Poem: Space Dreams
A bleak little piece from that blink-and-you-missed-it heartbeat between 9/11 and Iraq. I was browsing 'space art' from the 1960s and reflecting on how the dream of the Space Age had turned to be illusion. Even Stanley Kubrick missed it; the artists' visions then were all about how we'd cope as humans with massive mega-engineering projects in space, not on how there'd be struggles to keep 30-year-old technology flying.
The phrase 'grieved for falling shards' seems ominous in retrospect, as if this were a pre-requiem for Columbia. There were no manned US disasters in orbit before 2003, so why did the word 'grief' come to mind? I think I was thinking of Skylab and Apollo 13. But this makes a pair with 'Angel Falling', though it wasn't intended that way.
we had such visions then
sketched water-colour shapes
of star utopias
and one small pale blue world
the sky was not enough
to hold our upturned gaze
we counted satellites
and grieved for falling shards
the night was rich and blue
it seemed we had grown wings
and godlike strummed the dawn
to touch all things with grace
it broke, that fevered sweat
in which we were alive
into the quiet dark
we fell with no complaint
and now the moon is high
on concrete and on crime
it shines with cold delight
and calls our future, blood
Poem: Oh Jerusalem
2002, the Second Intifada kicked into flaming overdrive by Bush's cowboy vendetta. Blood on all hands. Somewhere in Jerusalem there is an olive tree planted in the name of my mother. When peace comes even here, surely that will be the end of the age.
Oh Jerusalem
i have no words
i have no tears
i cannot weep
i cannot breath
the offering burned
the olive crushed
the plastique shroud
the gunship dawn
an eye for an
will die by the
let not one stone
shall fight unto
Oh Bethleham
Oh Tel Aviv
Oh Sharon
Oh Hamas
Pray
Pray for
Pray for the
pieces of Jerusalem
Poem: Lifters
When the Lifter phenomenon began to break. Most of the Lifters themselves didn't demonstrate any anomalous effects, the thrust being explained by electrohydrodynamic effects of ion wind, but the legend of the 'true' Biefeld-Brown Effect - the miniscule, barely detectable variant which shows up, impossibly, in hard vacuum, and even then only in transient spikes - persists.
Lifters
for Jean-Louis Naudin
I.
Triangle of tin
foil and balsa, wire and glue
so my spirit soars.
II.
Thirty kilovolts
is the breakdown point of awe
this force has no name.
III.
Discs in autumn cloud
sunspot blurs on Kodachrome
how long did they lie?
IV.
Webcam videos
capture frozen images
scales tipping up -
V.
Tesla, Townsend Brown
legend, alchemy, deceit
-- but it flies, it flies!
Poem: ’01
After Afghanistan, before Iraq. That gut feeling: 'Oh God NO!' Seeing America signing her death warrant, yoking her future to a reborn Cold War, running eagerly, insanely to death like a child across a highway. A stark vision of perpetual war come home the only way it could, as civil war. It hasn't happened yet: I'd say God forbid, but can even God forbid a path that has not yet been unchosen?
'01
There was a dream I had
it went like this:
black wings among the clouds
a fractured hiss
of gas escaping
in the broken night
and ghosts among the rubble
bone-slick white
there was no sun at all
it had been weeks
since rain had stirred the cracked
and oil-drowned peaks
of ruined gallerias,
churches, banks
the freeways choked with
rusting trackless tanks
and coldly glowing cancer
burned my eyes;
I walked as fast I could.
The haunted skies
resounded with the shrieks
of wounded jets
they spiralled down in fury.
I forget
the weeks I wandered,
lost and dazed
somehow I found a green
secluded grave
there lay a single headstone
sketched in chalk
'Here lies America the Great.
She trusted War.'
Poem: Blood
After Afghanistan, or in the run-up to it. I guess I was going for something of the rhythm of Auden's 'September 1, 1939' which saturated the Net in those weeks.
The big moral question put to me was: Our brave men in uniform are willing to give their lives for our 'freedom', who are YOU to object?
And it's still a good question. On what authority can I call fighting people to peace, when peace for them may mean desolation of all they hold sacred? What am I willing to sacrifice for peace, if peace indeed comes by sacrifice?
I never did travel to a war zone. I would like to support those peace workers who do go though.
Blood
You say that only blood
can wash the earth -
of crime, and terror,
bankers' debts accrued
that pain has been the
engine of rebirth
since heroes learned to hate
the gods they slew -
I see your talking mouths
on every screen
in concrete bunkers
or in boardroom chairs
resplendent in your passion,
you careen
from holocaust to jihad
and declare
"Our noble cause is righteous -
None before
Have chanced upon this
Whiter, Brighter, Way
This is our best salvation:
Total war
This is your only freedom:
To obey"
and we, who after decades
of command
have learned to kiss the bomb
and serve the fries
forgive us if we do not
understand
why demons lurk
in starving children's eyes
You say that blood is power -
then this blood
of mine, perhaps, will travel
to a place
where righteous missiles
rain in killing flood
from holy satellites
in Western space
And if my blood should stand
between the stars
and oil seeping from the
broken land
perhaps I would be justified
to ask
that Time put down her gun,
reach out her hand
And if not - love has fortunes,
same as war
And blood for blood breeds blood -
but love breeds more.
Poem: Geodesics
From 2001 - before 9/11. Surfing for images of the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows (and that was before Google Earth). Rumours that a geodesic dome had survived and was being used by the zoo. A piece of iconic furniture, quietly rotting away like most of Buckminster Fuller's visions - too far ahead of their time, yet a time that must surely come.
I visited in 2002 but never did see that dome. I hope it's in good shape.
Geodesics
Through splash of autumn trees, a dome
- bright flash of metal-fire
silver meshwork gleaming dimly
overhung with twilight vines
I remember geodesics
crisp in magazine-gloss
the smell of holographic futures
inflatable homes and gardens
The prefab world we bought those mornings
faded under windswept skies
- slow fall into adulthood
knowledge bleak as winter dawn
Somewhere snowdrifts bury radomes
drydocked gunboats rust in peace
Echelon unplugged - a dance of voices
remapping the flat Earth to a sphere
Poem: And Now It Is The Year
A poem for the year 2000. Remember those days? Seems so long ago. I'd been dreading the century's worst downer for a decade. When it came the moment was unexpectedly hopeful.
And Now It Is The Year
midnight, sunrise
a wet dawn
on an ancient beach
billboards in Bethlehem
violins in Greenwich
rockets in Chechnya
and now it is the year -
and the dance continues
so much for destiny
so much for the world made new
- oh, but can't you feel it?
it is here. it is soft. it is rising.
see it pouring through
the old stone arches
yellowing cathedrals and
the dead wood shrines
burns like radium,
spreads like virus,
heals like water
shouts like rock 'n' roll
in the song of quiet spaces
hidden places
in the city's cracks
here you touch it, growing
in this time between the names
there is chaos
there is order
and there, there again,
is life
Poem: Man of the Century
1999.
Man of the Century
a moment's silence
if you will
lift your glasses
to the late remembered
century
he was a man -
how best to say it?
he was a man
for good or ill
who thought large
lived high
knelt in the trenches
gazed at the sun -
yes, burned his eyes
from gazing -
grew wings,
breathed fire,
bottled lightning,
sold the moon
all these things and more
he was, he did, he saw -
saw further than the giants
because he had outlived them -
made his own law,
wrote his own play,
stripped myth from the trees,
painted his own shadow
he was proud - yes,
we can say that of him
gentle? - no,
he was not always that
he was a man
of speed and thunder
always planning
always building
piling surprise on subterfuge
hurling us like locomotives
at one reckless visionary future
after another
do we miss him? - no,
we do not all do that
he was not a man
shy of making enemies
there are some here
who will remember
the wire, the steel, the light
there are some
who will never forget
and there are even some who feel
he stepped too carefully
well - we all have scars
to remember him by
as well as roses
he has left us legacies
dark and bitter,
electric and intoxicating -
champagne mixed with malt
so let us drink
to his memory
one glass, enough
to see the old brute off
wherever he's headed -
wish him well
the world is ours now
to break
and to the future -
pour one for yourselves -
here's to our children
and the toys we're passing on
may they live to weep their loss
more honestly
than we do ours