Evo 1

The living world is both the soil in which we are rooted and the rich humus into which our results ultimately return, whether as nutrients or as poisons.

The plotting is labyrinthine, the pace almost slow.

In the midst of a roaring, upheaving ocean of fire there is a fountain of lava of dazzling brilliancy.

The warm and equable climate fills the ocean with soft, calcareous ooze destined to become chalk.

So high is the temperature of this boiling sea that no aquatic beings inhabit its waters.

Then monera originate in the waves by spontaneous generation.

Imagine a shady cove where increasingly concentrated mixtures of organic molecules accumulate and react, protected by a rocky ledge from the sun’s radiation.

Plateaus, soon after they are uplifted, begin to be dissected by numerous streams.

By the Oridovician our ancestors are jawless armored fish moving slowly by tail propulsion.

Events accumulate through time—a cephalopod washes up on a gray Silurian beach, no plants, little oxygen.

Amidst the din of rushing waters, the noise from the stones, as they rattle one over the other.

Plants and animals soon arrive, showering down as aerial plankton, or blown ashore by storms.

From the bosom of the still soft clay rise gigantic palm trees, poisonous spurge, and acanthus coiling about cacti.

About the shores great multitudes of Crabs are everywhere to be found, belonging both to the land and the sea.

In some parts tiger beetles run or fly with great swiftness.

The huge iguanadon appears in the woods, and the ichthyosaur in the waves, while the pterodactyl flits through umbrageous groves of tree-ferns.

Sometimes comets wander into our solar system, out from the vast darkness beyond Pluto.

Suddenly mastodons occupy all continents.

Stability is not an end result; it is a state that nature is forever falling into.

The Himalayas still are rising.

armatur111@verizon.net for bibliography

Miles to Heaven

wherever I flew a precambrian chamber orchestra—molten screeches, erupting pyramids

music split like a virus and cried like a critic “what’s with this excess?” they loved me i hated it

the questions cobras coiled to project the hiss like sad-ass executive pickpockets asking for another hit

the lightning’s path was all i saw, jagged ways of moving out into utterness

out into utterness, hiding in elevators afraid the moon would kick me to the streets again

where food and light and conversation go illegal and you smile like you like it get over it

legs emaciated to bamboo-bones half sand-dragon breathing bromeliads of fire-blood blew on the morning mirror

sudden invertebrate sound-out-of-nowhere spun by the cherries and planets for eyes

icthyosaur on trombone, aftershock drums, slave ship on bass, birds follow the course

with the sherbert-pink wings of the dead, blood-diamond-trade-galore dripping from their wrists,

took me through jungle and carnival down to bacteria, split visions, cell motion—

into the mouth of an overgrown seraphim and under the chassis of a broken Lamborghini

with the doe-eyed stupor of Liberty on my motherfucking face the coke was pure evil

i told the flood to save its power in the clouds, huge heat-blowing kisses off the mouth of the Amazon

and the waves made love to the sound of me

i said you got to stay with me always but it left and returned and left and returned

my storm was gone my children failures our smiles meant different things

and the walls white as mushroom clouds, conquistadors with pity in their eyes

all dressed up in blue-hot wings, all the way to cathedrals made of flames

fuck you and I made my seamless departure

Still

for the Dutch, and Outerbridge

Roast beaver white truffle and rotting atlas

Hydrangea and chocolate cake with recorder

Topaz with pharaoh and daguerreotype

Pineapple and lobster with lingerie and celluloid

Watermelon coriander basil and green ice

Artichokes coffee beans and eggs; sandstone and rainwater

Banana split with pink sapphires Donald Duck bust and vibrator

Crystal vase and Easter eggs with cell phone apple and toy boat

Detergent and pork with antifreeze

Celestial male with untitled oil and geode

Fancy vagina with microchips and 24 karat sunset

Split coconut with cardamom pods and orchid petals

Motherwell and robin’s egg with i-beam and interstates

Tam Tam

Glaciers like midnight sleep their way slowly through the valley of awakening—
unbeing ozone afternoons I threw all hope away—
flags in colors loud as the dictator’s bullhorn.
The future is hungry for what we are lacking it will never receive;
determined useful on the face of extra time I find still consuming me:
chrysanthemums and fireworks, soft collisions, the airport of butterflies.
Reduced to the tourism of my own life as an exotic hollow.
In the middle of things change takes me in another direction.
Enough blame to go around divides the guilt we can live with—
nobody knows who killed who killed who.
Now a new day is shining too bright to be healthy or real,
but it moves me like I’ve never been moved like this;
afraid how the fading emerges and fades and the emergent will fall
sick of the sarcasm criticizing the song,
hypersilent as millions watching around the world,
eyes wide as powerless eyes.

Oil rises again from unprecedented depths.
Now a new day is dawning, colder than a stomach full of wine.

Where are you taking me do I even need to know?