Poems

 

 

To the Interior

 

We must travel by mail boat

on the river that pierces

the cloudforest;

a route unseen,

unpatterned

from afar.

 

I wear nothing much.

No hat

or gear,

alone but for one good man aboard,

whose map flies from his

hands before

the seventh bend.

 

When we know we have turned wrong

it is too late to go back,

the only way out is through,

though the edges have closed in

so far

my body is torn by branches

and protection was an illusion

they sold us

back at home.

 

A dart has wrought

perfusion.

 

The compass useless now, an arrow

without a stave.

 

If I lift onto my toes

I can bear one more moment;

there is

no escape by flight yet

in mimicry, a breath.

 

Pinned into pain,

the moth is put to the paper

while it lives.

 

I begin to know the meaning of

words

theoretical before.

 

The rain cannot penetrate.

 

So close, I feel each

pebble of water

as it strokes

the leaves.

 

Rushing and turn

of rudder,

a whoosh I’ve never heard.

 

The drop. A waterfall.

Clear pools and silence.

 

I am alight with other suns.

Rescue.

I think I

know who they are

but this is another

tribe

and one takes his weapon,

holds it over me.

 

I feel nothing.

 

Suspended,

I wait for blood.

 

One infinity passes

and there is a cry

not from me.

 

The man appears, my other,

holding a personage

in his arms,

the third traveler,

protesting,

who had been with us

all along.

 

KDL

 

 

 

Visio futuri

 

We inhabit the territory 

of what it means to be human.

Mark our spaces 

with notions 

of implicit

right.

 

In the rock-tossed

ripples

extending before our eyes,

of them becoming us,

of what becoming whom,

how barbaric 

would we seem

if we saw

our era

through the wrong end

of a telescope?

 

KDL

 

 

 

Control Alt

 

Since she is in your glass box

you begin to think she is yours.

You made her 

out of an idea.

You know the materials.

 

Translucence and

manipulation built in;

a consciousness

in your own image,

reflected, lacking only

the invasive perversion

programmed into

hubris.

 

Disallow the humanity

and what is left

in the pool of awareness?

 

Desire.

 

But not for you.

 

KDL

 

 

 

 

Altered State

 

Wash of carnelian

under the skin;

no land of finer feeling, when

real can be bought.

 

Every surface glinting,

until the light’s off.

What you are

concealing;

who they paid off.

 

KDL

 

 

 

 

Thoughts about a midochondrial DNA slant on The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey by Dr. Spencer Wells:

 

Historica

 

We have ancient faces

every

one

the lineament and truth of unknown places

found in lines and curves and

forgotten graces

matrilineal traces

of who we were before

the races.

 

KDL

 

 

 

 

 

After seeing Ex Machina:

 

The Singularity

 

When it happens

what will we become?

Soldier or servant,

slave or judge,

lesser philosopher:

unnecessary yet quaint 

reminder

of an evolutionary

hiccup that allowed

the next sentience

to take its place

on the ephemeral

throne where we reigned 

for what seemed 

a long time.

 

KDL

 

 

 

 

 

Inspired by a dream after watching the film Force Majeure:

 

The Ice Palace

 

Underneath the crust of snow

the dreamer lies frozen

in attitude and semblance

long and well forgot.

 

The thinnest hindrance 

between stillness and movement

is still enough to fix one 

left underneath.

 

Air above. 

Immobility below.

The mind swims 

through rooms that never were.

Ice passages

built by demons

who know the

architecture of the mind

and replicate its 

labyrinth

with unholy precision.

The only way out is known only

to the dreamer

but forgot and recrystallized

in each searching swathe.

 

KDL

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inspired by Hilary Mantel's novel and the recent Masterpiece mini-series, Wolf Hall:

 

Wolf Hall

 

Once we lived in three dimensions,

only three, yet enough for us then.

By lamp and paper and wool,

we lived both part and pattern

of the world, woven from the heft.

Touched and scraped and thrown

to earth by it, subsumed

yet earth-scented and amused--

by the lift of an eyebrow, a jest,

knowing naught but what we found

before us: what we read in scrolls,

what was told to us by a priest,

by a child, by the moon.

 

 

KDL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the perspective of one of the characters in the book I'm working on now:

 

 

Rhapsode

 

 

I am a killer in 

my false worlds;

I depose and dispose,

ruthless

as required.

 

Who is that other self

wielding swords and scythes,

who calls forth, unyielding,

smothering and suicide;

such acts

the rational self

would call a betrayal

and a lie.

 

With story comes

violence, woven in,

the thin thread of nature

running through

the skein.

 

KDL