30 April 2008

Progress

(for April, the cruelest month)

Thine ideas and thoughts are
fine and thine alone, and

tumbled roughly like the roundel
of a river stone, jumpily who

follows after. Veiled in threats
and petulance of pestilence now

open, rounding 'bout the bend.
Your countenance abruptly ends

the question of successive ends.
It trends toward looking down

toward looking for unsightly sounds
to offer up as some reward for

counting beads as on, as on
the Abbot's rosary, whose heavy

cross is it's counterweight.
You cannot wait for it to come,

you cannot wait for all of this to
finally become undone.


I mounted—sadly—some
hilltop. And roughly for the grit
of path beneath me slipped
and slewed as if to say:

"This is not your path today.
My summit—for you—will
not afford an aerie-view
of anything—an empty till."

But climb I did unto it's crest,
and having fallen to my chest so
many times that that path's dust
could not be told from my shirt's breast,

I saw the view, and saw the land,
and saw the city's meager limits.
I saw trees around the church
holding setting sun in thickets.

Then I climbed down that self-same
path. I slipped as if on summer's
morning grass and slid—that
view not having prevented it.


Our honesty is sweet—though vaster
than a lake's face, stretching faster
farther unto to ones eye's limits
—thickly—as though limned in plaster.


Her gazing rankle went without that
night. And I went out despite it. To
swing and loll with all gauds on, and
drink until I felt no fright at it.

But my procedure's ordering collided
in discord when she—in the guise of
flocks of doves—came crashing 'round
to run my simple ship aground.

She stoked me through the solemn eyes
of any man with fey surprise.
But simple logic held no sway. I, my-
self regrouped to play upon malaise

that I felt naught, but anxious gout
encircling all my things about with
rancor, sweet and saccharine.
And frightened then, I turned and fled.


Not drunk at home, but dangerous
before this one goes out again

upon the night's slick sickly sight.
It came upon his house again.

They were sirens of desire,
wrapped around the mortal tower

of his only worldly power,
slinking quick, they came again.

I—there—would not let them in.


Very late was the hour of their arrival
with all the pomp of some revival tent.
In dresses best, the came, they said
at the behest of some distant friend.

His strength it quavered at their sight,
but let them in—a wicked night, whose
inky blackness could—would not relent.


For unto me
an apple tree is born
of want.


The sun sunk through the haze of Nod
alighted red with bloodlust of a very vengeful God.


Through the peeling drone of servos
torquing clockwork limbs about

as if their motions somehow held
intent beyond their programmed bout.


The light beyond was
brutal. It came through

all. It came through on
beach—the border of

land and sea. We
thought we knew all

about it. But we didn't


Actually the highest rung on ladder
was a fad. It bulbous fatter than

the fattest—than the fattest of them
all. And climbed and reached it

anyway. And supple, simply under-hand
and both feet when they reached it. Sand

rained down from somewhere up above.
Grinding wearing slowly down the biscuit-

joint. The
dove.

24 April 2008

Not Knowing Better about Angela

I made it to the lake's beach, alone
Night welcomed me, and I sat down
and waited for Angela

How many died, slipping beneath
The lake's face, into the bosom
of mother nature,

Never to return? How many went
Willingly into that wet tomb?
I saw the shore's

Far side and there decided to
Give myself to Angela, and really
Care for her.

22 April 2008

Decency

Be willing to accept the red backpack
from whomever offers it.

Don't yawn, because a seersucker suit,
wet, clings drying to your back.

This glass of wine, this bottle of wine
they both are artifacts.

of the first glass—of every glass you've
poured. Consumed

Don't engender bacterial plumes in
cork.

Stop looking at my chest.

21 April 2008

the Only Way to be an Artist

Be outside
the system
that engenders
your educations.

[A bottle]

A bottle
of vodka
calls me
home.

This day—
this lack
dethroned
my sense

of up
and down.
Today, I
grey, alone.

Friends

I use the
anonymity
of the city
to avoid you

the Truth

I'd much
rather watch
a sunset
reflected

17 April 2008

Winds of Change

(for Millennial poets)

The wind
Is so strong
In my window

It supersedes
The walls
Put up against it

That the fans
Spin agrees. Winds
All in the paddles

All of this
Resists. It holds
Malign intent

—in motion! It's
Proportionally
Less, from a distance.

16 April 2008

Tumult at Sea

They never would have
thought when they left port
That anything
awaited them

in the arctic
But cramps, bad cram
and frozen
giblets.

The ship forwent
Baffin Bay
and went for
Reykjavik

And on the
Greenland Sea
the waters
thickened quickly

against the
hull
to try and
get it

Past the
hook at Nord
it tasked again
to extricate

the seamen
on the other
side
of it.

And then it
clasped it's chilly
grasp around
the boat's end

The cram ran out
and guys went out
to look for
polar bears

or something
else they
could
eat.

Up the ice
in jagged rifts it
tears the ship
and lifts it from

the water
beneath
The sea bequeathed
It imparts

on us it's will
It holds one still
and then it
crushes it.

14 April 2008

the Estrella de Mar

the Estrella de Mar is situated along
a moribound stretch of the Bibralter Coast
where

A sluggish sea lapped at the chocolate
sand on the deserted beaches.

The coastal strip was a nondescript plain
of market gardens, tractor depots and
villa projects.

I passes a half-completed Aquapark, it's
excavated lakes like lunar craters and a
disused nightclub.

A nearby town is without centere or suburbs,
which is what happens when sunlight is shone
on the British.

I climbed a pathway of blue tiles to a grass knoll
and looked down on a terrain of endless windows
patios and miniature pools.

Nothing could ever happen in this affectless realm,
where entropic drift calmed the surfaces of a
thousand swimming pools.

Sounds Mimic Cities

City birds have begun to sing new songs.
Gone is the familiar dawn chorus, with
it's rich mix of enchanting melodies and calls.
In it's place a strangely depleted music

—abrupt, hich pitched and sometimes
ear-piercing. It seems that constant
background sound in cities is having
andalarming effect on some bird species.

Everyone, and everything, is just looking
for some peace and quiet. I'm reminded
of something I've written for Dwell
—But I'll leave that unexplored.

Quiet Living

I don't want to change the world
I just want to live and live quietly.

I don't have the fight in me, where
you have energy—I move tiredly.

In the bed, and dead, listening
to Morning Edition. I woke up

with a headache. The bed quaked,
and every neuroscience experiment

that includes a white sphere full of
Wonder Bread stars, is my lament.

Ancient Roads

Half-forgotten slashes of land, cutting
through, around and over the hills of
Vermont

Might actually be "ancient roads,"
dating back to colonial times—

Some towns, content to abandon the
overgrown roads that crisscross their
valleys and hills.

But many more have recruited teams
to comb through old documents, make
lists of

Whatever roads they find evidence of.
Plot them on maps and set out to locate
them.



from: BLDG BLOG

13 April 2008

the Retreat

(for Dania)

Dania
You're the one
I need to talk to.
Insurgent in the

fermament you
are always down
you are always
around the place.

And
right on top
of spire
your desire,

flopping, languid
in the sea of sand
under setting sun.
The foppery!

Stop divining forces
with calipers and
forceps plotting
the take on me.

Your theosophical devices.
My advice is to retreat,
and beat the scorching
sunrise to the sea.

12 April 2008

Harry Kim

whether crewman
or ensign,
grew old in
Kohl's reality,

whose subtly
sexy Bust' Kincaid,
in "Captain Proton"
stopped Chaotica
and "Arachnia" both.

Played kal-toh
with Tuvok, and
once with Tuvix, I think
and once when Tuvok
lost his mind.

Clarinet,
perrenially frusterated
in sex.

He had a girlfriend
on Earth. But then
he went to the
Delta Quadrant.

At first I thought
he was a little gay.
Because he wasn't
interested in the clearly
sexy Delaney sisters.

Zimbabwe in Crisis

Thabo Mbeki went to Harari,
Robert Mugabe met him. They

Talked about forthcoming crisis
from delayed election results.

Zimbabweans are frustrated.
Bread costs thousands of dollars.

Building a Tunnel

Halogen lit up
more cyan than the sky
the pit outside
Izmir

The sun below
the horizon
doesn't make it
here. The shift

changing workers
move swift. Past
water-filled sink holes
to the locker rooms

When (or if) the damn thing
resurfaces
on the other
side

What will it bring?
Increased international
exchanges.
And money

There is a smell outside
of oil exhaust
and pride
in the moist

evening air
getting darker
—phosphorescent
Evening sky

hold gently
black mounds
of our interior
smattered with lights.

And where should that electricity come from?

Where they piled
the shipping crates
—just come in
of tunnel wall-sections.

It's wet, under
the rush of sea
water come between,
between the pieces.

Silver flash of
thermos and coffee.
Who'd've thought
This cold, on the beach
in the desert.

11 April 2008

Sublimation in "Sunshine"


I had such high hopes for this movie, knowing that Boyle took the producing role on 28 Weeks Later, so he could direct it. I appreciate the style and plot, but this movie has serious problems. The movie starts out promisingly. A small group of "international" cosmonauts on a desperate mission to save the world. What struck me, and what makes this movie so interesting is that Boyle—through great cinematography by Alwin Kulcher, and excellent repeat performances by Mark Tildesley in production design, and John Murphy in music—manages to produce an Alien-like sense of isolation and paranoia early on in the movie. The refreshing difference between Alien and Sunshine is that instead of a b-movie template in style and emotional content, Boyle uses a harder sci fi sensibility. Almost as an aside this imparts a mild humanist utopian aura over the whole ordeal (think of Corazon's garden, Silent Runnings anyone?). The movie draws upon much more influences than his say, Trainspotting. But what I find most encouraging about Sunshine is that it espouses a seriousness and authenticity in science fiction—a dignity that the genre so frequently has been denied in the past. This verite science fiction does not jubilate in fantasy. It is attached to it's advances science—dolefully at times, as indeed we see here in Sunshine. 
It seems funny then, that Sunshine's two biggest influences are pulpy influences of other 'restart the sun' movies like Solar Crisis, and another I can't remember the name of. But that's okay, because for most of the movie, the plot is secondary. Sure it drives the character's actions, but it's really more like a MacGuffin. Let me explain it another way, the way character's feel about each other is set before the movie begins. The events that conspire and the action's they illicit are just bringing about interpersonal dynamics that are already there. 
It appears that Cillian Murphy and newcomer Rose Byrne, are the heir's apparent in Boyle's cabal of actors, and that's fine by me. Murphy's performances in 28 Days Later clearly shows merit, and he doesn't let down here. He's quiet, and never (not even here) overplays a scene. Byrne too, in 28 Weeks Later, showed incredible promise. She gives another good performance here, where she plays a wanton woman malaised by her super-ego. The eventual love story plays out meteredly from begining to end—despite the eventual plot failures.
So it would seem that Sunshine is a prime example of what is good in science fiction. It has a progressive sense of narrative integrity, it's beautiful, it sounds nice, the performances are good, and it doesn't turn a blind eye to it's historical roots. An heir to one of the greatest science fiction films of all time, Alien. What then could hold Sunshine back from greatness? Well, I don't mind telling you: Plot. 
What begins with the promise of a 2001-esque ability to think—which happens in the genre of science fiction film (as indeed everywhere else) rarely—eventually succumbs to the same pitfalls that it tries to escape. About half way through the movie—on an extra-vehecular assignment—the characters encounter a crazed, crippled, religous-zealotry spewing, ex-captian, and inadvertently bring him back aboard their ship. What ensues is mild paranoia and frights, which eventually disappear. The characters get closer to the sun and the movie's monster goes back underground. It seems (for a moment) as though the movie might go back and fulfill it's initial promise. But as the movie progresses, he returns and disappoints. His prominence increases until the—near perfectly orchestrated, aurally—climax.
Don't get me wrong. I do not begrudge Boyle the right to be frightening, suspenseful, or religious. Indeed he was all of these things and more in previous movies, and well at that. What I do begrudge him is the right to do it sloppily. Characterization of the monster (and that's what it was) was tenuous at best. His dialogue reads as deluded pabulum, and quickly dissolves into white noise. The cinematography suffers as action sequences are shot from expressionist angles. The monster is often sublimated by a visual distortion of the film—which, while an interesting effect in it's own right, and it may well be perfect in another movie—that completely hides the wonderful production design, and creates—along with the angles—a complete disjunct in the cinematography's continuity. The subtle exploration of character interaction is increasingly displaced by plot until the end.
It's a hard movie to rate because it is so perfect, and ultimately so flawed. The reason I enjoy it, even though it has so many problems, is partially what a friend said to me about it. She said something like: "Why is it that, there always has to be a dragon?" And she's right. The way our world works, (in science fiction, Joseph Campbell is partially to blame) "action" movie (as opposed to drama) need to have a dragon. Can you fault a thing for being itself. It's western popular cinema, love it or hate it. And in Sunshine, there's so much to love. Most science fiction films can't hope to be as sober and gentle with their subject matter. Is it a flawwed movie? Yes, Is some of it downright bad? Yes. But it does have a glimpse of what science fiction could be, and hopefully will be in the future.

10 April 2008

Houndstooth

Houndstooth,
on those arab scarves
everyone wears.

I'm just glad to see
the propagation of
such a pattern.

Guns & Holsters

Though I'm no Freudian
I must admit that there
is something incredibly verile
about being strapped to a gun
It's leather holster
—so supple to the touch
It's not that I like guns
or necessarily police officers.
It's just—a gun, an actual
gun. Right there.
If your face were splayed
and tanned, I'd love it.
Just as surely as the nose
of an 80's convertible—arrow-like—
is a weapon too. It's not strapped
to you. And has no case to call it's own.
I'm willing to accept that
this all is the result of movies.

Reading to Children

When I have children,
(and I will) I'll
read to them,
because that's important for kids
and because I like to read,
even children's books
—sometimes
I like their illustrations
and guessing
their media
(which is sometimes
on their title pages)
I asked Bryn
of the two names
on the cover of some book
who wrote, who drew?
"The girl," she said, "because
they're beautiful."
and I said:
"Women don't have a monopoly on beauty."
Gosh!

I Get to Wear Cut-Off Shorts Too

Oh my god this
is not obscene.

They're just my
cut-off jeans.

You've seen my legs
—you changed me

as a baby.

Apples

The stem ended
baring two fruits
the other pile
is alone

If you have
and
exchange both
alone

If you have known
the glossy shadow
the row. The formal
invitation's ripened blow

If you have doctors,
teachers,
old woman,
wax between them

the evening's final
throes postponed
and postponing
is alone.

the Compound

It's crazy
that fundamentalist mormons
in texas, or wherever they are
force girls to get pregnant.
—Girls!

I feel partially responsible
because of my upbringing
and I think that a child's innocence
is the most precious thing
and the most despicable to steal.

My New Four-Pack

I bought a pack
of grey Hanes t-shirts
on amazon a few
weeks ago.

They came today.

And opening them
I was dismayed.

They were folded
and rolled into tubes.
Two dabs of tape
held the collar to the waist
or chest, or just below
in a roll.

And I wanted to unwrap them,
and to throw away the bag
(and the tape)
and to put them away.

It made me sad,
because I'll never roll them
—probably won't even fold them—
that neatly again.

06 April 2008

an Ornithology Book

That rests at forty five
On the shelf in the wall of

Our mid-century home.
The Barrow-Wights in
And around that house

Come occasional
And strong.

All spring-long. Our
Walls and windows
Crackle, sputter.

Under some other form,
An old Kingfisher
In the birdhouse which
I built.

It's nailed to the tree
Holding everything that
We put in it.

The same vine grown—
Germinating and virulent—
Around our house
Which is it's thicket,

Leaves the same things
Unknown. A trick—it

Grows and grows.
It allows a quickened flutter
From it's wings, my arms,

My heart between them.

And fields of poppy
lay out before the vine
in his little bird-mind.

The house is his
—which was mine.

03 April 2008

Quicksilver

(an Ode to trains)

Sometimes
the fastest one can go
is on a train.

The Futurists' own
silver paint on silver walls.
Silver appalls, but
swimming over me

with stolid pee
and factory run-off
in a ditch

beside the main tracks,
vindicated me.

the Slowdown

We won't drown.
That recession

is part of normal market growth
is wrong.

Every five, six years
it's that appalling.

Who is really seeing things?
It brings
with it higher food prices.
I'm into gluttony.

A mint—though—
only a small one.
A fiscal travesty.
Fiduciary.


I'm really so
sorry for you losses,
processes
and progress.

We can move together through
Slow by slow. Toe
to toe. Our total
effacement

both financial (our bank accounts)
or emotional (our bank accounts)
raise scorn.

The field of wheat and hops ablaze.

When I was 35

The children
are with Liz
The quiet yard is me.

Cold beer sans
hammock when
a bunny,

brown,
little, from
a shrubbery comes out.

Little girl's
got something to say to me.

Dog doesn't like it.
Shut up dog.


She stays,
as if she's bored or something.
I have another beer
day withers.

The starfield
superimposed on you.
—a blanket over
your shiny wet eyes.

I can hear
the gulls far off, flying.

The starfield's me.
Cars outside, cars
on the driveway.

The dog's inside.
"Sounds, move away from me!"


Liz phones
from the road.
She asks me; "Are we out of things?"
I'm not sure.

I say "Mom called
this morning."

She'll say; "I know
she just called me."

I go outside, I
bring the computer,
I set it in the grass
I look around.

No bunny.
Camden, from the screen door
hollers
tepidly.

Shut up dog.
I get a text
from Cy,
he's upstairs.

02 April 2008

Spring in Science Fiction

Today I'm on the beach
Everywhere. Children screech,

Shriek at the waves.

My sunglasses out of
Retirement—too soon?

Reminds of you.

I'll drown you in
The shallows. Slim

Stacked between a rock

And wall. You are all
Coming out too soon.

Barricade the air-lock!

01 April 2008

In the Bag

I woke up early, anyway,
Too early—half past seven.
Too much black coffee stains
Stay under lamp, on desk.

Too much coffee like a leaden
Something in my stomach.
I have so many things to do
That I don't want to do today.

I'll belay that shit, right there.
And you will easily supplant
The gaping holes still snagged
Throughout me. All about.

a Walk

(for Vinnie)

Trace the track
—intractable.

That we pull
the duck wheel foot

behind us waddling.
This afternoon,

a cruel commute.
Solar dust

congregating
into latticework.

And I walked
down that road

—with Vin,
underneath the

setting sun.
No one

talked. We walked
to the corner store.

Free March Madness
at the Vic.