Sunday, June 21, 2009

Nu-Clears


Many, many years ago,

at a Goldwater rally:

A daughter of a union buster twirls a lock of golden hair. Across the room, a judge's son is wrapped around her finger. She glances a repulsed glance and exacts her gravity. Electrified, he thinks to himself "we have to be close enough for this force to effect us."

 

He collides with her

and the two discuss their Barrycenter:

"In your heart, you know he's right," he reads from a pin on her mohair sweater.

"It's just nice to meet another so like-charged,' she gleams.

"Together, we could power the stars," he croons.

 

United by the State, they became Mr. and Mrs. Nuclear.

 

*

           

The planet then was a violent, boiling fireball. The Nuclears felt quite star-crossed, the nightly news citing (nightly) a nation divided at their name.

"The American way of life in peril! We must build a solid foundation. We, the Pillars of Creation!" recited Mr. Nuclear.

 

A shudder, an eruption. From deep inside the young Nuclear body, a strikingly photogenic Sun emerged first, followed by his glowing sister, Moon.

 

*

 

The son, born of some stellar explosion, was the light of the Nuclear lives. The faint young Sun promised to shine brighter each day.  But soon the wayward son began to disappear at night, stumbling through the garden each morning.

"I floated across the ocean in a golden bowl," the Sun explained, but the Nuclears’ nerve wreckage found no fix in their son's excuses.

 

They followed him once, to the edge of world, watched him descend.

"Every dusk, I am ready for death," the Sun cried.

They could no longer look into his face.

 

 

Moon wears a different face each day. She wonders if this makes her featureless, wanders low in the afternoon sky, waiting to be seen.

Some evenings she's dressed all in white playing hostess, making the rounds with a tray of sugar cookies. Her hips move just like those she came from.

Her mother too was a performer, a glittering goddess.

She drives the boys crazy, bathes in the lake.

Many have died from not protecting themselves from her.

 This dark side of Moon still wears the footprint of a man, still bears his flag.

 

*

            And Mrs. now with cancer and Mr. attached to a tube, there were ancient urges unanswerable and modern pressures mounting.

  Ahhhhh! to be continued AHHHHHHHHHH!

 


Thursday, June 18, 2009

everyone on division street is wearing a fucking stupid t-shirt today.



could you
please describe
the dent
that
forehead made in the bathroom door?




Monday, June 15, 2009

to write a haiku for you: go steam boy!















craft seminar: constraint poem

i decided to work with japanese forms: dokugin/renku renga, haiku mondo, sedoka, katuata, Traditionally a renga (and its organs: hokku, waki, daisan) is a collaborative effort, each stanza coming from a new, different voice. The multiple voices of my solo renga come from: Steamboy (anime film, unrestrained), Dylan Thomas (drunk laureate) and "The Communist Manifesto" (landscape of "Old Europe")

the constraints i took on then, were primarily the decided syllable counts for each line, stanza. follows traditional 5-7-5, 7-7 (with plenty of slippage)

from risk comes progress
my cogs, my human engines,
just a little more?

one valve! now two! three! now four!
a bit scalded, but that’s all

bones ground into bread
a brass valve to open skin
soon a Great Exhibition!



enemy to ash
what I seek is up, up, up
will you come with me?

thus is written in the book
the stubborn man, his dunce cap



the book of rays and angles
pistons in his blood (I swear)
is that the postman back again?

the parcel: the ball, the plans,
the news of your dead father

smoke signals steam chase
pregnant with mineral pressure
from atmosphere, jaws

even if hammocked in air,
the man with the handlebar
is nothing to hold onto



O’Haras deal arms
convinced that machines fight wars
they live by their guns

Scarlett makes trembling dogs of men
you’ll call her Miss O’Hara



father steel from steam
this ain’t Niagara Falls
where did father go?

under the thumb of money
extreme densities, extreme pressures



alchemy, a cult
the world waits for steam castle
not faith, not sorcery

shimmering gift of the gods
mankind released from toil



costly inventions
from inside the royal coach
am I to tremble?

fish men fear a submarine
internal contradictions
Columbus was not for this world



escape steam castle
and explore our english parts
which me do you like best?

the heir of a balloon race
a little demonstration

a ticking steam bomb
diplomats, great gobs of em!
bow down before science



bring up the pressure
find those elder ribs
the world is waiting for this?

the thing that smashed our house
we must kill the steam castle




by air land and sea
buy all three, get a discount
what is science for?

to make people happy here
the nation must be preserved

you must turn the wheel
ride the wire, flood with the window
to unmourning waters



a fleet of tempers
new cathedral battleground
where is Her Majesty?

she’ll see nothing at all of
steam troopers, aerocorpses



cross imagery
a spectre haunting Europe
you’re sure it's not birds?

battle wagons can’t climb hills
god help us all, it’s starting

quintessence, progress
Scarlett umbrella, a target
there’s a man in this machine!



fire in the belly
a kind-of commodity
are you forgetting?

threats to the next century
from risk comes progress, father



a low-sitting star
born from air: steam and new clouds
what we seek is up up up

maniacal, monacled
a world wide feeding frenzy
for the steam head

never mind the bridge
the city in its shadow
how did you get here?

hell boiled, a stolen gun
a son set free. go steam boy!



a hand trying to crush me
we stand in my delusion
could it be, a carousel?

something nice for the children
the crucial moment, a lift



Scarlett, the damsel
in the control seat
could they have seen it?

steam shatters, steam soars
steam clouds freeze into steam faces

Friday, June 5, 2009

the story of the honeybee and us: segments.

Poor honey suckers, foulbrood America, no one warned the end of the world? so sit and sip what is sweet--too soon toxic from female floral parts

 that flora,

she must have called to you. convincingly of age and wind-whispering just so ripe and ready for foraging, that under-the-skin-buzzing.

  and rebuzzing, she sold her sweet roadside. even when some chiseled corporate body, urged chastity. some saviour he was, that a foolish drone with salvation leaving the corners of lips pursed and long-chapped.

he submits: make your business waggle

hums- - -“with whatever drone I encounter.


Colony Collapse Disorder and Pollinator Decline

Statement of

May R. Berenbaum 
Professor and Head, Department of Entomology
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
and
 Chair, Committee on the Status of Pollinators in North America 
Board on Life Sciences and Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources
 Division on Earth and Life Studies
 National Research Council
 The National Academies

before the

Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture
 Committee on Agriculture


U.S. House of Representatives

 

Berenbaum, who hasn’t been sleeping well,

wonders at "The birds and the bees."

Through her muzzle cries, "Bloodsuction!"

charges, "Insecticide!"

promises, "Reverberation!"

 

 Noticing suddenly their no-air-neck-ties, Berenbaum’s audience applauds the apocalypse.


From 2006: reported losses of 30-90% in American beekeeping operations. Environmentalists and beekeepers were first inclined to attribute to known agents of death: parasitic mites. But inconsistent symptoms suggest increased stress, a new and unidentified cause of death. This phenomenon that threatens American eco-systems, food supply and bankroll has been given the name "Colony Collapse Disorder," or CCD. 


A lesson in honey being

diet: honey, nectar, pollen or royal jelly (for queen morphology) secreted from the heads of workers

communication: chemicals, odors and so-called 'dances'

social classification: euSocialists:"What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee."

 hierarchy: the ruling class (fertile females) the doomed drones (fertile males)  and the working soldiers (sterile females, child laborers)  


Worker Bees

"we work but not for ourselves"

we are all-singing, all-dancing

born fully-formed and winged

newborn bees patrol and clean, grow quickly into

nurses to new larvae, feeding warm wax or royal jelly

until they can secrete wax from own bellies, chew it soft enough to mold

into a hexagonal cell: rebuild the honeyhome


the honeymakers:

nectar sucked from flowers is passed from older mouths to younger.

drive off unwanted water with flapping wings, cap and seal with beeswax

 

(perhaps this is none of yours)


myself as honey bee: in the wake

With a start in honey-comb bed sheets

Where I am queen of nothing,

Inhale my fight-or-flight or sip an ethanol sleep

And know it makes no difference. Still,

I do prepare for a wing-slow.

If I avoided chemicals, or could, my head might hang honey-colored,

Though now only a haystack, combed daily by fine and bared teeth.

At the back of my hive-holed brain, there is a soft collapse this morning.

“The mind of the hive thinks this is the end of everything.”