ITERATION ZERO

I studied the shape of an African map
Lost in the shadows of etchings cooked
Into the occlusion drawn across stars
A chart of territories and island's teeth
Death's head eye sockets and nostrils
Flank the harbor beneath the calm waves
Holding secrets trapped in a darkness
Inscrutable to the divers of memory
And all of her children since the terminal
Point of anti matter has fanned out
Into the future on renewed cycles of flight
Whose direction dictated by a law
Immutable in the eyes of God
Pliable to the ears of Man
Thus able to alter the dream
Woven from every child's heart
Into the cages that bind us
Under a massive hypnotic spell
Introduced from the Realm Above
Directly into the Kingdom Beneath
From former exactitude to a latter blur
The pieces of which may shatter
Into a semblance of the Whole
To be picked up and examined
On the lonely beach of the heart
Abandoned by the brother of man
Left stranded on two paws
With quill points spring loaded
For a new walk across ink's
Undulating surface of reflections
To switch the oldest shell game
For the mind's eyelid lowered
Over the cold night of awareness
Which must grip every host
That ever looked to the stars

CARBON COPY

A different vehicle for staring.
The seperate outlet of look.
Sight captured by no one.
Eminently describable.

Any missing puzzle pieces fit.
The world's face reknits
beneath the skin. In the center
of the pupil the portal irises open.

Another mask woven for a new vision.
Formed of bones dissolved below
the surface. Seeing the world clearly
through the silence of a vacuum.

From the point of view behind
the stars before they were made
to mark the skies as another
disguise for seeing.

CONTINUAL

inual. inside you all. gliding tall.
riding far. hiding war. lighting fire.
tightening wire. frightening wider.
righteously wilder. you might just
have dialed her. who'll quite thusly
die older. human light has just piled
her into a corner. men like you have
supplied her with suffering. cont.
the menu has applied our selection.
to defend you apalled at the election.
to befriend your apple of inspection.
pretend europe has insurrection.
intend your opus to resurrect, and
in ten years hope us to rescue it. cont.

UNLIDDED

Cycles of command
sattelites and planets
women and tides
possession and distortion
sun bursts flooding
nova shell expanding
passing through for moments
birth of forces
minds of light
vectors gain momentum
history as story
attraction and addiction
gravitation and magnetism
waves of force
cycles of change
suspension of memory
and its slow dissolution
reformation of
disintegration
trapped in temporal
stasis energy burst
of positive pulse
abstract pools
we drift through
forces shaped around us
because of us paradox
nova shell thinning bigger
intersection of nineteen
eighty three flash flood
of earth birth and gestalt
loss of memory
gain of force
focus of loci
intake of nutrients
bathing of energy
denominations
of commonality
passing of waiting
sorrows of watching
bloodlines of
remembrance
re-emergence
of vision.

PARABOLIC VISION

Under the curving lens of my spectacles
my almond eyes slant in to curve
with the eyelashes, bent at the edge
of the lens as I peer out through
the corrective parabola of glass.

I perceive that I've been tricked
into seeing the image reproduced
correctly, and wonder just what
the difference is between being
tricked and seeing naturally.

Then I remember that seeing
itself is, naturally, being tricked
in the first place. And there
the interesting clue lies twinkling
in almost mischievous discreteness.

If you've been tricked into seeing
something correctly then it's because
it became necessary for you to react
accordingly to its presence. You were
the one that expected "it" to have form.

So to satisfy your own delusion
of what "it" really is, the world
provided you with an image to satisfy
your base expectation. The truth being
you never really know what anything

of all the different categories of nature
is really capable of. Its true form being
unrecognized leaves its real nature unrealized.
And here, the unfolding sporadic chance
of various emerging vortices of chaotic creation

where history unfolds or stacks up along
the imprinted spinal totem, brick by hieroglyphic
brick, leaves a mark that is melted in the sand
while it is etched, and even the wind looks on
never knowing why the artist keeps erasing his work.

WITH DAD IN HONDURAS

How it was those years ago, when yet
you lived, and breathed in this world
Lost as a husband, won as a Dad
How glad and loved, as kids we were
The care you took, to cook our food
though burnt the pot, it did us good
With stories told, upon your bed
your big old belly, you kept us fed

And occupied with such odd jobs
like distilling oil from cardamom
worth by weight even more than gold
(at least that's what we were told)
Carving pipes from purple heartwood
A special one with the twice-deep bowl
you said would make a nice gift
for Somoza—I wonder if he ever got that
and what he must have thought of it...

How you used to play Go
with the Japanese Ambassador
in our home, I'm not sure if you ever
beat him, only that you both won
with more meaningful territories secured
than the last tally when game was done
I remember how everyone you met
took some of you home with them
How proud I was, and my brother too
That we were both a part of you

When you were given an island off the coast
How you shared it with friends
to make the most of it, how we'd visit
every year and swim with the sharks
without fear in the football-field sized bay
In waist deep crystal waters alongside Pumpkin Hill
we stepped staring down through refracting ripples
to avoid sea urchins amid the great dark
blurry shapes of nurse sharks in mating season

How we pet them from fin to tail and how quickly
they would swim away, how free we were upon that day
When we waded up on to the beach still wearing sneakers
to protect our feet from volcanic rock
How we discovered perfect pools of aqua blue
and jumped in to swim with barracudas eying us
with stark curiosity, how they disappeared
in a flash only to return soon
accompanied by one twice as large

How we'd forage in the jungle
for chicken grapes and shells
with designs on making home-made wine
and wind chimes. How we'd bottom fish
with cracked-open hermit crabs as bait
We didn't even have to wait, the fish bit
just as hook struck water, there was never
any doubt you were the best father

The sixty pound King Fish you caught
on a hand line you'd entwined twice
around your palm—it jerked you
from one end of the dory to the other—
You would've gone overboard if it wasn't
for our uncle, your brother who caught you
and helped you reel that damn thing in
The Bay Island people ate fish cakes for weeks

I remember how you'd rub your unshaven jaw
on our cheeks staying up late telling tall tales
keeping us enraptured all night
What I would do to capture that feeling tonight
The scars left from the fishing line
across the palm of your hand remained white
and visible until your last stand
They serve as much as anything to represent
the extra lifelines before you went
that you had gathered for your short stay
Together you showed us how to experience
more than a lifetime in just one day

The jet helicopter you named "Burrito"
and painted a garish green and orange
The pilot had the doors removed
just like they did in 'Nam
How he'd strap us all in and take us
for the ride of our lives, pulling off
the Hammerhead stunt to everyone's surprise
How hundreds of local poor folk would show
when they heard the distant whine
incoming from beyond the clouds
piled up above the pines

Shielding their eyes from the blowing debris
as it settled in its furious descent
A metallic wasp laden with raw blocks
of chicle carried in its belly pregnant
Freshly exported from deep within
the Mosquitia jungle, I remember the time
you had a day off and so took us on a picnic
You used the helicopter to drop us down
to an uncharted spot by a pristine river
hidden deep, winding through a cloud
rain forest where you theorized

No human had ever stepped foot
and the stones along the riverbottom
were all polished into eggs the size
of an ostrich's, and how later
that year after we had forgotten
you gave us each one riverstone
for Christmas, it was all that we got
Back then we were mad, only many years later
did we come to accept them
as priceless gifts that could only
have been given by a truly great Dad

How it was, those years
long gone, when you still smiled
and could do no wrong. Left as a husband
to be found as a father, with care
you tended our garden in a lazy kind of way
Just enough you watered us
and fed us every day
I hope you can look down and see
what we have both grown into
Though you seldom got the credit
we owe much of it to you

SCARS OF THE CRUCIFIX

Scars of the crucifix upon the cancerous tumours
of a violated world so it's said to thee let justice be delivered in full to the oppressors of nature and let us all rejoice as the living sheds its lambskins of dead sloughed-off popes and peasants to reassert

its ancient dominion on the clean slate of tomorrow's beach and let the thrice repeated numerals of six on six on six represent the spiral resolution of this reintegrated dawning of the new imperious age as we shed our snakeskins of false idolatry such as is represented

by the chronic myths of biblical deceptions and let us
refute the brain-washing mentality of the overt power systems already half-past crumbled for all to reclaim the joyous ecstasy of purity and recharge its ancient unending power to put forth our agenda vibrantly into

the superstructure of this eroding empire surrounding so that we might revel in the foundation of having survived the persecution of our enemies the children of god en espiritus luciferal ex espiritu daemonia en esprit du corpse y lux morte liberado and on the ninth day a nightmare erased

displaced by the worrisome tension built up in the highbrow rise of society's income unable to face the reflection in the feeding trough's glossy moving waters always depicting the shadow of a beast behind us looking over our shoulders for an instant before moving on away into the lengthening

stripes of day light disappearing into the night of wishes sown most bravely in the corn rows of sleep walking through the forest and being well aware of this acted out extended play on creationism seeding its own fires from the edges of its spreading mantle

a hem dress of sparks leaving smoke curling in drifting withered imprints slowly measured by one set of eyes just another manner for which the universe devises to look at itself arising in the forest of the geometric night a tidal wave called Domino his story

then must be for all to surf when most will build their homes upon the wave mistaking our voyage for the wind in our sails until they hang their sorrows out to dry and come to call this breathing when standing in the midst of home the whole world's reeling on its predestined course

stopped in a palm and dropped like a ball on a hot summer night the bolo about us a balance tied on to tune us in to synchronization with our situation just a plumb weight dusted off to achieve perfect pitch look in the mirror tar-baby and don't untie that rope rising up to the sky

from that stake over there and watch out for that guy in the shades these carnies will go to great lengths to insure the travelling show must go on through every neighborhood in the good green open wide wagon wheel of all that ain't wrong with Incorperatica.