wb :

on a night such as this -
how are you? good day,
what is the time?
may I? you may

let's go for a walk
i'll take up a ride
on a bicycle!
we could walk or we'll fly

to the moon don't be silly
i want you right here
it's enough that you're over
it's too much that you're near

let's give up (let's not)
i think of too much
i think of too little
maybe we've lost touch

with what we wanted to say
took too long in the thinking
the moment is now
the poem is inking

slowly but surely
(let's just take our time)
there's only one moment
and that is now, we've done it, it's over, we've made our
rhyme

it's too late it is gone
the moment has flown
what did it look like?
could we have known?

or just grasped like a straw
it didn't exist
it was in illusion;
moments are mist.


adam

he built a castle of roses
and watched it sway in the breeze;
the moonlight would wash
over petals and leaves

on the midnighter's table
next to an empty glass
then he sighed with the wind,
slumped over a letter

like all the works of man
toppled in the end
by nary more than a breath
and a wave of the hand

first a little
in the mornings when you wake up
and discover that the spawnlings of worries
have taken up residence and bred in your sheets
and your sleepy mouth sour with the filmy milk of what ifs and should haves

afternoons are terrible. the sway of a leaf
becomes in one terrible instant the sway of jeans on a hot school day
or the shadow - the silhouette of a smile
a breeze is the memory of a past kiss.

evenings - quiet roads now ring with longing
no more solitude but emptiness
long shadows - a quiet play only for your audience
the puppets secretly laugh at the living

it hurts but then the next foot falls
and your shadow lags behind a step
and, tarrying,
hurries to catch up


adam

I ran into a minstrel
on the red road outside town
he was singing for his supper
and he looked a little down -

"these are the last days
'fore time comes to an end
and we have spent our centuries
to break and then to mend

our pity, our art, our built-up things
our craftsmen lifetimes-wise
but the world will end tomorrow;
so now we improvise!"



adam

every saturday he sits in his corner
and smiles.

then he takes out his little keychain,
and twiddles his fingers about the bones
rayed out like so many cold cold ribs.

he walks to the door, the glowing black door
and he puts the key into the lock
twists it
twists it, hears the click

and now he is happy
locked in.

Labels: poetry

there you sit at the computer,
staring, staring,
staring,
staring.

the screen is bright enough,
does it reflect you, man?
a timer ticks away, bottom-right, right, beside
beside that number that shows how many megabytes
how much more memory that silicontraption has,
more memory?- you could always buy more
more for the precious pile of metal
the shiny heatsinks
the shiny chips
as you looked into those memory chips
did they reflect you, man?

or were they too bright, were they too bright?
were they too bright? too much light?
you could always lower the gamma
lower, yes, lower, a touch of a key
a flick of a switch, yes, lower the light,

the sound too loud perhaps? then turn it,
turn it down, turn it lower,
make it deathly silent. it is easy, is it not?

do you hear yourself in the silence, man?
do you hear?
do you hear breathing, do you hear?
do you hear beating, do you hear?
do you hear hearts and stomachs,
beats and growls over whirrs and whines?
can you hear yourself in that silence?

can you hear yourself over whirrs and whines,
that whirring noise of the many fans
those fans that fan the heart,
fan the heart of your computer?
will they ever burst in to fire, does it, does it
does it feel the heat that it makes itself?
does it feel, man? does it feel?
tell me, does it feel the cold of the room,
that cold that preserves its bones,
that cold you made to preserve its nerves,
even that cold that freezes your flesh?
can you feel it, man? can you feel it?
too cold, and a switch; too cold;
the air-conditioning goes down, down, lower,
and it is warmer, it is warmer for a while.

but you are afraid.
the heat, yes, the heat, will build,
build, build, build, until those chips fry,
fry, fry themselves in their own lard.
are you afraid of that, man?
are you afraid of that?

are you afraid of that, man?
are you afraid?

are you afraid of that?
go out of the room,
go out of the room,
go out of the room

out of the room
the room,
out of the room
and into the sunlight which you cannot,
cannot cannot adjust,
that sunlight, yellow light to strange eyes,
accustomed as you are to flickering white.
go into the sunlight, the sunlight,
and into uncomfortable, uncomfortable warmth
embrace the warmth,
the warmth that warms as much as it wants,
the warmth that you cannot adjust.
you were not born here,
you were not born to die here.
go out into the noise of the world, man,
go out into the noise of plate and pan
jackhammer car jogger ice-cream van
go out, go out, go out and then
go out again i know you will return here, man

go out go out, return here no more,
go out, you will return but
go out.

go out where you cannot control your destiny, man.
you are no god
you are no god
you were not meant to be god
you were not meant to be god
you were not meant to be god

you are not a god, you are not
you are not
you are not a god of order

you are a slave of chaos
a slave of chaos
slave of chaos
of chaos
chaos

go out, go out, where you are a slave
to sounds that you must hear,
light you must see,
warmth you must feel, oh man,
go out and feel the warmth that misses you.

you are no god on olympus, you cannot live in storms
you are no god, you are no god,
go out into the world that you missed,
go out into the world,
that you missed,
that misses you still, man.
go out into the world and live,
live like a man.

go out, go out. feel, see, hear.
feel, see, hear.
you have not felt anything but freeze.
you have not seen anything but glare.
you have not heard anything but whirr.
go out, man.

are you afraid, man? are you afraid?
are you afraid of chaos, chaos,
chaos that you cannot control, man?
go out, man.
go out,
go out where you cannot stare into it any longer.

does it reflect you?
does it reflect you, man?
does it reflect you?
can you look into it as a mirror,
can you look into it as a puddle,
can you look into it?
can it show you your face, man?
can it show you you?
this screen does not show you,
it does not show your life,
it does not show your life,
it does not show you.

you are no god, it lies to you.
you are no god, it lies. it lies.
it lies, it lies. it is perfect,
it is perfect,
it is perfect,

it is perfect.

it was built to be perfect,
know that, man. know that.
it was built, and built it was
for a purpose, built by men.
it was built for one purpose.
it was built to be perfect.
it is perfect.
it is perfect.

it is perfect.
it never forgets,
never forgetting,
it never forgets.
and so it lies.

go out, man.
you were made to forget.

-~-

a.n.: this is what many hours of system shock 2, a good hot shower, and an overdriving mind make.

Labels: poetry

different when we get back, the product of
breathing the air on opposite sides of a continent
mountains between us,

miles of wire between us
so that we can share the electricity of our existence
but the touch is lost
its insulating quality that keeps us from being reduced to electrons in a pipe

oxidation is loss. we'll be
spirits lost on a wire
we'll drift between packets and protocols
we'll dissociate our feelings
immune to grief, we smile our
electronic smiles.

II.

we'll be
afraid at the last juncture
before the point of divergence; taking our trajectories
to different coloured skies

the last brush of
fingernails palm sweat
evaporating on my forearm

tomorrow it will dry
memories are anhydrous
but tears are not.

III.

we'll be
waiting for the crossroads
not divergent yet; our footsteps still
in rhythm with the drummer
that is our sycopated
heart-beats but yet -
touches cold we fear the coda

IV.

we are
silent, sitting on a bench
no pain yet - but our eyes glow
like the stars we are,
we are, we are, we are.

Labels: poetry

on the porcelain tiles
tending to the bougainvillas
i'm inside making flowers into necklaces
later she tells me they're pretty; she wears one around her neck
and gives me a little laugh

she's outside pulling weeds
i'm inside with the herbicide of youth
angry at the walls;
my tears are to her
garden shears

like rain to butterflies
(where do they hide until the showers have passed?)

she's outside watching television
in her old wheel-chair
I am inside
dreaming of airplanes and skies

I am outside dressed in drabs and grey
walking around the wooden box
I bend as if to confide
but now she's fast asleep, inside.

Labels: poetry

you and I have no chemistry. Henceforth
we are dissociated, I my own
entity. I cannot comprehend
your spontaneous flares;
insoluble mysteries; variable states,
golden dust motes floating
precipitously -- the facts stand as this:

when I count the ways I know thee,
the technicalities fail me.

Labels: poetry

He stood and waited as he tried to imagine what it would sound like if the train passed by him without stopping. it was a faint humming in his head that grew as sudden as a bolt of lightning, then faded just as quickly into a low moan, leaving behind empty air and a trinity of rails.

Perhaps he had been waiting for too long; when he waited, he thought, and when he thought, he thought of such things. in the distance, he heard a thud-thudding, accompanied by a light shuffle of shoe on tile. he had found a seat long ago, all of them empty anyway. everyone had boarded the previous train in their hurry. though the trains ran in a loop, and the last one was not due for a few more hours at least, the station was empty nonetheless.

Then more people started to fill the platform. first it was one, then they came in two by two, all manner of men and women. so many people flooded the floor- almost threatening to break past the line meekly painted into the tiled floor, and overflow onto the rails. ever they came with no end, all manner of brilliantly boring people. some in riches, some in rags; most oblivious, a manner of metal mated to their ears. there were those in clean suits and tie, immaculate hair on white shirts; there were those whose white had grown yellow with age, but who still fumbled to tuck their shirts in and keep a crease in their pantlegs; there were those who carried great bags, bent over, with no care for the stained patches adorning their clothes. all of them jostled and scrummed, sounded and laughed. so many. he had not thought there had been so many to live. the sensory confluence reminded him once of a movie he watched of a slow-motion magnified frog's leg twitching upon the application of galvanic force. like so many cells they twitched, hemmed in on all sides by fellows; then there was a great flash, and they lunged!- they flailed in one direction, moving scarcely a nailsbreadth each but drawing the entire leg with their concerted power.

Then two of them caught his eye. they were surely together, his arm about her waist. whispering sweet nothings into each other's ears. perhaps he recognized them, and there is nothing like recognizance to bring recognizance. perhaps they were the same couple yesterday, but then she was in a shorter skirt and his hair gasped at the ceiling, frozen in picassoesque spires. or perhaps he knew them from two days ago; then she carried a red red rose newly sprung, and he had a smile more sincere than the sound their feet now made when they stumbled, giggling, across the floor. now he was in a great suit, coat hanging on the other arm, and she smiled coyly in a pretty blouse and lipstick.

Or perhaps they were all different couples. clinging on together in their happiness perhaps, and both men and women flickered glances thence, perchance gently jealous.

Then he heard the announcer on the sound system. a breeze blew past his ears, whirling with the static-garbled words.

"For your own safety, please stand behind the yellow line. thank you for your co-operation."

The thud-shuffling continued even as the rumble of a steel behemoth waxed in the distance. as though a lion sensing prey, the thudding hastened for a few moments, then it resumed its old pace. perhaps that was the tail of the lion; the rest of its muscles coiled in anticipation, the muffled roar stifling itself, and countless cells readied to spring. then the train- he dreamt then, so vivid, that it had stopped to graze or perhaps drink from a water-hole- the lion sprung! then its lifeblood poured out onto the tiled floor, and hundreds of people walked through the doors, as many as in, and the doors closed, and the train was off.

That was not his train.

The shuffling in the distance finally reached his ears. a sickly old man, bent over crutches, hobbled over and took the seat next to him. no word passed between the two. the old man had a beard, perhaps, and might have once enjoyed the dubious honour of having hair. teeth were perhaps only a faint memory now, but certainly the love of walking had stayed with the old man, past the loss of one leg beneath the knee; crutch held erect beside him like some fantastical scythe, watching the people as surely as himself.

And then it was silent again. there would be a short lull. he knew more people would come and the station would be crowded again. as sure as from nostradamus' lips, they arrived, filling the painted floor and leaning on all the pillars. some watched the rails playfully, most stood to themselves. then a few strains caught his ear. someone- a boy, young, was singing some russian song, music filling his countenance even though his ears were not stopped up with rubber. the words reminded steinbeck of the time he was back in moscow, working as a doctor then. in the stifling heat, in the press of a thousand souls upon a lonely one, he yet managed to feel the solitude in the cold russian winter, and the warmth of a drop of the miracle liquid, the lifeblood of the proud rus. strange, how a young boy's uncertain notes could evoke his memory of a hundred men delivering their anthem; and strange, how he could think of vodka in the middle of summer.

And he was happy. music in his blood, joy was in his face. no need had he for gels upon his hair, nor neither suit nor pants nor pinstriped hat. like some rogue atom vibrating at absolute zero, or the last rose of summer, refusing to go, he stood out; pricking those who came near him, yet drawing just as many to be hurt. all about him smothered the blacks and whites of business garb, the grumbling noise of music faked too loud. perhaps again the spring would bloom in red, but not ere winter struck the lone rose dead.

And then they heard it, like so many flies catching the scent of carrion in the air. the same voice- the same sound, exactly as it had been for so many years, so many trains-

"For your own safety, please stand behind the yellow line. thank you for your co-operation."

And then there was the rumbling again, like the great hunger of a greedy emperor. this time, the train came at the other side, disgorged its vile, squirming load- like a bloated roman patriarch, taken till his stomach's protest at the table, gone to throw up a viscous bile, then shovelling just as much into his gaping maw again. as much went out as went in, an infinity of peoples chewed on and spat out in some grotesque orgy. in the middle- lost in the noise- the faint words hung on the air, trepid, then were lost to the toothless metal maws, tens of them along the steel snake like some homeric monster, snarling at the masses that yet pushed themselves into its jaws.

He shuddered. the jaws snapped shut, forcing rubber lips together. the song was lost, its notes still playing in his head, and there was a glimpse of the boy's smile- did he look into his eyes?- and it was gone.

Again it was solitude alone with solitude. the old man beside him turned to face him, and ventured a question.

"You've missed both trains. aren't you taking any one of them?"

There was only the uncertain reply:

"No. these- none of these is my train."

Labels: prose

The idea that the landscape of Mars is red is a commonly-held myth. Photos from the first martian probes in the 1990s showed a panorama of red but those were really colour-enhanced - for scientific purposes, for sensation, who can say? Having discovered another uninhabitable grey rock in space would not guarantee NASA's budget - after all, we already had the moon and as far as the average voter was concerned, that was enough. In reality, the martian landscape is almost uniformly grey, punctuated by canyons, but these are grey canyons studded with grey rocks on ancient grey riverbeds. From space, the planet looks red because of iron oxide in the atmosphere. From the ground, the sky is grey, but the ever-present iron oxide dust looms nevertheless.

It was dark on mars. That was how it always had been, the shroud of night almost perpetually drawn over the red planet not by the presence of clouds (she had none) but by sheer virtue of distance.

Above the spaceport the sky was a deep grey. It was night-time. The daytime came and went with whimsy but each cycle brought no more than a tinge of brightness to the otherwise twilight surroundings. Six billion miles was a long way for the warmth which sustained green earth to travel.

It was also one hell of a long way for a spacecraft to travel.

That day, the spaceport was crowded.


Mother held my hand as we thronged with the crowd; pulled and pushed, seeping our way like rivulets of water between the cracks of parched earth towards the wire fence. I felt myself being pulled upwards by her muscular arms. Mother hoisted me to a perch on her shoulder so I could get a good view of the spacecraft: at seven, i was tall but most of the rugged colonists were taller: it was water day, there was to be a spacecraft (we didn't know what it was to look like), and it would come like rain from interstellar space to our dry little hole in the middle of our desolate solar system.

The first we heard was not the rush of the sonic boom or the parting of the sea of reddish clouds like a crack in some divine firmament to let in the first rays of a new sun, shedding brilliant light on the small pack of cold colonists and filling their eyes with a spiritual fire. Standing there I could fathom a small wet throng wading through the river Jordan; a crack in the sky; a deep voice of command.

The first we heard was not the torrential pour of combustion engines flaring in gigantuan struggle against the pull of the planet, lowering the silver spacecraft first by metres, then by feet, then by inches. When the ramp was extended, a man in a half-spacesuit stood at the doorway framed by a halo of brilliant, cutting but that is an image for later. Before there was light there was sound...

...and the sound was the word. A baby crying. It was little cousin Zechariah, nobody could hear anything of the spacecraft let alone see through the dusty haze, it was night-time, it was Mars, it was the spaceport; and he had had a brief premonition, the sort only available to the very very young, of the grief that is our birthright.

Labels: prose

i wandered in alaska,
feeling pretty bored
when all a sudden to my left
there darted quick a fnord.
perhaps i was mistaken-
but sure that i was not,
i called my huskies to awaken,
and the fnord i sought.
fnord
all over the seas i ranged,
in search of th'elusive fnord
but scarcely a trace i gauged
of that invisible god.
it left me a broken man,
now weary of life itself
but still the desire ran
to see the fnord myself.
fnord
so over sea and mountain like i roamed,
though neither brought me sign of what i sought.
in time, the winter rains to me were brought,
the seas they froze and fresh in spring they foamed;
the leaves turned brown, were trodden into rust,
and gave the barren trunks their greens anew,
while eggs cracked open, hatchlings aged and flew,
and even stones were worn down into dust.
fnord
but ask me if i ever saw the fnord-
i never did, tho' everything i saw,
and all the songs of nature i did hear.
no man will ever know that work of god;
it is his oldest grave unspoken law:
that man before the fnord shall only fear.
fnord
not plucked from out the flow'rs or trees,
not panned from out the lakes and seas;
the fnord is nothing man can seize.
fnord
it is like a ghost in the evening air,
it is like the whisper of sweet despair,
fainter than gossamer, finer than hair.
fnord
but it is in every work that man has wrought.
in every statue, worked in every ingot,
in every word, each punctuation dot.
fnord
it is in every breath of city breeze,
in every stark cold white fluorescent glare
upon the baby cradled in his cot.
fnord
make no mistake, the fnord is there.
beware.
fnord
although you might not know of what i speak,
it is still early; wisdom's child is meek.
although i know it is in vain to seek,
you, dear, might find what i have longed to see,
in everything surrounding you and me;
but, pray, if you should ever see the fnord,
know that that knowledge is most dearly bought.

Labels: poetry

floor flower

papers
files flung or simply left
through neglect or a deliberate act of violence
bag open - blue whale sifting the air for the detritus of dust
eating through the shiftless cobwebs of disused time
or a mouth open in frozen, dead wonder
the ruins of Pompeii.

adam

Labels: poetry

for you (who caused my heart's erosion)

I. harlequinade
farcical clownery or
love? as our painted lips
(cherryred, dustymauve)
and the shaded world
sparkling under
my left eyelid
with stripes of
peach&rose&goldenrod
were threatening
to brush (or possibly collide)
at this instant
a (fairlysmall)
dollop of coldcream time
hearts twisted, tangled
hung
for sale on a yellow ribbon
caught up in
a lovers' flashy
display of
buffoonery

II. chaparral
a dense thicket of shrubs
where we tumbled&played
as children
and lopsided grins
cracked our faces evenly in half
as the sunlight dappled
your earlobes and chin
and we were
hippomenes&atalanta
orpheus&euridice
perseus&andromeda
as our lips were stained
with the purpling
fruit of berrybushes
and small trees

III. alcazar
a spanish palace or fortress
where you draped
silk&moonlight
across my curving limbs
and took my hand
(chilly for want
of your dust-caked touch)
and led me,
a princess (made of icy stars)
to a prison
dangling crazily
between earth and sky,
suspended (tucked-away)
in a twisted, blackstone tower
originally built by the moors

IV. sachet
a small packet of
ashy snow is my heart,
but
maybe you can
find the last glimmering
gemstone hidden
(buried&sifting)
in that wasteland?
i don't know how
it was fooled
so
(tenderly&mercilessly)
by your dancing pupils,
your laugh
sweetly aromatic as
perfumed powder

V. panorama
an unbroken view
into your graying eyes
where i cannot believe
what i saw:
a world shadowed with
silver mist
that shrouded and distorted
entire lumpish continents
and roiled over
the palsied sea
punctuated by blueblack bubbles
where tenthousand(maybemore)
emptyfaced people
had been placed
(in meticulous crisscrossing lines)
crowding the yellow tinged glass
of an entire surrounding area

VI. creosol
a colorless
look was all you threw my way
(but it missed)
and shattered crookedly
on the bristling fence
behind my two shoulderblades
and only slightly glancing them,
enough to sear a questionshape
into the whitewhite skin
a trail of hurt which
dripped and disappeared into
the air
remained&hovered
(but thanks for asking)
when you pressed scarred palms
to hollow cheeks
you left pinkbruised marks
glistening like
oily liquid

VII. iridescent
producing a display
of something like
hope (champagnecolored)
dancing at your temples
little glassy shards
of canned light
and i think it was a goodbye
half-sunk into your parted lips
and as we touched
(fingertips, like curling palm fronds)
into
a haphazard explosion
of lustrous, rainbowlike colors



side note: words in italics: meaning of the words in bold

Labels: poetry

Fairy tales

Once upon a time
Seems so long ago
No more weary knights
No more fire breathing foes

Chivalry and folklore's gone
The prince's kiss turned to dust
The jeweled sword no longer shines
The treasure chest is locked with rust

The mermaid's tail swims no more
The fairy's wings are ripped apart
And yet these things come back alive
In a read book and a child's heart.



Onions

straight line on the screen
perpendicular to my fingers crossed
i hold my breath. in it goes.
steady.
my heart races. hook me up to one of those
and the line will jump up and down
like fresh onions on a skillet.
he can't taste onions anymore. i cry.

Labels: poetry

double bill.

Hug

hovering on each other's edges
there is a precipice of indecision
in the split second of eye contact
a buzz (is it electrical, or some force of the soul?)

there is a rush; and the moment
vibrates
between the could be
or maybe should not then there is no hope

when it's over we wonder if it really happened;
was it some sort of insanity
(but we feel the lingering warmth down our sides)




Leaves

no telling when the wind will blow
its coming or its leaving
except the sound of moving leaves
a silence's gentle sieving

between the bars of quiet
with luck a footstep may trawl
a passing car makes angry air
on an evening's sultry drawl.

my breath intrudes;
Silence is the friend of feet
voices give way to headlights
and the sound of a darkened street.

adam

Labels: poetry

a long time since
or: delayed onset of hyperallergy

sometime around twelve in the afternoon, at the height of the heat, a man collapsed deep in the dark heart of a giganteous dome; the dome that protected his kin from ravaged and revengeful nature. his passing made no noise; caused no stir; and soon an ambulance picked his body up, its automated medical system still whirring. the coroners- his fellow students- found no poison, no drug, no killer save the man himself. exposed to open nature once, so many years ago as a child, he had become addicted to her wild and sullied beauty; today he died of it.

Labels: drabble, prose

Life sucks life from the living
in the living of the life -
a collection of comforts that can't last
(like kites and grades and friends)
and a miscellany of miseries that don't
end, but are surprising in themselves.

Life sucks life
from the eyes that don't shine
and the lungs that fail -
inhale exhale cough choke sputter
repeat -
and the ears that resonate with jarring silence.

Death is kind -
it does its job,
scythes the soul,
gets its due;
and once it's done it doesn't end
and what is eternal doesn't hurt,
doesn't surprise,

doesn't change like life, the salamander,
slipping out of your hands,
writhing free leaving a little pile of warm-

and you can't wash your hands of life
the salamander.

Labels: poetry

18

I
the year could pass like the stirring of soup
or the crying of a cardboard baby
whirring past your earlobes
hissing like animals!
or flirting loosely with the idea of silence







II
it could be the silent ticking of twilight skies
we could stand in a circle and join hands
(here put your hand in mine, fingers
encircling
like mating honeybees or the long-end of the preying mantis moving in for the
kill.
)
here i am Lord take me take this life take this flesh give me something else
here i am encircled on a sliver of bespectacled earth
Lord, I am tired of people. I am besmirched.
it could be the noise of monstrous whirling fleeing eternity fleeting like the buzzing of dragon-flies

III
Tacet.

-adam

Labels: poetry

seems to be preparing
for something
involving the universe

little satellites round
the bends, thoughts weighted
down by apples in a bag with

homework and long bus rides
- spurting from their shoes
the remnants of rain

Labels: poetry

of spinning air from lungs
under heated, hell-bent
sunlight; feverishly, comically
practising an extremely distant
cousin of ballet -

is being rattled, inexorably
in a little bus; watching from
the white fence the others
giving themselves up to the god of running;
hoarse from a sudden typhoon
of knowing -

those days turning into nights,
silhouetted against stadium lights;
compelled by dreams of far-off
drums (those beating now),
heartbeats being propelled forwards
unable to stop.

Labels: poetry

an ode to words unspoken,
for unmade promises, unbroken
to inchoate, inarticulate cries,
unverbalized, unvocalized sighs.
a lament for those laced
into love, those faced
all day; every day, with
its gossamer, undying myth
in the reality of lamplight,
cold and clear hindsight;
one sees in fact
that poetry lies not in this vanishing back.

Labels: poetry

"Are they still-"

"Yes, Mr. Steinbeck, they're still chanting 'we want more pay'."

The head of the Astronomical Observatorium paced about the floor even more nervously. He read his watch, said "forty-two hours to impact, seventeen to zero hour". He grew increasingly agitated in the span of a microsecond, walked out to the window of the hotel room in the affluent Grand Central District, looked at the crowd of assorted technicians, janitors, and astronauts below him, and shuddered. "This is bad."

"Well, that's what capitalism gets you, sir."

His assistant looked noticeably less flustered, but nevertheless adjusted his tie self-consciously every twelve-point-six-six-seven seconds, rounded off to three decimal places.

"Indeed, Jenkins. I wonder why we didn't just give up the idea of a meritocracy, put down our grudges, embrace our fellow men as equals, and completely forget about scientific progress of any sort back in the day."

"Sorry, sir. Just my thoughts."

"Pah. Bloody capitalists."

In a few moments, they would be (representing the Astronomics Institute) presenting their case to the LaFerge Corporation as to why the latter should raise their workers' wages in order to get them willing to work in their capacities as rogue-asteroid killers.

"It's preposterous, Jenkins. An asteroid big enough to make the sixty-five million bee-see-ee one look like a golf ball, and they're talking profit fucking margins."

Jenkins merely shrugged. He had met his fair share of money-wringing pricks in his life, being deputy head of the Institute, and thus in charge of acquiring funding from time to time. This was nothing different, albeit the result of the conference would affect (i.e. kill off) the entirety of living organisms on the planet Earth, down to the smallest protozoan and dirtiest bottom-living shit-kissing scum-sucker bureaucracy could produce. Naturally, it didn't mean much compared to a potential cutting of four billion New Yen a year, compounded by new hirings, off a three-thousand-quadrillion profit. No, the very idea was horrible. Still, the ethical implications of killing off ten billion people were enough to make the Executive-Chairperson-Of-The-Company-And-Generalissimo-In-The-Highest-May-His-Name-Be-Hallowed-Forever Bob stoop to holding a conference with the two astronomers , with the intent of "assessing the pros and cons of acceding to the union's demands".

"Fuck their unions!" Steinbeck was getting slightly agitated. "Fuck them and their fucking cunt fucking profit margins! It's the whole damn world at stake, and all they fucking care about is their fucking profit fucking margins! What the fuck is happening to Earth?"

Jenkins nodded sagely, repeated. "I tell you, sir, it's capitalism."

The old, balding, and tall-but-skinny-with-frazzled-sideburns head of the institute glared at his deputy, looking as though he belonged in another institute- one with padded and soundproof walls. He turned at length back to his watch, continued pacing about the room.

"And you know what makes me sick, Jenkins? It's the fact that we're wasting so much bloody time waiting for those- those- scheisskopfs to prepare their agendas and settle on an equal representation of shareholders and whatnot- Hell, we're here with this much time to spare only because I volunteered to use agency funds to secure the venue- when all this while that rock half the size of China comes ever closer, just waiting to kiss our ass goodbye. And those fucking unionists aren't doing a fuck about it! Don't they fucking understand the importance of global extinction?"

"Well, they've got to make a stand, sir. Besides, it'd be illegal. Misappropriation of private property, and the like."

"Mis-a-fucking-pro-fucking-priation my ass! It's the fucking world! Arrrgh!"

He threw his arms in the air helplessly and flailed like a fish on a marble countertop waiting for a sushi master to gently dice its guts apart. The subtly horrendous attempts at art strewn gratuitously about the room didn't help much. He put his posterior into a strange chair that looked as though it had come out of one of Picasso's nightmares and had been painted by Pollock. It felt unsurprisingly shitty.

"Another thing that makes me feel like shit is the fact that our only case is the fact that letting the asteroid hit Earth will cause a greater loss in terms of insurance and work-hours lost. Makes me feel like utter doggy-doo-doo.

Jenkins ignored the last statement. "Sir, I included the human cost in our first estimates, but I don't think they'll buy that, so I've got another estimate disregarding the cost of 'trauma' and 'psychological impact', et cetera."

Steinbeck looked wide-eyed at Jenkins for a moment, then started choking out laughing sounds.

"Let's just use the second estimate, eh? Besides, all that 'emotional grounds for compensation' bullshit's been outlawed ever since twenty-thirty-six, eh?"

"Aye, sir."

"I didn't want an answer, Jenkins. It was rhetorical."

"Of course, sir."

He sighed and slumped further into the already-uncomfortable-enough chair. He tried again half-heartedly to rouse a visible enthusiasm in Jenkins.

"Don't they have any common sense, Jenkins? Don't they fucking see what they're doing?"

"I suppose they do, sir. After all, they're bucketfuckloads richer than us."

Steinbeck left his mouth open for a few minutes, thinking of a possible reply, but gave up because his mouth was getting dry in the air-conditioned room, and also because the shouts of the unionists outside demanding more pay before they went back to work interrupted his thoughts every few seconds, making it impossible to think without inserting a profanity every now and then.

"Fuck."

"Fuck what, sir?"

"Never mind, Jenkins. You know, there used to be a time we would get beaten by our parents (back when we had parents) for saying that sort of thing. It's become a perfectly acceptable addition to any sentence. Nowadays you kids take it so literally."

"No other way to take things, sir."

"No, indeed, you slimy piece of shit."

"Sir, I'm not slimy, sir."

"Fine, you piece of shit."

"Aye, sir."

He gave up and resumed waiting for the conference to begin. He checked his watch again.

Sixteen and a quarter to zero hour.

After another ten minutes or so, he got up and dragged Jenkins to the conference room they had booked, eventually arriving three minutes and one point one four one five nine two six five three five seconds early, rounded to ten decimal places. He sat down in one of the chairs at the exact moment it turned three minutes to noon. The significance of the moment lost to him (at that exact moment, a faulty alarm clock rang in a mechanic's office for no good reason, startling him and making him drop his sandwich, a crumb of which would eventually be hurled into space along with its cargo of bacteria, ready to colonize the barren world it would land on and eventually develop into a civilization pondering where the hell exactly they came from), he grumbled, having nothing better to do.

"I agree, sir."

"What the fuck, Jenkins?"

"I agree with you, sir."

Jenkins grumbled.

Steinbeck merely went "gah" and went back to grumbling.

Eventually, twelve representatives arrived in the conference room and took their seats around the table. One of them (he assumed correctly to be the one really in charge) volunteered to explain their unorthodox timing.

"You can call me Ms. Delahue. We're sorry we're late, professor, but we had to, you know, all the formalities and dress codes our company advocates."

Steinbeck murmured under his breath to Jenkins: "bloody women". Jenkins chuckled. Misogyny had not yet been outlawed, purely because misandry had also not been outlawed, and the constitution demanded equal rights between the sexes. In fact, Ms. Delahue, upon seeing Steinbeck's lean towards Jenkins and the latter's subsequent chuckle, leaned to the lady on her left and said "I bet those chauvinist pigs are saying something like 'bloody women'". Steinbeck, observing Ms. Delahue's comment and her partner's subsequent chuckle, leant once again towards Jenkins and muttered "I bet they're talking about us". Ms. Delahue motioned to her friend and said out of the corner of her mouth "I think they're talking about us".

One of the auxiliary representatives unwittingly cleared his throat, and everyone sat up straight in the chairs designed to promote back comfort with a recline of one-hundred-and-thirty degrees between the back and the thighs, self-adjusting to any body shape and size, easily available from Jackson and Sons for the bargain price of ninety-nine New Yen apiece.

Steinbeck broke the nervous silence.

"And where the fuck is Bob?"

"We're sorry, professor, but he's busy with business. We here represent the interest of the company and it's shareholders, in his place."

He groaned. So they weren't worth the time after all. Even worse, they probably wouldn't make any decision. They would probably just feed everything they heard back to whoever was in charge, who would deliberate in the comfort of his golf course, or in bed with whichever mistress he had slept with the previous night- depending on the time zone he was in.

"He is, however, observing the meeting via airwave."

His face grew brighter. Finally, something was going right.

"Very well, let's begin, shall we, Ms. Delahue?"

She nodded.

"Okay. Today, we are examining the issue of the workers' wages, specifically in the rogue-asteroid-killing department-" here, a representative whispered "actually, it's a segment" and Steinbeck glowered before continuing- "- segment- and the potential costs if the demands of the union are not met. First, an estimate by our institute as to the potential cost of ignoring the asteroid: nineteen billion and twelve million, give or take two million. In any case, it is far greater than the four million the proposed wage increases would cost; certainly enough to get you to reconsider."

At that, the representatives let the good professor ramble on for a while. When he looked as though he had finished, they dropped the bomb like a B-29 creeping up on an innocent, unwitting, happily merrymaking city suddenly drops a twenty-one kiloton atomic bomb as some sort of practical joke.

"Actually, professor, we've done our own estimate, and it shows to be three billion nine-nine-nine million nine-nine-nine thousand ninety six New Yen. It is obvious to us that we will be making a loss of four New Yen a year if we agree to their increased wages."

"And how the anointed flying fuck did you get that number?"

"Same way you did, professor. We added up the costs of life insurance and potential work-hours lost of those people working in our company."

"Fuck! You didn't include other people in your estimates?"

"They work for other companies, professor." She explained a basic concept of economics and management to the professor with an indulgent smile. "We don't pay their wages or insurance companies' claims for reparations. By the way, professor, I am curious. Fuck what?"
Steinbeck looked flustered for a moment, then at a loss for anything to do, ignored the last question and tried harder.

"Didn't you include the human cost in your estimates?"

"To the best of our knowledge, professor, emotional grounds for com-"

"-pen-fucking-sation was outlawed back in the thirties. I know, you cunt-face, I know. You fucking Nazis don't fucking give a royal flying fuck-fingered rat's ass about the people."

The representative appeared unperturbed.

"To be exact, in thirty-six, the fifth of November, at around twenty-one hours, though sources differ."

The professor floundered for another minute or so, his mouth trying to find words (and his hands helping, trying to grasp some to put into his mouth). Ultimately, he failed. All this time, the representatives had been waiting patiently for a reply; seeing none, they made a motion to close the meeting.

Suddenly, as though hit by a dead fish, he found the words he wanted to say.

"But it'll fucking kill everybody, you assholes!"

The representatives stopped, leant slightly (almost imperceptibly) forward.

"Wait, wait." The man on the screen spoke for the first time. "Did you just say everybody?"

"Yes, YES! EVERY-FUCKING-BODY, YOU CUNTFACE! YOU SLIMY PIECE OF-"

"Good! Then it's settled. If their next of kin are dead as well, they can't claim insurance, which brings our estimate to-" behind him, some cogitors (the smartest people in the world, mechanically augmented) clanked as they calculated- "one billion twenty-three million one-hundred and seventeen New Yen. Thank you so much for reminding us of that fact, professor- we are indebted to you. Now we can safely refuse the union with a greater margin of error. Good-bye."

Steinbeck stared at the table, jaw agape. Already the company's representatives were packing up their things and leaving by the front door. When he regained conscious control of his body and had stopped making any woman walking past him blush and any man look at him in admiration, some raising a cap like a sailor would greet another sailor, others replying in kind because of the stream of profanities issuing forth from his larynx, he wept into his hands.

"Jenkins, God, Jenkins, how could they?"

Ever the observant one, Jenkins merely replied, "they just did."

He gazed about. Somehow Jenkins had managed to drag his (admittedly only fifty-seven kilo) body back to their hotel room. Everything seemed to slow down, and even the various postpostpostmodernist crocks of shit in the room looked a lot prettier now that his imminent death had just been assured. The watch read three-thirty-nine in the afternoon, which translated to around thirteen hours to zero hour. He sighed.

"Jenkins?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Know any good orgies in town?"

Labels: prose

I was at a trial in the House of Lords, the victimized party, represented by my lawyer and friend of many years against the Pillar Corporation. The crime was some inconsequential quibble which I really should have forgotten about before I had even considered taking to court, but nevertheless it had been taken to court. Ironically I now have forgotten it- but who really remembers a crime? Only the people are worth remembering. The man who still stands out in my memory is the judge. I forget his name, really- so you will not ever know him the same way I do. He passed the verdict for some amount of money to be paid to me in reparations, which seemed satisfactory to the Corporation, so I agreed with it and my friend must have sensed it, as he told the judge so and no further appeal was made on either side.

After the proceedings, the judge came up to me and pressed a five-cent coin in my hand; he said "you deserve five cents more than what I judged officially, but I was hesitant to include that in the verdict. It would reflect badly on my sensibilities; don't take this as an insult, I ask of you, but you will need it one day."

He was more than a judge of man- he was fit to judge all the earth and he judged correctly. Sometimes I felt that it was a waste for him to judge as a judge; he should have judged as a man or a saint, or a- just not a judge. His fairness could have been used someplace else, where it would do actual good, such as on the chair beside whichever deity might govern our lordless planet.

In the middle of my story, he was right. I was on a bus on the way home, dreaming some poetry, when a girl from my past stepped onto the front and put a few coins into the hopper, but the bus driver refused to give her a ticket because she was five cents short. I knew then what was the purpose of that coin pressed into my flesh so many years ago back when commiting minor crimes could get a major company sued, and she merely looked at me with a thankful expression and walked into the back of the bus where she faded again into the memory from which she had came. I looked at the five cents in my hand and threw the coin, now spent, into that same foggy mist whence the bus came; all of a sudden the bus disappeared and I was back in the courtroom, now twenty years past that day when I had first seen the girl on the bus and forgotten about her since. The judge Abraham Smith had just passed his verdict of two hundred thousand in reparations to the defendant, a solemn man named Derrick Ng who had been killed due to negligence on the part of the company which produced the emotional supplements he had been fed. Since Derrick was owned by the state, the compensation (since he was dead) also went to the state, although the judge judged fairly anyway.

I was present as one of the jury. The verdict, having been decided by the judge, nevertheless did not fail to astonish me. My compatriots sitting (as I was) in the spectator's box had already reached their own verdicts and were busy spewing nonsense at the judge's face, which he deigned to ignore because he could not see that they were more than puffs of air hovering over contraptions of steel and cloth over which men laid their posteriors- they were the chorus of his past, and sequestered safely away in his unconscious memory (our Freud who art in Heaven) they could only trouble the conscience of one who sat amongst them. In that way I revenged myself upon that nameless judge for justice, and the proceedings went on below me in utter silence, the gentlemen miming their sentences and signalling their arguments, nearly threatening to break out into a fight. Then again it was the fight of a man named Derrick Ng against death, and he was weeping as they brought in his autopsy results to show that he died of a heart attack, then a rebuke (he was still crying) by the prosecution stating that the attack had been brought on by a dosage of contaminated dopamine-precursor-surrogate which the Corporation produced.

It would all amount to nothing anyway, but I looked on as they seemed to drift further. Below me, the man in his coffin looked at me through the veil of his eyelids, and I waved back at a man I recognized from visions and dreams, while beside him the girl who needed five cents on the bus and missed it because she had not that precious coin (which he would only have in his memory) wept at his grave, and he knew it, and was the sadder for it because he could not make her happy in life or death. Even though she was his assigned mourner from the state, he was sad for her- and he could see that Derrick, too, was happy.

From some point of view he suddenly realized that he had been referring to himself, and he looked at his own body, seeing through eyes that were older than Time but younger than Sin. He was naked, but the crowds walked on past him in the halls of the court, moving into the room where the Wise Magos on his throne meted out judgement on the willing and unwilling, and there he understood the dilemma which Abraham faced; he was trying to consecrate a bowl of shifting sands, trying to baptize a screaming and thrashing child, bringing a population under law under strain. There he saw the weary lines in the judge's jaw, marked the face of a tiredness whipped by moderation into something which bore more semblance to an occassional weakness in his heart than a precipitious despair in his voice.

Then the whole weight of his life broke in all about him, and he was swamped in the heat of recollection, as though his life had been written on a piece of paper, crumpled, then dropped onto and endless beach and burned while the smell of ash and silica consumed his senses. The girl whom he loved, then promised a friend to get over- that was a September some year back- then the abjection that was an absence of more than a month- then his youth, where a line told him that he was wrong, that his ruler was wrong and the teachers were wrong, when he measured the side of a rectangle and the God of Education proclaimed it a square- he was wrong, though he was perfect, but those above interceded and separated him from the one hundred marks he knew he so rightly deserved- then older and older memories, built into the mottled peat that was his mind, sunk in as foundations so deep that now their unearthing shook the very castle of his thoughts- back when before he was even born, he remembered the life of the universe, its death, and his Godhood and rebirth at the end of time.

It was all so strange, yet exhilarating, as though ex homine a greater truth lay bare before him, waiting for him to take it, embrace it, and return it to the cot in his heart where he knew it rightly belong. Finally the memory that he had been waiting for came back to him- he saw Derrick standing in the hallway, Abraham pressing a coin into his hand, and the words that were spake did render him unto untold despair that he would never rise out of, even though he had finally gained the understanding he had desired so strongly ever since he had been born; that understanding of the primal world which lay behind the veil of senses and thought, and even behind the tapestry that depicted the Veniversum in all its glory; he had conquered it with logos.

-~-

an experiment in modernist prose writing. i quite like it myself. i thought of it in the shower, then wrote the whole thing out in around fifteen minutes in a flash of inspiration.

Labels: prose

when the eastborn disk flails at his zenith
but his bright blood stains the cotton-clouds black
then you know the world is not right at all.

high on his jewelled throne, so very small
the sun-king sinking must feel some monstrous lack
so far removed from earthy pulse and pith

he has a heart to fill but no eyes or ears
(even so it has no strings to be tugged at)
and his bowels burn up everything he consumes
poor helios will never be anything but fire

so he cries, and the clouds hold blood and tears
when they strain against the weight of sunbeams
then their toil rumbles all across the earth.

even the sun must have a doctor to his heart
i told a joke and the rains stopped wailing
it seems heaven has a sense of humour after all

Labels: poetry

at night,
swimming in a sea of streetlight;
like moons rising ahead
where the road's belly curves out of sight.

(beached now,
waiting for the last buses home;
watching cars drift us by -
ripples of watery glee)

the darkness closes our eyelids;
you slip up a bus and the
shells sing to me

Labels: poetry

locked into the av theaterette
- with the darkness you find at the bottom of a pond.
toes of coldness up my nose,
feather-sad shapes of chairs

Labels: poetry

In the mornings you feel like you cannot let go
of the hundred things you said to yourself-
last evening -
and last night was the worst of dreams
bitten into a bruised maroon the thought of seventeen hundred
so many,
you had not thought it had taken so many.

they said the world would end
tomorrow.

a stark march across
(the floors of silent seas?)
the shop at the corner and the sky
it was raining and
it was like sad sand flowing between the ashes of a construction site

a hundred suns wouldn't tell
how much a single tear
streaks across the universe

or lands like a raindrop in a shell

they said the world would end
In the mornings you cannot let go
of the hundred things you said to yourself last evening.
last night was the worst of dreams
(and last night was tomorrow
and this morning is a hazy afterlife.)

adam

Labels: poetry

ok, so i lied. i'm secretly a modernist.

-~-

s is for cereal
are we not all serious?
there is no moon in the sky that is black
jack

son of the man
mannequin kin puppet's peer and wigstand's child
you joke! but dance a little jig for us
and while the us away
while the us of a
it does not behind to compute.

but bitten by welve tmosquitae

unlikely that i am joyce bysshe or poland
twelve again computes me.

yes, the taste of autumn is in the sakura
and who can resist- the teeming diaspora?
sit beneath the tree
watching cherry blossoms fall
floating to the sky

zen is ahead and the past is zen;

it is not defiled to speak of it

when another choking on the smog of air
the oxygen that feeds into despair
not burning anymore but eating now
no radiant face or furrowed brow
it leaves a skull to look ahead
at our unsleeping dead
insisting that they live
what gives?

on the bridge
another earth crashes;
the supports groan with the mouths of a million greeks
if it had breasts to beat then
there would be no equal in expression
naked, oiled, it is ready
then the spear lunges and it falls.

sometimes i wonder
many times i have died
but this is no claim over my life
and the cherry blossom falls
but the trees stand. not seeing,
the king of gods hangs as all about him
pink bloombuds drift
has he wisdom now?

Labels: poetry

I see her as she sits -
the woman in her wheelchair;
will she look down and see me?
What will she see? What will she think?

Grandmama, you've no english to speak of,
I have no age.
Talk me of time,
and i will tell you my youth.

You wizened crone!
what secrets have you gained?
what secrets have lost you?
What have you bartered for your beauty?


I see you, as you gaze on me.
You smile, that look of content wistful.
You know more than I.

Yet you sigh, sewing on,
Knitting with your needles,
Clackety-clackety
Clack.

Labels: poetry

The night is young, the day is through, all that conquers my mind is you;
Through darkness, as an arrow true, pierced in my heart, the wounds accrue;
Down memory's dark avenue, the unrelenting thought of you;
All that conquers my mind is you; the night is young, the day is through.

Here, now, amidst the death of sight, I stand within the naked night,
Despaired, bereft of all respite from fury of the untamed tide;
My dreaming brings me not delight- filled not with bliss, but born of blight;
I stand within the naked night here, now, amidst the death of sight.

The morning rises in the east, uncloaking light the midnight's mist;
The dewdrops in the gold light glist are all remained of twilight's tryst;
And darkness' veil about you ceased, I cannot chance a glance resist;
Uncloaking light the midnight's mist, the morning rises in the east.

When noontime bathes the world aglow, it all my passions overthrow;
As melting of the winter snow, then all my heart doth overflow;
When love triumphs everything below, and you the only thing I know;
It all my passions overthrow, when noontime bathes the world aglow.

And once more I am in dismay when evening harries you away;
Lost to my sight, to light of day, my hope again begins to fray;
And colours turn to stony gray - oh! how I wish that dark delay
When evening harries you away, and once more I am in dismay.

The night is young, the day is through, all that conquers my mind is you;
Down memory's dark avenue, the unrelenting thought of you
Through darkness, as an arrow true, pierced in my heart, the wounds accrue;
All that conquers my mind is you; the night is young, the day is through.

Labels: poetry

Questions:

How do you break out of conventional and cliched descriptions of phenomena? It has become automatic and worthless to use phrases like 'dusk descended', or 'night falls'.


Why is there this connection between night, or things of the night, and falling? Why do we rarely say moonrise, whilst sunrise is much more common? Why do we never say moonset when we regularly say sunset? We prioritise one above the other, such that it has become almost natural to view it in this manner.

I had a third one, but i forgot.

Labels: other

In the mornings we trudge tiredly up staircases
to freeze in the cold classrooms
where we have the content of our heads measured -
in arc-tangent and sine;
in the equation of a line.

why equals em ex plus see
or, reduced to a sum of ATP -

we sit in a row slumped behind bags and old jackets
pillowcases woven out of daydreams cushion our heads, exhausted from yesterday's real work,
which was the contemplation of how the pink clouds made the morning.


adam

Labels: poetry

the chains of illusion are born in the night
and slowly but surely conquer;
no hero can break from their gossamer might
nor resist their ethereal lure.

faint wisps of deception, mere tendrils of smoke,
entwining, corrupting bouquet
invisibly gather, then gently they choke
and lightly on ankles they weigh;

incorporeal yokes on relenting a neck,
the manacles gladly accept
and willingly bend as a beast to a beck,
to a whip of dismay and regret.

look on, on the herd! look, behold them, the slaves-
now slavering at their desires
held out of their reach, all their longings and craves
to stoke their consuming heart-fires;

and chained to a plow, all the oxen with faces,
and turning the earth sown in flood
the harvest of falsehood, the windfall of graces
to slave yet their children, their blood.

their ghostly enslavers have no need for reins
for the people have asked for their binds
anytime they can break from their tenuous chains
for their sinews are bound with their minds.

the chains of illusion are born in the night
and slowly but surely conquer;
no hero can break from their gossamer might
nor resist their ethereal lure.

Labels: poetry