Evo 3

The fluid lake that works below—bitumen, salt, and iron scum heaves up its boiling tide.

The laboring mount is torn with agonizing throes.

 

Dust particles from space provide an important source of the molecules that give rise to life.

The soil is full of small angular fragments of white quartz.

Tensions in the Earth’s crust break Rodinia apart along rift zones.

 

Dense, black water-laden clouds mask the sun; thunder claps and lightning flashes day and night.

Turtles cavort in their capes of green algae.

Nature is unambiguously a world of things that appear to be other things, or in some cases, of things that appear to be nothing at all.

It is almost dark when the men who have gone out hunting return.

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Sources

1. David Mallet, The Excursion, Canto I.

2. Nigel Henbest, “Science: Organic molecules from space rained down on early Earth,

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13318053.300-science-organic-molecules-from-space-rained-down-on-earlyearth.html

3. Thomas Belt, The Naturalist in Nicaragua, New York: E.P. Dutton.

4. Rick Guenther, “Peace River Geology,” http://www.calverley.ca/Part17-Geology,%20Archeology/17-01.htm

5. . J.E.N. Veron, A Reef in Time, Belknap Press of Harvard U. Press, Cambridge, 2008, p 85.

6. Ibn Sarah, “Pool with Turtles,” Poems of Arab Andalucia, Cola Franzen, tr. City Lights, San Francisco, 1989.

7. Nature, Representation, and Misrepresentation, http://www.transparencynow.com/history.htm

8. Eugene Andre, A Naturalist in the Guianas.

Gallery

i. twilight on crewdson

Through storefront windows, the succulents phosphoresce. Security sleeps under the thieves. Shoes are being idolized, elevators filling with heavy cologne.

Like aquariums blue with Television fluid, suburban light is moving sans control—
all walls turned to H2O. The oaks aglow upon the lawn

serenade us to a boardwalk rendezvous with the golden orange of our body
moonlighting as our child.

Midnight cake is drowning in a bath of milk. Shoes are being idolized.

I know this air:

Spring is coming, the hyacinth,
the impatiens.

It Happens

Once my mother heard the priests moaning through apartment walls
things changed. I came to hate the city.
I rode the bus through Brooklyn. I was eight, alone.
Can you imagine?
Carnegie was cold. Ballerinas can be cruel.
My mother took me to the agency.
They liked me til I smiled,
pointed out my tooth, the one a millimeter skewed, and said
*tap tap*
“This won’t do.” So that was that.

She heard the priests again.
Moaning through apartment walls.
Soon after, men in suits came calling.
I thought they were from the government;
they said the government was useless—
politics, philosophy, writers,
you, I, and tomorrow.
I was headed for Columbia. Law school. I was in.
Can you imagine?

We read the words, attended
It seemed so true—it seems so odd
to say it now.
But holocausts and empty space were all around;
my head full of fears, deep,
historical fears—Babylon, earthquakes, Obscenity.
I met him then. I was seventeen.
He was twenty seven. Can you imagine?

Three years later the kids kept dividing.
We drove around
picking out the houses we would take
once Jehovah cleared the way.
He gained fifty pounds a year.
I told him traumas he didn’t hear,
thought Cuba was the end of all my cares.
Six or seven bolts of light and the fruit would fall.
But the Russians never came
and he only spoke lovely words to God.

Identity Schmisis

Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven far journeys, how his capacity for staying still to attend to a quiet interchange of question and answer amounts to less than nothing and possibly even subverts our understanding of what it means to mean something. I look at the blue sky and the flower patterns in the countryside with his mind.

How many nights have I found myself listening to Londoners’ diatribes on the sheer weirdness of the American citizenry?

You couldn’t find the sphere on a globe, they complained. Or Your love is suffocating me because it is filled with conditions based on your beliefs of how I should live my life.

I told them our country is noble and strong. We love what is right, and we hate what is wrong!

But it never does me any good to be proud. Because then I’ll start being happy with myself and then I’ll stand still and then I’m old news, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. O Mama

always said life was like a box. Any man who dares to be young, or to grow, or to be original, must expect to have the world set upon him and pound him unmercifully! You get pistol-whipped, booty tapped, face scarred. Your future may be happy and productive, but you’ll have to collect power-ups, such as oxygen and flaming tar to emerge victorious. As the years draw to a close, you still won’t know what—if indeed anything—is going on.

But don’t be afraid of change. Just be yourself.

But who am I? That certainly is difficult to say.
I’m very patient, but I’m also very impatient.

When I was a child I used to run races with the wind. The world was inhabited by buxom, bottom heavy, voluptuous nymphos who used to pass around pictures of me with the words ‘teeny weeny boy’ on them, which was my nickname. Now when I see a woman I’m afraid of her. I’ve been so bad with women that I fear if I go near one she’ll hit me. Perhaps she will kill me. That’s why I got into a relationship with a wonderful, beautiful, amazingly sexy (is it getting hot in here??)
transsexual man. Despite 53 marriages he says he is a one-woman guy. Unfortunately, so am I.

Now all ports are open to my immediate desires, but also subject to my long term vices, like Gucci shoes, and certain chemical stimulants. I can barely see the road from the heat comin’ off of it. And I hear there’s always bald tires at the end of the fast lane. Gah! I’m so sick of this! Why,

O mighty armed, is the mind so hard to restrain and restless? There will be some things that people will see. There will be some things that people won’t see. And life goes on!

So let’s break out of the horrible shell of wisdom and throw ourselves like pride-ripened fruit into the wide, contorted mouth of the wind! I’m talking some new kicks, ones like you ain’t never seen.
Open your eyes, Muse, now you realize. Now put on thigh highs. Tie your boots up tight, very tight with all your might and add perpetual tenor to my rhymes.

The greatest number of people are never taught anything properly or accurately.

And only you can make it a wonderful day for a has-been who never was.


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Sources

1. Homer, The Odyssey, Book 1, lines 1-2, Richmond Lattimore tr.; and
Plato, “Theaetetus,” line 179e6-180a1, Francis Cornford tr., The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Princeton University Press, 1989, pg. 884; and
Luke Mitchell, “Grand Old Inquisitor,” Harper’s, November 2004, p. 67.
2. Arthur Rimbaud, “Mauvais Sang,” Bertrand Mathieu tr.

3. Salman Rushdie qu. by Oliver Libaw, “View from Abroad,” ABCnews.com, Feb. 2, 2002.
4. Original
5. Unknown

6 and 7. Peter Enns, “What Do We Tell the Kids?”
8 and 9. Pat Tillman, in an interview with Tim Layden, “A Cut Above,” Sports Illustrated, December 8, 1997.
10. adapted from Eric Roth, Forrest Gump screenplay.

10. adapted from Eric Roth, Forrest Gump screenplay.
11. David Grayson, Hempfield, Doubleday, New York, 1915, p.207.
12. Kool Keith, “Little Girls.” Sex Style. Funky Ass Records, 1997.
13. Unknown; and
an adaptation of video game reviews including www.gameover.net/reviews.php?id=24&page=ps2reviews.
14. Your Future Now, http://www.bikereader.com/solo/future.html.
15. Unknown
16. Lizzy, grade 5, http://www.kidnews.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=47.

17 and 18. Roshan Matthews, “Who Am I?” http://pugg.symonds.net/roshan/writings/whoami.html.
19. Jerry Jones, Dallas Cowboys owner.
20. Thomas Duncan, Big River, Big Man, J.B. Lippincott Co, Philadelphia, 1959.
21. Gracie and Zarkov, http://www.deoxy.org/gz_texp.html; and
Letter from www.sandy123.com.
22-24. Zakaria Turay, quoted by Tom Masland, Newsweek, 5/13/02, “Voices of the Children,” Newsweek Inc., New York, p. 29.
25. lynnie, http://transpartners.tripod.com/lynniesgeneticwomansguidetotransgenderism/id1.html.
26. AP article, CBSnews.com, “Marrying Man Weds for 53rd time,” Oct. 6, 2004.
27. generic

28. Nigel Coates, Ecstacity, Princeton Architectural Press, Princeton, 2003, pg.119.
29. David Lee Roth, “Panama,” 1984. Warner Brothers, 1984.
30. original
31. generic
32. adapted from Bhagavad Gita, tr. unknown.

32. adapted from Bhagavad Gita, tr. unknown.

33-35. Donald Rumsfeld, Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing.
36. F.T. Marinetti, “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism,” Le Figaro, February 20, 1909, tr. unknown.
37. David Lee Roth, “Mean Streets.” Fair Warning. Warner Brothers, 1981.

38 and 39. adapted from Kool Keith, “Intergalactic Lover,” Black Elvis/Lost in Space. Ruffhouse Records, 1999.
40. Kool Keith, “Intergalactic Lover,” and;
Ovid, “Metamorphoses,” Samuel Garth tr. 1717.
41. L. Forbes Winslow, Mad Humanity, M.F. Mansfield and Co., New York, 1898, p. 138; and
Johnny Oates, Baltimore Orioles manager.

School of the Stream

So he said wait and listen to the wind,
and to the clouds as they unwind,
unearthly in their dementia,
on to the streambeds they love to meander,
there to smell the cologne of aspen
and the evening wine of the gladiator.
Breathe in the thunderstorm’s mist,
let it soften our bodies to alabaster,
sculpt us together in the forest of jasper
unbothered by the earthquake and its cries.
All the world is squabbling over businesses and monuments
but it is our good fortune to know these streams,
to melt away into the rain.
They call us losers to wait on the showers—
some invisible they as real as us
we think of fondly at the moment these rebellions
never reach fruition.
Just teach me the lessons you think I have taught you
and we'll talk here all evening
smoothing with our eyes the wings of the heron,
motioning at the spots of the salamander,
deciding how else we will live.

The Hardy Boys Go Nowhere

VI.

Here came the foghorn of 11 o’clock in the afternoon. At wharf’s end, the Hardys found a wagon filled with ice. Inside, glistening in the sudden sun, a row of baby orcas, eyes still open, lay like a sleeping totem with tongues stiff as pistils. Joe pointed to a sign: Wale Pupz. 1$ Do not inkwire.

Frank raised one from the ice, jiggled loose a tooth, and felt a molar of his own give way. They weighed a dollar with some ice, and receded into the shade.

The Hardy Boys Go Nowhere

V.

Outside the theater, Egmont’s French wife sat inside a television booth. Her two white fruits seemed to recognize Joe’s face as she raised her head from the blue light. “This may be our most puzzling case yet,” he remarked.
“Joe, her whatchacallums won’t find Dad!” admonished Frank.

Little did he know how wrong he was.

The Hardy Boys Go Nowhere

IV.

“I simply can’t understand how our father was kidnapped by the ghost of a sixteenth century Austrian count,” Joe confessed. “He was Flemish, and you’re wrong,” corrected Frank. “Didn’t Dad tell you? Mr. Egmont is not the supernatural embodiment of the great Lamoral. No! He is the very real descendent of the bastard son Beethoven conceived on the night the Egmont Overture debuted. Mr. Egmont is his great great grandson and over time he cultivated not only an obsession with Wild Bill Hickok, mystical dentistry, and rare coins, but also a taste for the polygamous lifestyle that threatens our way of life. Do you understand now, Joe?”

“Not at all,” the younger lad replied. “Though now I get the lovely music.” Among the lightning shadows the first shocking notes of Beethoven’s masterpiece were pulsating, pulsating, pulsating.