helpless in the net
raining in Los Angeles
animal, mineral, vegetable,
lost, the iPhone will be as ancient
as the fax machine, abacus,
cuneiform tablet google Nexus, nano-
virus, Siri, blink— only the gears are eternal
gears are the myth of the soul which needs
grease, so grease it, grief, all things
need tending, try to hold it safe
outside of time
the bits flow off, disintegrate, coalesce in the air
as starlings, rust-flakes are spark-flowers then
in the mineralizing and oxidized air
the data mined chords strike up their clouds,
the tilting horizon , tilts
imaginary towering garden skyscrapers raise up
heaven’s oracular orb churning those patterns out, mackerel
sky, gulf-stream, the spinning globe redundant with its
molecular machines. protein-
chain synthesis, pair-bonds, steel-
beams, up and up, we go
“atmospheric river” they say, as if we are children,
as if air was water, as if all was just one phase change away
a handful of motley gasses grew grasses in the haphazard
fields of the sun, O ungulate O biped O tongue
O cement honeycomb cataclysm in orbit O symbiont of soul formed skyscrapers and secreted rhythms O superhighways O plastic bag islands of our century O to have
been born at all and here, no less, like this no less. it is the 21st century since we started counting and look! this is what we have made (?) children in the market-data-points aggregated and analyzed in the vast and soulless algorithm of the vaster,
bigger, soul, face-paint, football, synthesized flute-loop, they are dancing on the
internet again
I had no word for it because it was a new thing; the swarm
of the satellites outside heaven bleating and bleating the night sky surround
sound around O earth we have made you a necklace and a ladder
we have made you a soft gown
the mechanism was right there, before us
it is surprising we didn’t see it before
the aerial field the pasture the pavement the city blocks cellular matrix and me
on my couch my dog snoring slightly the pale light lightening over the dark hill
opposite me, coffee in the mug with geese on it, coffee beans from somewhere
“hyperbolic geometry” “the doctrine of digital surveillance” who hasn’t
drawn a cock-and-balls on a cathedral, grinning ape of my same hands, same
heart, same thirst, that the first word was either mother or a curse