168. Cattle through the Peepholes

circles:
blinking eyes
beyond,
eyelashes long and
golden, dusty;
flies
interspersed

still yet
moving,
inches become
miles,
through alchemy
to kilo-
metres

skin beneath
metal,
air beneath
exhaust fumes:
and in the driver’s seat
the unthinking
be-jeaned,
be-plaid-shirted
blue collar
robot

driving,
surviving,

one eye:

glassy,
still, and
searching

158. BUBBLE

For whom?

do the
hollow shelves
wait

the dusky
archives and
yellowed
magazines
beckon –

The
ants still
mill about,
carts rolling,
volumes flitting
back
upon
shelves;

Frictionless
vacuums
where
children
play

algorithms and
formulae
[formulas?] and
conservation of
energy &
mass and
momentum;

acceleration,
inclined planes and
laws of
Newton:

Silence on the floor,
despite the
creaking of
cubicles,
clicking of
lights,
buzzing of
4-year-old
Sony
Vaios…

154. Salon des Refusés

He sits beside me,
only seat at a
crowded
intersection:

Old –
what a horrid
word;
wrinkled up,
frail, and
gauntly
tall.

Why are you here?
I would like to ask,
not judging
nor rudely,
but genuinely
curious

Abstracts
flicker
flacker,
dancing ‘cross the
pixels,
zebra manuscripts
painted
in cathode rays

Treatment
Medication
Lifestyle factors
Genetic component

headlines

Headlines:
receding,
newspapers clippings saved,
lay study
summaries

And yet isn’t science,
isn’t research
a mystery,
as cryptic as the
things they
study

147. Little Litany

Little unborn
fetus,
peeking through the
window of a
burrowed
egg:

Sympathetic arteries
trail to and
from your
thumping
body

So exposed, so
fragile: your heart is
beating; it is
a tiny
miracle –
a strange thing
to see such
inner workings
crudely
revealed

We are
injecting you with
strange
fluids,
failing to
explant
you

We have
mangled the
yolk and
you are blurred
in
the aftermath;

Upon rediscovery
you are
hovering,
heartbeats
faltering

I am so
sorry

I say, over and
over as
you fade, as your
heart
stills

Poor little
chicken embryo,
I am so
sorry;

We are discarding you into
a plastic
bucket
used for
cherry
picking some
summers
ago

I would like to
say a
prayer for your
unborn
soul

But I am not
religious, and we
are surrounded by
uncommon
melancholy

Or I am,
as the others leave and
discuss their
weekend plans

I am left,
devastated – for
what?

The sacrilege of a
stifled life,
dissected and
discarded

I am haunted,
and I am
so,
so
sorry.

120. Bell A23C

As all good actors,
I act so well I forget
the role:

All of a sudden, I
abandon self and
reclaim you.

Only after the
trance I look,
disgusted at myself.

Copy of a copy,
designed artificiality:

false grain repeating on
false planks of wood;
modems glowing in their
green domains,

chanting mutely in the winter breeze

We are all the same
only I am clever enough to
copy, copy
for I am too afraid to
disrupt this elaborate,
sickening
suffocation

for I
must

109. Radieux, étranger

2 galaxies collide,
silent in the airless
universe:
what are the chances;
what is the
probability!

Quantification cannot classify,
instruments cannot perceive;
exhilaration of the unknown
exalts the most uncharted
mysteries.

As we part, there are
stars in the sky, in
the streetlamps.
Moving on our separate paths,
destined for our solitary
niches,
it is so beautiful
we can meet in such
covert darkness, ephemeral,
out of the millions of the collisions
that could have been,
and never will be
again!

102. Caenochrysis

Image source:

http://bugguide.net/node/view/329223/bgimage

Dust settles mutely,
silent snow on gilded spines;
sunlight dyes the untouched leaves
more acrid shades of sand:

Turquoise glistens in the naïve lights;
photons dance upon the lacquered orb.
It is a scarab, it is some ancient
relic:

Pausing in the untold centuries,
a single timeless beauty rests,
beckoning amidst the desert of
celibate academia;

There is the long-faded scent of
crushed cigars, the strange perfume
of crystallized ink.
There are forgotten letters left
half-written on the desk:

How do we reconcile –
colours?
A catch of azul light,
ephemeral on the patio
furniture
reflects in the flower-stamped dress
of a young girl next door:

Some unknown beetle specimen
hovers soundlessly, brief on the false
lilies of the polyester fabric:
it’s like a factory, there is this
lovely hue everywhere –
but there is only one shade like this,
glistening everywhere,
landing noiselessly in the
obscurely dappled shrubs;

all others steal the eyes
for just as long,
but it is this precise,
indescribable swatch
we struggle the rest of our lives
studying, searching,
never truly describing,
recreating.

68. 2:05 P.M.

This is my second time in the
human anatomy lab.

I am all alone this time;

I need some time to process
what we learned today –

Or maybe just time to come to terms
with death.
In high school
we did things with
sheep eyes, pig foetuses.
But a human: a donated
human body
could be me,
could be my own
mother.

Ah, death:
we become spare
parts,
donated
graciously to
labs, to Body Worlds,
to patients needing
organ transplants:

I held a brain in my hands today,
and I cried.
I cried
for the temporality of life,
for my own mortality.

All alone this time in the
human anatomy lab,
it is quiet, and
strange.
Preservatives fill my nose;
I am intoxicated with
formaldehyde.

Always alone,
after the crowds and lines have gone,
alone:
on a cold metal
foldable tray,
stuffed away in some
morgue, some cemetery, some lab;
and we become spare
parts,
and we cry,
for the temporality of life,
for our own mortality.

38. Numbers

Curious things,
cold, soulless.
Always proving,
always searching,
never feeling,
never answering.
Barren:
spread in artificial
rows,
matrices, leading
nowhere;
[Incoherent musings
of a foreign deity.]
It is what I have chosen,
enlightenment;
strangely –
I am drifting farther,
closing into a realm
I do not
belong.

4. Uncertainty

contained in the infinite eve of Choice,
hovering in the great stillness of Night –
reflecting the world in one glassy Eye,
succumbing to the inevitable pull of – Gravity?