmer

rescinded iron archipelago

deco / herence

in syntax ribbons

fasten hatch

and blast off

thaumaturgic nerve squadron

potassium hum

hauled across

these light-years

the vatic expanse

of this absence

[An earlier version was published in xStream, edited by Jukka-Pekka Kervinen.] 

Orders of Multitudes

WHET AMULET 

debris radiant glaze domain 

salve came qualm encumbered 

wept matter fact remembered 

recondite chordates elucidate 

machinations of solid-state literati 

doldrum motors meme tsunami 

mediate critical mass distribution 

tacit planet meanders align 

plum receptors calibrate solace 

so flown paradigm time 

The Archaeology of Virtuality

from Metatronic: an Alchemical Journal (for Robert Kelly) 


The car arrived without a driver. 

~ 

It is only those who have no future to whom the agents of the future come. 

~ 

Dear Angel of Incidence, 

The source for the Pegasus/Mercury paper tape code is "Information Representation and Manipulation in a Computer" by E.S. Page and L.B. Wilson and, yes, that was the impetus, with a nudge from Blackburn's Watchers and a nod to Sappho's 'Fragment 182.' The rest obsessed from that. A simple machine shuffling the flows. Contact human reference that oblique figure cut from the argument (apropos of Atropos and several threads severed, or persevered perhaps, in the process). 

~ 

She appeared to be translucent, faintly silvery and unambiguously briefly leafy, an imperturbable oscillating conundrum. ("Sometimes I wonder where the message begins and the world ends.") The wobbling pivot of that disturbance in air resolved into a sufficiency of indeterminacy, that is . . . the signifying calligraphy is inscrutable. An instruction manual in the form of a riddle or a self-fulfilling epiphany. 

~ 

In the leaves of the trees, lenses . . . and a dangling entanglement, primary circuitry of the time-adjusters. 

~ 

Listening to the dead (mostly). Their music is alien polar silence(s). As for the asphodel and the river of murmuring, memory is random and (mostly) involuntary, that Daphne bit specifically, notwithstanding the keeper of austere ceremony. We drink the bittersweet water and forget. 

~ 

Bitumentation is the enumeration of a deprivation. Interminable contextuality, equal to the measure of obscurity. We are more than the sum of our seeming. 

~ 

The divination is in the (living) syntax. 

Monaural Vortex, or Early Onset Nostalgia

PASTORAL LOGIC                                    for Clark Coolidge

I surfed through this nuworld this afternoon 
and it was shiny, noisy, clean and intact 
as brass tacks clasped in memory stacks, as 
phantoms on bicycles pedal soft into ruined futures. 

The earth unscrolled in folds beneath the furrows 
of human endeavour, though old not much wiser 
as if nothing had happened to turn in alarm 
from casually irrational acts and predatory charm. 

I passed the fields of crushed red brick 
where a viral sky shed fat flakes that vanished 
into robin's-egg blue smooth to the touch 
yet intricate as ice rimed upon grimy windows. 

Immutable Refusal

Disjunctive synthesis. A mere spatial evasion maybe . . . a cloud of pixels, inexplicably . . . scintillates beside me, some immaculate lattice mapped upon maximum circumstance and the axiomatics of desire. The contingent epiphany obviously adept deception. A glitch in vision commensurate with the autopsychology of dreaming. 

Reversible Dispersal, or Slipped Infinitive

Now there can be no realization. I gather shards of tense / from the abundant blue confusion. Cuneiform or acanthus thus suffice. There is no rosy gnosis to this. The kiss persists, enclitic to it but involute. Cadence to coda. A sequence of gamuts nested in diffusion or the locus of an enhanced delay. 

The Enunciation of the Becoming After

The anxious cricket in my ear implicates itself in my impending disintegration, not to mention deafness and notwithstanding an indefinite aura of aureality to these copies of aethernity. I beside myself with the pallid multitudes and their Martian ambition. The sinthome of this is parthenogenesis. An indexical disposition (or inchoate state of attenuation) juxtaposed with the errant paraphernalia of a spectacular indulgence. I beside myself again and again with diminishing resolution. 

Mutable Refuge

PROTECTIVE INTIMACY 

"tunable, coherent, immeasurable" 
(Rod Smith, the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings) 


any other form of 

like interruption 

would be something 

quite different 


simulated life-emission 

like minded tolerance 

biochemical indices 

indicate cadence 


radiation gradient 

bleak body deformation 

as active aperiodic 

empirical discharge 


spectra like previous 

with extreme punctuation 

thus the disjunct sun of 

luminescence immeasurable 

Disjunctive Conjunction, or Murk Gurgle

THUDDITE 

That flowery spreadsheet, actuarial 

          albeit indeterminate 

                             with immersive flourish, embellished 

                    (parenthetical)     thud operative 

whether proviso cite or source muster, 

          code-work heroic 

                              cast alike 

all extant nothing     (and indelibly so) 

                    more or less 

                              well-chilled 

          intransigent capital, 

dread fetch 

          in tinned swelter, 

                              the seemingly likely 

                    glandular factory 

enhancement as 

          retrieval past value, 

                                                  apt lapses 

                    apropos 

retroactive flush          (glut sputter) 

                              hence 

                                        froth-benefit analysis 

          "quite rightly" 

                              arbitrarily obliged 

Nunc Stans

CODA

Her eternity

b u r d e n

eventually embodied

then unearthed

further impermanent

earlier galaxies

entangled in

tranquil veil

(sleep-genius

"cover me")

drowsy cherub

bearer of abeyance

our own aroused

avowal equal to

arborescence

spectral companions

lustral all

(scathe not

anything like resistance)

interiorized audacity

comprising time

current converted

as essential as

seldom understood

of this

earthly concealment

let me

grapple in silence

among therapeutics

(within gnawn song

nested reticence)

murmur after

grove extension

this rose

as was

with what allows

by turns

experiential grieving

must accrue

so muse how much

extinguished

why mimesis

status granted

each fixed

light-beam home

azimuth posture

impossible form of

coiled birth

enigmatic leap

speech stoops to

save us

so I as refuge

obsolete

domain around death

through slim crimson

a b s t r a c t e d

those tears

so much sung

to distort

another sovereign kiss

destination embodiment

my unlisted

simulacrum

suppose cosmos

in despair

craving empathy

our holy tether

give them

their ghosted desire

else deft razor

("do not rescind species")

animal people

here too prey

rising from light

where canyon embraced them

[An earlier version was published in The Alterran Poetry Assemblage, December 2002.]

No Doubtful Asphodel

TH/IN PIECES 

o 

cry

o

gene 

o

void 

em

bod(h)i

ment rai

sed sed

iment 

essent

ially 


~ 


cir

cadian os

cillation in

tercel

lular 

chro

nosphere 

reser

voir per

turber 

verge 


~ 


por

tal err

or ver

itable 

dor

sal sal

vation 

irration

al opal 


~ 


savan

nah 

affi

davit 

arch

aic ache 

a

gate to 

a

llopathic 

o su

zerain 


~ 


resi

dew 

s

urface 

dur

ess 

irradi

ated 

pain de

mesne 

Logical Depth

Behold an almost votive commotion at the table of dissolute muses. Their intimacy is brittle mimicry, prismatic glances in hand mirrors and ludic tattoos. A somewhat machinic bit of obsessive-compulsive theatre (damsels de-stressed, in celebratory mode) amid the usual lavish inactivity. She who must be accommodated arrives late to the occasion. As for a continuous present, the key would seem to be the logical depth of its virtuality. 

Convex Resonance Event

So begins the disappearance of the world. Those who remain remain implicated. An insect trust in the process. The thought is not the magnetic field of that feeling. Hieratic digital entities retroactively absent. The manifestation emits presence but is elsewhere. An immense din splinters into silence, intricate artifice of the contingencies unhinged. Then spent starlight shivers and disappears into the intermittent music of the hemispheres.