Therefore

on the bright side of the bus
she was alone and cold
worried and stoned
laid bare to public transport
though we only understand her exposure years later
when the narrative closed neatly as an autumn pool-
she died and i was alive, a reader with a username

i knew i recognized her dimples and sweaty black bangs-

our buses used to go to the same summer camp, back where
the secret power of affected naivete was yet undiscovered
and every morning was filled with thrilling discipline
and bandy-legged intrigue

where the girls from morning round-up who once held so much mystique
are now married, or pregnant, or both
when i talked to them in random indeterminate meeting places
there was confusion, and i feel like i am trying to bridge a large distance,
speaking the events and circumstances of a life
with rock patterns and smoke signals
while in in The Cloud web handles and networks collide and co-mingle,

and handheld devices and the all-too human multi-task one another into orgasm or sleep

memory is a question of pixels and storage capacity and instantly loaded rationalizations

and with this thought I got off the bus

now let these thoughts of her appear on an ADD/PPT slideshow

and darkly float in bubbles above former selves

and these thoughts which kept me occupied

were absorbed in the facile warp and weave of

memory's cheap embroidery

was this a foregone conclusion?

must we bring a cold 'therefore' to every small town newspaper death?

burning silent judgment and a thousand dead words of sympathy?

it seems a shameful and cheap ritual

maybe there was a time when
i would have believed in a
mathematical proof for virtue
or in the verities of other people
but growing older can make you suspicious

and possibly republican
certain things sound suspicious
‘good intentions’ ring hollow and ominously
and so one turns inward

while salesman and cult leaders

get a platform for talking coherent systems

full ranges and completions for things incomplete

for everyone else, by now it's no secret new planets will appear in the sky
and new dinosaurs will be pulled from the ground
wholeness longs for absence,

voice demands no voice,

stagecraft helps itself

progress, Stalin-esque, steps forward and leaves its the victims behind for history

and our history is eating itself, hero by hero,

with the reader in charge, hero complicit to plot

now the reader sits in the yard on a wicker settee, under a clear moon,

and memory a killing field of poignant, static victims

and with them we are vicariously alive
and with them we get stoned

and time after time
run out to catch the bus

without a warm coat

Once Upon a Planet

Something was happening that didn’t feel like history it was

too fearless to count, too sober to remember.

Hadn’t had a straight thought since can’t remember when

everyone kept thinking

These are the rules how do we break them?

Now they want to be good guys again.

These are the people.

How much do you trust them?

Millions strong, the absolutely flightless

come flapping lightly out of subways,

out of perfume on the elevator wind

because change is a knuckleball hurricane 

adolescent in love,

because nobody knows who killed who killed who,

because the norm must seek exotic days again,

dark days must seek the lightness.

Because oil rises from unprecedented depths,

enough blame to go around

divides the guilt we can live with.

In the middle of things change takes them in another direction,

for only so long, then another change clarifies

what once seemed so clear.

(Sirens playing pinball in the city

now sound over here.)

And you accept the new law

knowing future scrutiny

awaits, nothing's impossible

doesn't mean anything's guaranteed.

That all these tears could fall for other reasons.

That too is change I know its end.

Everyone wants to be good guys again,

peacefully sharing the port-a-pots,

sharing coffee in the cold,

saying  There’s no way we can do it

according to those who aren’t doing it now! 

Hadn't had a straight thought since can't remember when

I last enjoyed a moment

that is always on the move.

Now I've grown tired of skydiving and driving

home in crash-proof cars,

waiting for direction

to be offered by the wind,

asking why we keep building this palace

we never stop to sleep in.

Something was happening that didn't feel like history it was

too fearless to forget, too sober to be false.

Twenty Nine for the Global Marketplace

i. bp

Christmas madness—finding the last gift has been opened, the child goes insane. Less and less still equals excess. A blockbuster hurricane is now in its infancy.

ii. wlocal

Stay tuned forever. Don’t leave us. We prescribe blizzard, pathos, the celebrity seal hunt, important information on Aerosmith’s new roller coaster, and child pornography so explicit we can’t even show it to you on TV. We fly above the buzzards now. Starvation is a crime. Sports is next.

iii. glaxosmithklein

Three more minutes of life at 200 million dollars, mouth watering before impact, the trillionaire inherits more time. Freedom’s just another word for the insane safety standards of people who’ve discovered they have everything to lose. They’ve got the guns AND the numbers now—gratuitous surgery, speeches in empty rooms, spilling the best kept secret since the afterlife. Aging well will kill us all.

iv. big government

Shit, another casino is on fire. The bridges are falling down. The schools need to be retaught everything they think we already know. Self-evident as truths that no one sees until carried to logical, foreseeable, disastrous conclusions and the wringing of glands. The future is in our hands, but we’re wearing someone else’s gloves. There’s never good news. The galactic machine does no wrong.

v. geneva

Tough times. So many rules, all of them changing. Foreign flags drift upon inhuman seas, all blood and foam and blue. Human weather lifts its thunderhead. The talk gets ugly. Like we’re comparing atrocities. Only we unify like a firing squad. Anyone wanting to point fingers will find no one he can do so to.

It functions but it shouldn’t, like the body of the bumblebee. Some truth is rock. Some truth is water that evaporates.

vi. cross

Extraordinarily serious—the situation now. Too many human pennies minted, tossed away. Mexico floods, Kurds bleed. Super Mario shows up in Africa, KFC and Pepsi on the streets of Khartoum. The babies are getting less cute and the cannibals need room.

vii. halliburton

Everything comes back in style—cold blood, voracity, nudity, stupidity—the dinosaur made manifest. Crystal tings as we break blue buildings out of steel. Engines prowl. Agendas swell. Limbs overburdened with muscle crumble at knee or neck. Our asylum is the safest. The future must be inhumane, or very superhuman.

viii. U.N.

Think Israel and DNA, maps of Uganda, maps of Mozambique, rock stars and geishas lost in a rhizometric forum of superb engineering. Green steel launches itself into blue fire. Escalations match escalations. We rise in inflated equilibrium to the foreseeable lessening. Born free. Still in chains. Dead bird. Manta ray.

ix. boeing

We know why we’re here. Our very belief is describing the shape of decline AND a resurrection so

unexpected you’ll say it must have been happening all along. The heart is a warm place. And the cherry on top of the nuclear bomb.

x. reuters

Stop sign at the commingling hyenas drooling on prime real estate. Girl with missile headdress and slave with fresh meat and microchips. Prairies checkered as a hobo in the pith of agribusinessland. Still savage, still reaching out of the chemical luau for hope both light and night have crimed. Give us pictures of Jesus, the Maasai with the AK47, the Maseratis and the singing steel. Together we’ll sort it out. There is no path. You just arrive.

xi. cnn

San Fran car chase, wakka wakka cloud. The illusions shatter: historical byproducts sluicing backward in a slime of cholera memories, embarrassing press conferences, informational enigmas. Patterns meld, insane dictators emerge, get crushed, leaving diamonds in the void. Reenacted pop stars fall pantsless from million-dollar motorcars.

xii. R & D

It’s hard to know which impossibilities are worth realizing, which frontier has no void. See Snow White with her gas mask. Pull open curved glass to the starry network glowing like the seeds of tossed candy pills and an island on fire. The truth is really in here. With every obstacle removed: the gate, the moat, and the watchtower.

xiii. redflex

What a relief to find what you wanted was all wrong. All along the answers trailed you like delicious lambs trailed you like unwelcome wolverines. Lilies and oranges for the morning. Lower taxes for Christmas. Solidarity among varying objectives. (Terminology is so vast.) My surveillance invents your crimes.

xiv paramount

Deathquake—puritans unchained [sound of glass breaking] and white animals hanging from the sky. Bright red minutes pass. Forged in soft light between the stems of plastic plants and photographed in mauve, I stand up like the breast of Cinema itself. Thawing like a billion-dollar diamond in the heart of Anaheim. Pretty soon we’re all communicating with the dead. And now I'm the one leaving the theater.

xv. k st.

Total and complete and ready to disintegrate, we subscribe to common sense until things get specific. Dial hotline to CEO for the latest in Lesotho politics. Forge class-action jellyfish. Die bravely but still die. It doesn’t matter if I’m right. There’s no way I can be wrong. The protest never makes it past the tear gas.

xvi. goldman

You should be doing more than you’re capable of. Created equal only to prey on those who look like you could take them. Walk with your loyalists. Strike Aztec fear. Imagine foaming jails. Prompt the Rapture by provoking disaster. Airplanes are mating in mid-sky. A man without money is an animal. Throw him in the yard.

xvii. mart

Pioneer decadence: Motherboard city unboxing form and function til dreams and city wells run dry. Eggshell-thin as days go by. Cracks in the aluminum side. Parking lots where fields used to lie. The wolves are all dead. Now peace hunts the deer with nothing to fear but the leaves and the rocks and the birds in disguise.

xviii. morgan

Everything is dying. Live. All is receding. Surge. No one is buying. But me.

xix. greenland

Arctic sea calm as the early morning dancefloor. Conspiracy wears midnight blue like the seas of maps in geopolitical press rooms: deep ocean worms, the scalp of the plume, Somalians at the Taj Mahal baked beyond black. All fitting together like the notes of the humane piano. I’m having chest pains. I'm having visions of a truly green tomorrow. Let the stodder burn.

xx. pfizer

Tom and Jerry on skyvision, temples of Angkor Watt pulsing in the checkered tealest sunlight. The pink roadsters of kamikaze joyrides enter a galaxy of branches, pears, and shells bitter as some Ken doll locked in the tube of a jet stuck for all eternity on the landing strip, unable even to taxi. 1+2=? But what does it mean, don't you know?

xxi. chase

It's not transparent. I can see right through it. Our sales took a pounding (laughter). But the candidates aren’t sure what torture is. One more appliance has burned its motor down. I am the asteroid silently tumbling toward your demise. I’m sorry for everything I imply. I'll crush you politely now. Bless God and the infant blue sky.

xxii. demos

Don’t cry. It’s only super Tuesday. In our continuing apocalypse, that counts for something more than Islamic sunsets, mandatory bank check, genetic moonscape, lotto ticket jackpot. Dip your finger purple, and Jesus Christ, Allah.

xxiii. qaeda

Engulf. Formalize. Maneuver. Interface. Force into structure yields new desire out of the fire—equality under the dream. I see an octopus with a clock eating itself on the lip of a rifle waiting to coruscate. Birthquake. Icon bomb. Disintegrating vapor trail. The phoenix does its magic at the speed of light spreads its wings o’er me—putting the meaning back into the meaningless. The global dove has no appetite like mine. Virgins await me. What awaits you?

xxiv. the valley

No nadir and nothing more than fully human. One long transaction of salt and milk, a secret alliance forever the same. The glands in extremity rule. The hamhock forearm, bound too tight like a chemistry journal. The mouth as luxury resort. Tinker and adjust the lighting. Open up the doors.

xxv. nimrod

Forget the stones. The hard work is done. Climb up with your pebble. We’ll crown the sky, dust by grain of dust. If and when you fall, do not worry about us.

xxvi. holiday

Perceptive and hungry in a brightening field, I opened up to alternate charges. Formula One poison arrow frog racing through bridal-gown canyon-engine of the earth’s core. The scent of burning cash on World Orgasm Day. Scapegoats for the easily inflamed. Bikini-clad biocandy, delighting as the eve of a secular holiday.

xxvii. the hill

Whenever the eye removed its costumes, a bacterial conscience was splitting new worries, dividing like viruses proud of their motility and stick. Put it in inflammatory context and await expulsion from the news cycle. Anyone talking this much can't possibly be speaking the truth. I speak for the irresponsible why? Oops, I did it again and again and again.

xxviii. dod

Aboriginal Mustang drag races in hot space rockets thru lapis fields, malachite belts—the cold stone of administration. All atrocities are fakes to some. Let rain your pamphlets, fleshograms, timestorms, Vietnam’s defoliated pheasants, free civilians. Cut me at your own risk. There's a penis in the sky over Islamabad to night. I am everything I can destroy. And everything you want to save.

xxix. dischord

Piece by piece you pick it up alone. X number of the constructed necessities—corn, computers, chemicals down silty beaded streams will flow. It’s all a circus but I don’t have to fuck the clowns. Don’t believe the bile. You can live a full life in exile.

DECKED

File download: http://armacost5.opendrive.com/files/53362043_JVlPi_c917/globalmarketplace2.mp3

New Normal

--It began with strange chemicals seething under a sky lacking in oxygen.

 Nothing in the world is usual today. The moon is certain to set at five, and the sun to rise at half past thirteen. The men are all imitating each other and on a small mould. There are reports of severed human genitalia and small boys being sacrificed to the sun god. Who can distinguish the real from the false?

 We have designed a starfish-shaped gel robot that can turn over by using spatially varying electric fields.

For a time, it seemed as if we were about to use the bright beam of science to illuminate the murky world of human action. The pie waiting to be divided up was enormous.

"When I see the men sharing the money, I feel envy," says 11-year-old Hassan Ali as he plays in the water near a hijacked Greek chemical tanker.

It is the great panorama of living things that enlists my central concern. So much has been written about the triumph of the fittest and so little about the survival of the failures who have changed, if not deranged, the world.

But we are dealing with a complex system--life on Earth--that is self-organizing, feeds off a flow of energy, and that exists at the edge of chaos.

Things change, we never know why, with the zigzag speed of a long-winged fly. I know it upsets me, but I can't understand why.

Somebody is playing games with the American public and I don't think it’s the Chinese this time.

Nothing in nature or human history points to the idea that we are moving anywhere. I see a war, and a victory after that one, and after the victory, a war again.

The fresh blood and the cries of the dying creatures are pleasing to the Goddess. Nobody on either side can say that this wasn't vetted properly over a long, long period of time.




In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a dead beluga whale, now classified as toxic waste, has to be handled with gloves and protective clothing because of the amount of toxins its body contains.


If you've got to be told by someone then it's got to be me. Our identity is a dream; we are a process, not a reality. Man is equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which he was made, and the Infinite in which he is swallowed up. If he exalts himself, I humble him. If he humbles himself, I exalt him; and I always contradict him, til he understands that he is an incomprehensible monster.

A meteoric iron weighing a pound fell in East Africa in 1853, was secured by the natives, anointed with oil, clothed and decorated, and finally installed in a temple especially prepared for it.

The human drama is exhausting. It is also a downer with no redeeming entertainment value outside of its hot sex scenes. None of the characters are likable in a conventional sense, and there's no telling when the once fascinating will become the most banal.

A young, drug-addicted supermodel struggles to get clean and make it in New York.
‏

Nothing can approach the devastating beauty of human beings.

Police in Australia's Northern Territory are on the lookout for a large male kangaroo that has been harassing human females.

In such a situation, there is no precipitation of qualities; no distinguishing of colors or forms. Nothing makes any nonsense or sense.

A geological group that that drilled a hole about 14.4 kilometers deep in the crust of the earth claims to have heard human screams.

Momentum and liquidity aren’t enough. There will always be something better just around the corner.

If this road goes there, it must be the right road, and if it doesn’t, it must be the right road to somewhere else, because there are no wrong roads to anywhere.

To be in any form. What is that? Breasts of unimpeachable heft and bounce? Bad waves of painful intensity followed by total confusion? Children who can only see that things are used up and that there's a certain pleasure in speeding up the decay? I was going to kill myself two years ago when my wife left me, but God sent me excellent doctors.

What can medicine do with something which floats on either side of illness, on either side of health, or with the reduplication of illness in a discourse that is no longer true or false?

The world of Nature is granular—discontinuous. All signs are things appearing through all things. I determine nothing; I do not comprehend things; I suspend judgment. The beauty of indisputable fact is all I can cling to, a cold wind that grows old.

A Brazilian jetliner with 155 people aboard was reported missing over the Amazon jungle Friday, September 29, 2006.

Now the eagle dominates my days, is jurist of the ambiguous cloud. But I believe a day will come when everything coheres, when the sun's blood will fill my head like dew, and each droplet of solar dew become an energy and an idea. The complete truth is out there. Somewhere. In pieces. It just can't be conveyed, either by words or by silence. I know it upsets me, but I can’t understand why.

Night is too late for you; come, while the twilight is closing the flowers.

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Take a twilight tram ride through the zoo in the cool of the evening, then try a spin on the new Endangered Species Carousel. The admission is free, the human drama is all around, and the animals look happier than ever to be in their enclosures.  

 

Orangutans in zoos may enjoy watching us as much as we enjoy watching them.