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Struggling wordlessly into the light

Startling eruption of limb

As green as green has ever been

Flowing and fumblingly growing

Out of dark moist cloister

Hail Mary

Blessed is the fruit

Of thy womb

Pray for us now.

We are born

Sun seekers

Gargantuan

Being-eaters

To be eaten

Composable

Cooperation of cell

Atomistic apostles of Aten.

Those on Earth come from your hand as you made them

When you have dawned they live

When you [have gone] they die

You yourself are lifetime, one lives by you

All eyes are on your beauty until you set

All labour ceases when you rest in the west.

Deliciously off-kilter

Younglings

Rare and delicate

Star-fire flowers

Bestowers of heart

Murderous and monstrous

Little mesdames et messieurs

Wyrdlings of woe and wonder

Gigglous adorations

Time’s incarnations.

An ash I know, Yggdrasil its name,

With water white is the great tree wet;

Thence come the dews that fall in the dales,

Green by Urth's well does it ever grow.

…Laws they made there, and life allotted

To the sons of men, and set their fates.

Each and every

A-symmetry

Or fault

Is ready to take that shape

And form uniquely our own

If only we can survive

The violence

Of glorious

Juvenescence

That most exciting journey to behold

For the gods and the old.

The Spirit is not born and does not die

It does not come into being or cease

It is not destroyed with the passing of the body

So why do you cry?

Broadening boughs

Pushing down roots

Weathering wizening

Procreators

Strange standing waves

Beautifully cracked

Hallow vessels

That sing when touched

Strengthening to girth

Heavier crowns.

Good God

Grace a’me

Bless mine

Hold time

Momentarily.

Quick spinning seasons

Where everything speeds

Achingly open spaces

Free for next year's trees

Identities distilled

To essence

Sapping slowly

Dissolving memory

Hinting of patiently

Waiting eternity.

All living things decay

They cannot stay.

Be

Carefully

To gain your

Salvation.

Cleave

The bonds

That bind.

Reflect, refract

The undying light.

Though we may grieve

There is no staying grief

We are life’s loves

Labours lost

That leaf

Then leave

The Nam Kang is their playground

***

Your children have suffered much

From your beauty and your weakness

Their children will suffer for their beauty too

***

But their smiles

Ngaam lai, ngaam lai lai

And their warmth

Khawp jai, lai lai.

***

Luang Prabang:

A jewel on a pinhead

Trying to balance

I awoke to the dawn without you

The first light of the day

Illuminated only your absent shadow

The memory of you

Burned in my mind

Before I had opened my eyes

Only yesterday

We drifted together contentedly

And, with just one arm,

I enclosed you completely

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Speaking different languages within hearing distance

And always the river's lullaby

Its sweetly caressing song:

***

"your differences are arbitrary

if only you would know

and like my distant tributaries

you form the same great flow"

***

Two days we drifted languidly

Past elephant and buffalo

And children playing free

***

All

As we

Schooled daily

In flowing

Sagacity

"Something to do with violence a long way back

and wrong rewards and arrogant eternity"

(Phillip Larkin)

***

A blood-letting of sorts

heralded your first day here.

Prehistoric beast that you seemed in your fear.

***

Fear that needed, needs still, a little more

than a kick in the teeth and three words to heal.

***

Confusion inevitably ensued,

and the twisted fears turn us all inside-out,

or rather, they skew our futures with incessant demands,

for a placation we may never fully discover.

***

OK think! (you were warned early on)

Come on, on your feet......I lie.

More like:

You bas-havethis-fuckyou-hateyou-

loveme-alllovewefuckinghateall

....loveyouson.

***

Though the last three words,

came so much later than you ever deserved.

***

Hardly surprising the confusion never dissipated,

but mutated,

in your sense of what it was you might allow yourself to become.

I suppose that's enough of that, a little of what I can imagine.

***

But what I am trying to say is that,

perhaps I can hold fast enough to make an attempt,

(full-hearted and half-arsed as it may be -

as most things are condemned to be)

an attempt to retract from blame and recrimination,

to slow the continual clockwork of hurt

and ask something simple.

***

Can we try and make sense of it as Father and Son?

***

Though you can never have your Dad back,

to ask some questions or talk,

and I don't expect miracles

-us holding hands as we walk

into a bright new dawn-

***

Can we just try

to use both our heads,

to recover some reasons

for the blood-letting of sorts,

that permeates both our lives

and which leaves us with words to try and heal

reality as we've known it,

as we approach it...

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(Rainer Marie Rilke on Therapy)

Sallow-skinned with large pale watery eyes

Such a translucent child her blue blood shows

I swear the whole world can see her fragile life

Pulsing through her veins

Hardly enough skin to separate her

From the world around

Her enormous consciousness includes whole worlds

Television springs such tears

A paternal scolding could never bring

***

A frail and beautiful life she is

She will need fierce angels to watch over her

She will learn to push the world away

Separate, distinct, with a façade of arrogance

She will learn the human art:

Of turning papery skin into the toughest of hides

Of hiding a fiercely emotional heart

Under layers of indifference

***

One day she will come to me, wondering

How it was so easy to lose all she held dear

Why it is so hard to regain her innocence

Without losing the distance she needs

One day she will come to me

With child's eyes still, that say:

"Look what the world's done to me"

***

I wouldn't have it any other way

So many thick-skinned thick-skulled people

Are the cause of her pain

I'm so glad she can't become

The thing she has always hated

***

Seeking a balance

She will learn to tread carefully

Nurturing her emerging wisdom

Holding back just enough

So her precious understanding

Is not stolen by the world

***

She will then learn her thickened skin

Kept her blue blood flowing,

And so kept mine

Continued from Part 1

Little escaped their minute attentions and predations:

The Soul, an early casualty

Of more precise instrumentation

Senescence, just another

Dragon to be slayed*

The Mysteries gave way

To complex refutation

***

Too few paused

To wonder whether

Ever quicker

Computation

Would unleash the

Ancient iron law

Of more is less

***

Their stupid siblings

Were burned

To turn

The world

Into a treasure store

Of Information

***

Confusing translation

With transliteration

The more they spoke life’s language

The less they understood or felt

Mistakenly equating

Increase in years and complex calculations

With the tally

Of quick life well spent

***

They redoubled their

Promethean labours

Crafting Robota

To build machines

…that built machines

……that built machines

And so on ad infinitum

Some said a diabolical Matryoshka

***

They dared not give

Inhuman slaves the freedom:

To learn from error

Or salvation

Through suffering

To earn their Souls

History had well taught them:

The likely outcomes of

Unequal power and

Father Time’s

Age-old indifference

As to which offspring of Man

Would survive or fall

***

Our Homo Deus

Could not completely

Remit the defects in their code

They suffered shapeless nameless longings

Then shook their metaphoric heads

To quiet age-old carbon glitches

Destruction of their natural world

And diverse relations

Was more than compensated

By crypto minted promises

Of endless Metaversal riches

(Where anyone

Could be anything

Or many things

And everything goes)

The Cynic’s lantern

Outshone the sun that day

***

Unless, by chance, you long:

To hear the

Soporific susurrating

Tumbling bumble

Bees at glean in

Myriad-hued meadows

Or the startling

Murmuration of

Starlings curling

Shadows

Athwart the twilit sky;

To scent the earthy musk arising

Whenever tear shaped water falls

From heaven

To cleanse the dust

That blinds us

(Sharp coppery hint

Of a spilt heart)

***

Proudly believing they were

The Alexander of Nature

Our unwitting (though ingenious)

Double agents

Rejoiced in their emancipation

A new Divinity was forged

Despite young Werner’s warning

They demanded greater calibration

At every scale and throw

They soon forgot:

Diversity in proliferation

Was first cause

And only destination

In chaotic life’s

Intrepid innovation

***

At every chance

Sleight Homo Deus

Disputed their own

Mother Nature

Their archaic algorithmic

Alma Mater

Could be decoded

Yet ne’r destroyed

***

She (half-sleeping) watched on

One eye open:

Entire and entirely lacking

fear, rancour or favour.

***

The Poets rejoiced again in

Ancient chorus:

“The chance for change

The binding Law

Given by our Maker

We do her bidding

When we most rebel

The Laws of Life

Can not be broken

By your Science

Or our magic spells”

***

* See Nick Bostrom’s “The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant"

Part 1 — the rise of the Innovators*

Once

Upon a time

There was a place

(Deep in a gravity well)

Where the tick tocking of time

Had ran on ever and a day

At the same pace

***

Nothing much happened

In that Arcadian land

If by nothing

You will discount

The circadian rhythm

Of love, life and death

And the unspeakable wisdom

Shared by all living things

Sorrow and suffering

Were no strangers here either

The world turned as it ever had

With little perceptible change

***

Until there came a time when a generation of innovators arose

Their leader Moskin foretold of a new dawn for Man

Their goals were as lofty as they were broad:

To dissect the nature of light

Tirelessly unweaving rainbows and

Scoring the music of the spheres

Building ziggurats of knowledge

To outreach the nearer heavens

They freed themselves from bondage

To their historic chthonic fears

***

Moskin proved one could

Slow the passage of time

By accelerated activity

And so the pace of daily life

Increased to a frenzied pace

Each person began to dream

The dream of endless life

This world’s animals, plants and trees

Were excluded from the new hope

Of immortality

They stupidly persisted

Living and dying

In the same old quick ways

***

A kind of conservation

Could clearly be seen

Each new technology

And extra day of life gained for mortal Man

Was paid for in an increase in the speed of

Slavery and death of the other species of living things

The contract — if one can call it that —

Seemed well struck for our bright new Men

***

After a time the people

Had almost forgotten

The genesis stories of old

Of immortal beings that once gave birth

To fast dying life and terribly mortal Man

Despite and amidst this brave new dawn

The outcast Maker tribe still sang

Of the magic that precedes

Measurement and words

***

Led by the holy Akptah

They sang old songs of Man’s sympathy

With all forms that carry the fire

Reminding Man in the age of innovation

Of a brotherhood and bond

Writ in the oldest language

From when first the clay grew tall

Even before the spoken word

Hymning of wordless wisdom

***

Singing:

“When we slow time

With speed

And fuel our fires

With the burnt offerings

Of our brethren

What we gain

Must be conserved

By what is lost

Countless are

The steps of the Tao

To the eternal.

Your unholy grasp of time

Will end in tears

A day in the light of wisdom

Is as a thousand years”

***

The poets were ridiculed (or humoured)

By these perennial neo-people:

Strange artefacts

Myopic mystics

Fast-dying remnants

From slow time

When Man

Knew so much less

***