Poetry
Two
The Story of Geology
The story of geology has been
to destroy; has been flux and fire;
has been to create just as it should;
has been difficult for living
creatures; has been exploited
and drilled; contains fossils
as concentrated centers of
petrified time, markers of strange
places, lifted from seas unto
mountains, lifted from low
to high, to skies, to ridiculous
heights to be discovered by people
later caught in ice; buried stomach
contents reveal last meals and head
holes reveal human nature; broken
arms healed and unhealed, recovered
and not recovered; paleolithic people
lived longer and had better teeth, had
more stable social systems, made art
with time to develop as a
community-supported activity, art
that lasted and still lasts, art
that follows cave’s curve, art
that disintegrates in rain, that dissolves
in breath, art that takes place
in the center of a circle, in earth’s
heart, performed; the story of art and
geology has been of quarries, of pigments,
of ochres, of sienas, of terre vertes, of
haematites, of lead, of transparent
mummies, of malachite, of lapis
lazuli in war zones and continually
shifting to new sources glimpsed on
satellite or worked out via computer
models, then treaties and currency
in exchanges, the exchanges of thin
lines drawn over large areas of
land; or sometimes following rivers
or other barriers, mountain ranges
cutting off peninsulas and then
mysterious languages; from a world
created just as it should be are water
levels cresting, is a river that floods,
are grasses, drought, and cracked soil,
are mudslides, wildfires and debris,
are minerals, large cracks and white
expanse of salt breaking speed
records. The story is all of your
canvas being lost at sea, is an
avalanche, is a split-second decision.
The story is heat, oil and light.
Everyone is sleeping; everyone
will have been caught
in that position; everyone will
have left breakfast dishes; murals
will have been preserved and
their colors will be bright and
beautiful. Someone will fill in
the paints and guess at what
the faces used to look like. All
of it lost, all of it found. All your
visitations, all your pilgrimages,
to suffer over the fields of
razor-sharp stones on your
knees, carrying an easel on
your back and the solar-
powered 3-D printer. You
will set it up in the hottest,
sunniest spot; it will be a
temperature unsurvivable
for humans, everyone else will
be huddled in biodomes
with desalinization plants
smoking on the horizon, as
the artist you are invulnerable,
you will set it up and each knob
you twist and turn will
shape an enormous pile
of plastic gathered from under
each tree, from the sides of rivers
and creeks, from trash cans along
mountains, from highways and
trails, from the insides of fish
stomachs, from the centers of seas—
all in the world that is permanent
versus all in the world that is fragile
and temporary. All that persistent
detritus must at last degrade back
into a spectrum of colors, which
will stay through erosion whether
over and under, color to persist
through breathe and ground—that
will be your greatest invention still
and your story to tell.
“tremor of form”
on six-foot areas of placement, or less than (fewer than)
uncountable persons agglutinated to
mass of eyes impossible to control
the prism of the drawing tool would cause the fabric to
hence causing the line to curve hence the bird flies counter
to the textiles the reclaiming of what litter
would be it like that would be somewhat like
that if I thought toward you would be kind of somewhat
you moving along the timeline you ahead a sort of dot
and behind us that pluralized group all hands legs and eyes
digging behind them as they move looking for something they
don’t have didn’t have not looking ahead as they push
causing the fabric to give a little yarning it up
the pool on the street is of threads the spigot is giving it up hence causing
it being colors, fraying if color can fray
hence causing the line to curve not square
don’t square your shoulders continue as dot you
will be ungraspable circular, unpursuable
in this discussion just as I or would like to compare
how genes are absorbed in in absolute space
the response to existence in
absolute space (or under incredible pressure)
as one repairs itself to drift forward in deep ocean
as one is self-repairing in deep space
yet lacks motivation intense gravity
or motivation is not part or intense lack of gravity
of the repair process
causes migraine or religious
fervor to be alone in this void
home of this us all together
you:
enlighten in light then this tentative essay
that from either side half glows
gold versus
lead
in weights how much
lean back or in wood
or small part of one
I reach and take, asking
“what is the
primary duty of repair”?
how can I apologize for my echoes?
you silent over here
allowing me to pilfer
silver, gold, silver, gold
columbite-tantalite
extract
niobium
tantalum
extract
columbite
no not silence, deafness
tin, arsenic, copper, gallium amplifier, receiver
gold indium magnesium (compounds) electrical circuitry
palladium platinum silver amplifier, receiver
tungsten electrical circuitry
electrical circuitry
electrical circuitry
liquid crystal display liquid crystal display
mica, sheet
diamond, dust, grit and powder
aluminum
antimony
arsenic
asbestos, copper
gemstones, graphite, gallium
indium, iodine, manganese
quartz, crystal, tin, tungsten
titanium
not silence, deafness one side
my impermeability you are not silent
at all, I find over centuries I start
to hear what you are saying, barely
same components as mirrors same components as reflections
between symmetry and asymmetry
line off glass and lead mercury
arsenate of lead quicksilver
lining a fast reflection
a flash but no blur
rather
a recollection
a small contaminant
the angle of incidence
ahead of the reflection
like that, calling across a distance
wishing across a distance
everything across a distance
if I take one step and divide in half
then divide in half again
and again we never arrive at
where we could be
so, void, or voids
the voids Descartes sketched void to void, oval with dark
spaces between the void and how we
are not aware of other bodies blind to what’s ahead
of our heads: see, see!
