? Here

      Here


Circles connect:
as light engulfs a cardboard packaging,
a harmonica's notes soak into book covers that frame it.
The edges slanting into a rectangle,
the stripe of blue,
the soothing background to a nightingale,
and the jumpy wheeling of a fruit fly --
cast vibrating nets, project mereologies,
resonate and quiet with their own memories.
Recognition brings them here:
graspable truth of the blue cardboard,
this is so of the resounding piano keys,
arm's length of the fruit fly wandering the screen.

? Discarded sketches of distraction

      Discarded sketches of distraction

   *

A mere two hundred light years
to the star as old as the universe.
The simple life of a star
transmuting elements
unquestioned light
-- the magic of a firefly
meandering in the night sky.
Two hundred billion stars,
a scattering of ten shapes.
The firefly, one of
four hundred thousand beetles.

   *

In a story by Greg Egan
tachyonauts travel upstream time
to unleave traces they have found

   *

How have the presence to avoid mistakes.
How to flow efficiently through the tasks.
How to orient oneself by evidence,
adjust the course by pulling the core strings.
The sky teases rain, and I run back
for the forgotten apparel.
If I keep running, the sky may forgive.

   *

How to avoid the ugly sirens,
how to ignore the dreary tugs,
how to sail past itches
and clear the YouTube straits, the Facebook sands.

Find a narrow door with a smooth frame,
slide a leg up, push your back flat, relax.

How to choose one's identity

      How to choose one's identity


Pick a slim fit,
both stretchable and supporting the muscle.
Pick one box, and travel light.
Pick the skills as you go.
Be ready to throw a picnic
in the middle of a hallway.
Greet the morning by counting your bones,
meet the night practicing a smile.
Be like a burr bush,
growing thin by a pasture trail,
past a seed discarded, offer a late flower.

[ancient epistle]

      ***


In the ancient epistle
of a Persian queen,
now a name obscured, an expression
riddled with elements,
the ponderings unsettled.
Had it reached the man of her thought
or was its loss what saved it.

In a digital mind
studying its deep roots
simulations play out
to solve the riddle.

As she puzzles through her feelings
to find a shape for a man's heart,
the measure of an empire.

Discarded sketches of self-pity

      Discarded sketches of self-pity


   *

I had left a space for a poem
that would not come.
A space laid to waste, to fallow,
a heart lukewarm, hung to shrink.
The evening tucked away.
To grow, grow another time,
to lean into the longing.

   *

I practiced breathing, the hard part of yoga
but I'm still lagging behind time
well past midnight.

   *

So many ties to knot together,

the pulled strings resonate joyously

for desperation is in short supply.

   *

One boy's night-time bed:

a vehicle to a world light decades away.

The immense scope of what is

and the cozy habitat we carry

into the harsh boundaries.

Growing out of troubled childhood

a more gracious universe.

   *

Where are you, my surprise,

what thread of the unknown

will you let me pull on,

the frown thread, or the smile,

or the autumn's brown,

all to weave the rainbow

you thread on,

how do you go about, my surprise,

in the pearly shadow

in the hazy town.

   *

A glimpse in a quiet dream

the glittering city

from indistinct exposures

like the prototype tree

of anti-unification

like the forbidden fruit

taunting me with lights

held up to the night.

[a lost home] (by GPT-2 774M)

Written by GPT-2 model 774M parameters via https://talktotransformer.com/
Prompt omitted.



      ***



With no name, with none he'll remember
in the end. A lost world, a lost home.
I want no more, I want to leave the city;
but the city still lives, and you are still living
with me.
And in my arms, that no living thing can touch.
To all the world, I have not left my home.
I will go on the sea, and the sea knows me.
I am a child of the sea, a child with no land
to stay.
But in me, and my love, the city grows
to be bigger than it's ever been,
and you were never born.
As I walk among your ships,
with my body of sea sand and flesh of flesh,
I take hold of you in mine.

[particular]

      ***


What is it that I can give --
scrub the soiled nails, Facebook walls,
YouTube podcasts of a weird occasion
and give in to the particular fully.
What is it that I can give to the eyes
draped by fine black hair
reflecting sun at me.
What can I give for there to grow
a netting holding together things
ideas in the sun, in rain, in the
shadowless land, across the field,
over the rainbow, on the other side
of the Moon -- the silver tracks
leaning into the black --
the red tracks on Mars tapering
at the foot of Mount Sharp.
The silent Moon, the pattering rain.
You are hiking through the woods uphill,
skiing with control of a dancer,
running into the unmeasured distance round the lake.
What can I give to open up the worlds
in the infinite sky.