Jewel Matrix

Writing is the multiverse
Looking slowly down
Lit corridors that time besieged
In the palace of your soul.
Split phases of you get written
Every time you put words to the page,
Each version of your self reborn
Through elastic ink of cosmic calligraphy
Journalized in quantum fragments.
Each self is preserved in time
Like balanced atoms in a crystal
Maintaining order through prismatic patterns
In a starry delirium of dimensions.
Opening the jewel box of your journal
You find portals to other worlds
Where you existed in a social gravity
Shaped by pyramidal decisions,
Distorted by rhombic desires,
Destined by parallel stories,
Constructed by the people you knew.

Blokus Wars

    The little square said to the big square, you are four times my size. The little L said that the big L, you are one block longer than me. The five-square shapes were larger than the 4-square shapes, but they did not boast about it. The 3-square shapes knew they'd be selected last, or possibly abandoned, yet they served.
    All the 5-square shapes joined ranks, conspiring to reach the center faster than the other side. They zigzagged in a razzmatazz, lances drawn with pizzazz. Forward they cried, the smaller pieces picking up the rear. In a disembodied, shapeless pattern they lay down their lives on the board, filling squares on the checkered battleground.
    Breaching the center, they cried with triumph, as the longest piece blocked the enemy from flanking. In parallel ribbons, their offense became defense, filling the voids left from within. Second colors joined in the ranks, forging a quadruple rainbow of frenzy. To the four corners they expanded, taking up space where they could, grasping for extra life, clawing at inevitable spaces for survival.
    The colors were rivers of compromise, redirected by external choice. They danced with their opponent like yin and yang, in a finite braid. They took what the environment gave them, as people often will. The few that were left did not succumb to failure, only the sadness of being unneeded.
    When the war was over, the squares that were still open sighed at not being covered, yearning for one of the unfit shapes to transform into something that would. Structurally the matrix decoded a blueprint unique to the observer, who followed their circuits into pathways of oblivion. Only the blocks were ignorant of their significance, the mysterious chain of decisions that had determined their fate.

Deism, The Teleological Argument

    Imagine you are stranded on island. You find a complex contraption like a watch that couldn't have been designed by nature. You assume it must have been designed by intelligent beings. When we look at nature, we see a far greater and more complex design. The Teleological Argument suggests that our assumption of an intelligent designer of the watch parallels a designer of the universe on a far grander scale. Deists believe that God is the intelligence behind the orderly structure of the cosmos, having revealed the laws of his design through reason. The inference is that science is more capable of exploring God than faith. There are no divine miracles or revelations that prove the existence of God, only the miracle of an infinitely complex universe with systematic processes.
    A refutation of the Teleological Argument is that it is assumed the watch finder can tell the difference between a design and a non-design. Since the watch is found to be designed, it would seemingly imply that other things around them are not designed. Yes, there cannot be anything in nature with random appearances, so it follows that the watch finder perceives a design in anything they are seeing. My response is, why shouldn't they? A random universe without patterns would be one without reason; there wouldn't be any evidence of a design. So long as reason is the fabric of design, it doesn't matter if a human created it or some other sentient being. A human invention involves no less reason than an alien invention or the physics of the cosmos. A deist doesn't worry about such distinctions.

Rain Nymph

 I woke to the sound of falling rain
 Soaking my sleep clean of the dream,
 Where you looked to the sky as it beat
 Off your face trickling down
 The jungle leaves surrounding you,
 Pattering your closed eyelids,
 Purifying air that refreshed your grace,
 Soiling you to the ground that planted
 Ornaments of youth in my head.
 So fresh, so clean,
 The rain that feeds my heart
 Trickling down, soaking my pain,
 Draining my brain of the gothic muse
 To nurture pearls of flowers
 That bloomed at your feet,
 Screened you from the warmer months
 When the sun melted your skin,
 Cracked your bones, parched your hair,
 Discarded the heavy leaves
 Above you that heaven purged
 Beyond awareness.
 Every year, starting November,
 It rains for days, for months,
 For three quarters of the year,
 Floods my consciousness
 With Gregorian chant
 Channeling some Byzantine goddess
 That engraved your beauty through mist,
 Saturating me
 With the tears you left.

Practical Wisdom

  One of the interesting things about our times that people are living longer than ever, so you would think there's more practical wisdom to pass around. But I feel like we're going the opposite direction by getting more entrenched in consumerist culture. It's unfortunate that with our increasingly aging population, we are not taking advantage of improved life strategies. Our culture is so sedated by media imagery that the elderly don't mature fast enough, they regurgitate some ideology, or succumb to arguing on the internet, or get ignored if they have substantial things to say. To me this is more about brainwashing than a lack of brain power. I'm not letting my kids become addicted to screens for that very reason- one among a myriad of other health benefits.

Bayes' Theorem Gives Universality to Science

    The most interesting book I've read lately is Chivers' "Everything is Predictable", about the universality of Bayes' Theorem and how it applies to every aspect of science, even the decision making of humans. It turns out that our brains are just as logical as the scientific method, which tests a hypothesis by weighing it against prior data and updating the probability that something will happen in a given set of parameters. Bayes' Theorem takes the obvious prior information when frequentism doesn't, presenting a rift in statistical theory.  Frequentism simply measures the probability that something will happen in a given sample without any prior data.
    Modern science has become like mining- mining for data, that is. Why we use frequentism in modern science instead of Bayesian statistics is beyond me. It has helped me realize that science and academia are industries like everything else. Frequentism allows this kind of ruthless publishing whose sole purpose is to ask for more funding. Real science that involves Bayes' Theorem applies prior probabilities to new information. 
    With Bayesian statistics, we realized that knowledge is only a spectrum of what is probable, not what is fact or fiction. Reality is merely the probability that an event will occur given prior conditions, which we test with our brains all the time. In fact, as creatures of reason, it is the principal way we learn to adjust our behavior in the world. The next time you make a decision, think about all the prior information you used to weigh the probability of it being correct or incorrect. It's enough to blow your mind.

The Four Voices

    In Mark Sullivan's "All the Glimmering Stars", the main character learns about four internal voices that contribute to individual suffering. They are rush, or impatience; violence, or justice and anger; lack, or desire; and fear, or doubt. Any time you are suffering by thoughts alone, one of these voices are likely playing in your head, like a recording you can't turn off. And that is why overthinking can be so hurtful. Whenever you catch yourself hearing them, tune them out.
    Rush is when we are multitasking, doing too much, not allowing enough time for the quality our life needs. When we do things fast, we can't be interrupted. We are quick to anger and likely to curse. We hold our breath as if locking it in time, trying to pause it so we can catch up. The cure for rush is a break, vacation, or a reduction in duties; but mostly patience.
    Violence is anger at perceived injustice, whether it is for the self or others. When something isn't fair, we seek balance by returning it to the universe, punishing those we believe deserve it. The cycle of revenge only generates more suffering, both for others and ourselves. We believe we've earned the right to harm because someone has harmed us or our loved ones. The cure for violence is self-control. Only restraint can transform an outburst into calmness.
    Lack is the voice you hear when you want something unattainable. You believe you need it to make you happy or complete. You can't live without it or you'll get nowhere. Pursuing the unattainable will lead to even more mental suffering. There's a saying that even when humans finally get what they want, they only want more, and this comes from lack. The cure for lack is moderation. Find the balance in everything, not the excess of anything.
    Fear is what prevents you from reaching your full potential. The voice of fear tells you you can't, you'll fail, nobody likes you. You won't try new things for fear of change or pain, but the thoughts fear generates already cause it. You'll never know what things are worth if you don't try them. Thus regret lives strong in the voice of fear. The cure for fear is belief. Things will be ok if you give them a chance by believing that even failure can teach you something.  Believe in yourself and others and you will feel more confident and trusting; and most importantly, open to the truth. 
    We cannot let these voices control our lives or cause us harm. Each can increase stress, which in turn can be a leading cause of disease. The fully realized, mentally healthy person does not let the voices make them hesitate. The opposite voices must be heard: patience, calmness, moderation, openness.

Wheatscapes

 East of Montana's glaciers
 There were miles and miles of wheat
 Fields unharvested, glittered gold
 By the light of the sun
 Transferring cosign radiance
 Under the rim of the Rockies.
 It was a time when
 Grains and bugs still splattered
 The car windshields,
 Glossy graveyards between rolling hills
 Sketching a windswept horizon
 Full of wheat, all wheat,
 The amber threads weaving
 A tapestry for the road.
 Peacefully they waved in a sunset's mirror
 That filtered through the mountains
 On evening's open ceremony.
 My young hands gripped the wheel,
 My face grew tired
 As their tendrils gripped me,
 Whispering the secrets of death
 Tossed and turned in the mill uphill
 Shredding their nutrients

 Off the highway sand.

 There's no telling

 Whether we domesticated them,
 Or them us.

You Found Me

In the gym I started running hoping to get attention, the crystal oceans in your eyes bonding to my broken skeleton.
I tried to go fast but couldn’t, they were taunting me, the ones who ignored me, the ones who loved you.
Go away, I said, I never wanted to talk to any of you, just let me be, I am a runner, let me run. When they followed me, I felt noticed for the wrong reason, turned out of the gym, away from you, the horde falling behind despite my numb feet.
You’re gone now, a thousand miles across the distance of fjords, green islands, mountains, all the way past the rim of my heart.
Onto the track I stumbled, knowing you were following me, looking for me, like the others, a game, I was just a game.
But then your blue shirt traipsed up the 100-meter ribbon glowing in parallel waves that rolled with your hair.
The fear escaped me, neutralized by the light in your eyes, that incredible light, blue shirt and smiles and waves of joy illuminating my concealed face, the others following yet stumbling out of the picture, out of my mind forever.
You found me, I said, you finally found me.

Quadratura

 Heaven is a ceiling that grows
 Through landscapes in the mind's eye
 To contemplate all our divine intentions
 Plastered in permanence, unfiltered
 From the shifting vices of Earth.
 Where the megaron strips navigation
 We look to the stars for an answer,
 Absolution in a rococo nebula
 Framed by imagination, trickling tintinnabulation,
 Echoes of bells off the bronze planetarium.
 Skyward we teleport home
 In a basket of deliverance, unfettered
 Cobwebs of illumination conducting
 Orchestral fantasies in the light,
 A radiance to cleanse our atmosphere.
 Soul meets body at the cherished boundary
 Where angels become humans that grow wings,
 Leaking children from the loophole of time,
 Oil streaked burden of gravity unrivaled
 To brighten the path in hymns of creation.

Brown Eyes on Father's Day

You ran to me with a bag in your hands,
The oyster brown shells of your eyes
Alight with excitement, your friends delighted,
Fathers circling children, children circling you.
You hugged me unforced, ardently I surrendered:
Your hair smelling of candles, your smile transient
Like a star in transit behind the molten meteor
That graced you in a film about wishes.
You pulled out a hat you’d painted,
Placed it on the ephemeral temple of my head,
Joined me in a fervor remiss, that I had shamefully
Ejected from a premonition:
That I would have left you alone there,
For my own comfort, my own disgrace.

Eyes can’t look at you any more sweetly
Than when you look into mine.

Subsidized Housing

    In the 19th century, the increase of industrial production in metropolitan areas required city planning at an unprecedented level. Industrial workers needed to live near their jobs, while the spread of communism served to increase pressure on governments by making them more aware of their disadvantages. As many workers woke to the idea of being cheated by capitalists, governments needed to appease them to assuage the threat of revolution. One of the ways in which this was done was by assisting low-wage workers with housing in the form of subsidies. Many European governments subsidized housing to help their poor earn a comfortable living.
    In the USA this wasn't as big a problem. Though industrialization was strong, the spread of communism wasn't, so the government did little to assist with housing. This inaction had large repercussions on the country. Suburbia was able to blossom in our country because there was a lot of land, and it wasn't hampered by government regulation. It also meant that housing was dominated by markets instead of government, which has not slowed to this day. Housing is so expensive in this country that many middle-class families cannot afford it. As landowners get richer by acquiring more land, middle- and low-class citizens are left paying rent on the biggest asset that should be able to afford.
    I believe the USA should have followed in Europe's footsteps on this matter. If we'd implemented subsidized housing instead of laying the roots of lavish suburbia, more people could afford them today. We wouldn't be so obsessed with our lawns and how many rooms we could fill. It was a mistake to believe the market would make anyone happy but the rich. All the average citizen should want is a humble abode with a small yard, which would also be better for the environment. The government has not helped in shaping the kind of moderation we need to save the planet, much less ourselves.

Marriage

  Marriage is when you see each other's flaws so well that you are the only ones who can truly understand them. You understand your partner's flaws even more than they do. Accepting the ugliness inside each other is what it's all about. Nobody else in the world sees my insecurities like my wife, and nobody has worked so hard to accept me into their life. There is no higher gratefulness than finding someone who is willing to go through the hell you give them and still take care of you. I'm told that it is in these murky waters of imperfection that the real treasure of a person can be found, things that are also only seen by the spouse. The endearing aspect of each imperfection is the glue that holds us together, binding our souls like improvised photographs and the secrets they reveal. Over time the light gets refined, you see the unfolding history of their struggle against imperfection, the battles they lost and the wars they won. And you think to yourself, only marriage can really motivate someone to improve the idiosyncrasies that drive everyone else nuts. Nothing exposes us so timelessly like the bond of true love. There is someone who knows us inside and out, better than we know ourselves, as if an angel were put on earth to watch over every move we make. Marriage is a lifelong lesson in becoming angelic.

Blue Gold: Cobalt Mining in the Congo

    Behind the curtain of Africa, a stirring in the Earth shakes it to the core. This is a place where workers are taken advantage of to such extremes that one has to wonder where the line between slavery and labor begins. In the south Congo, enormous pits have been dug out to be mined for cobalt, the world's new gold. Cobalt is in high demand this century because smartphones and electric vehicles need the lightest metal capable of operating a portable battery. As I write this, mining companies are raiding and abusing the area, as they have been for centuries involving other resources. But this time it isn't the west who is the guilty party, unless you consider the consumers who buy these products. This time it is China, the manufacturers of our precious batteries. The Chinese have taken advantage of a weak, easily bribed government that reaps most of their country's profits, allowing the workers to suffer from little safety regulation and child labor. Often tunnels collapse in these mines, leaving countless children injured or dead. Wages are so low that families have no choice but to send their children to the mines to help gather what little income they can. Most aren't even guaranteed a steady wage, but a piece-rate based on the quality of ore that is mined. You can spend all day toiling in the mines and not get anything for it if your ores do not meet a standard. Some of the mines are heavily guarded by soldiers with guns whose directive is to punish any wrongdoing. 
    This place is an abomination of greed, reminding us that forces conspiring to slave labor are very much still alive. What's also scary is there is very little public information on these civil rights violations. The companies in charge of these operations use force and intimidation along with tight security to make sure the conditions are not reported on. It took a candid, undercover reporter to uncover what is happening in the South Congo for the rest of the world. His name is Siddharth Kara and his book is called "Cobalt Red: How The Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives".
    As consumers I'm afraid not much can be done to reduce these violations by boycotting. Bringing public awareness to the situation might inspire the DRC to a more rigorous human rights campaign. Because it's the DRC government that holds the most power here. Reporters and NGOs can do all they can to inspire activism, but what it boils down to is that a government is allowing this to happen. Smartphones are an enormous part of modern living; we won't be abandoning them any time soon. The same can be said for electric vehicles, which will be essential to slow down climate change if governments are not willing to invest in other alternative sources of fuel for vehicles. It seems that sometimes when we purchase things for a good cause, like protecting the environment, it comes at the expense of workers suffering in places like the DRC. It's a sad state of affairs and totally unnecessary. The mining companies need to treat these people with the dignity they deserve, and the DRC government needs to care about more about its people than money. Blue gold won't last forever. Human dignity will.
    This situation underlines the importance of education in modern policymaking. Because the government does not adequately fund education, Congolese children are easily taken advantage of, especially when their families need help. Widespread poverty reinforces itself by lack of education, since children without a strong curriculum are free to work at a younger age. And without labor laws, they are easily scooped up by companies who feel they are better off hiring children who aren't aware that labor standards exist in much of the world; and even if they are aware, the families can afford to keep them in school. Rather than studying for something better, unaddressed poverty pits them into some of the most atrocious mining conditions the world has ever known. Unfortunately, their stories are being kept under wraps by authority figures, but with continued adventurous reporting by people like Mr. Kara, more of them can be heard. 
    Satellite imagery could also help expose what is happening in the area. Yet if it is not in the interest of international governments, this will be ignored as well. Thus, the international community does have a small part to play in securing a healthy life for these people.

Chega de Saudade

No more blues.
Only the cyan tropical sea
Bathing in palm-green aquamarine
Seashell corals caressing the sand,
The fronds swaying in a lazy breeze
In the wistful heart of Brazil,
Where cyclones never wander.
 
Inside us all is a fire that burns,
Mistaken for purity of light,
Oxidized to movement,
Devouring anything to sustain us,
Like the crude oil beneath our feet
Ignited to the heavens.
 
This is the last place I’ll go,
Where the wind doesn’t infect
These blackened lungs aflame,
That wheeze with desire for release,
A distant smoke, a fallen ember,
We are victims of our own success.

Skyline Alibi

 In the cold night air I put the car in drive,
 Advance down the avenue with controversy on the radio,
 Roaming for closed cafes, delivering mazurkas.
 The Space Needle reaches for the stars
 Like a Lucas film skyport
 Surrounded by a city on clouds,
 Windows glimmering in coronal mass reflection.
 Empty streets, empty stores,
 Sleepless offenders on broken sidewalks,
 Arms in the cracks reaching to drag them under.
 Rounding the corner of Lake Union
 A blasted construction site breaks through the Earth,
 Sending me adrift down the Amazon
 With only the rosary to guide me
 Upon wings of the radio waves:
 Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,
 Blessed art thou among women,
 And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

 It repeats without mercy, echoing off the skyscrapers, 

 Reverberating through the periwinkle corridor of my soul
 To baptize me in a wreath of submission,
 Forgotten sorrows of a city sanctified by chant.
 Next stop is the shelter, where they all sleep,
 Where I am the only man allowed all night,
 Murmuring in their beds, those angels stolen from paradise,
 Forced to repeat it on the unstable pavement.
 Their screams erupt beyond the cemetery,
 Leaking through the sewers, waking all the homeless,
 Panhandlers spooked by a distant chorus
 That follows the rosary down twisted alleys,
 Entering their nightmares- those men who wronged them,
 Entering me.

Ghosting You

The time has come
To accept what has happened,
Eliminate confusion,
Resolve uncertainty,
Be comfortable with it.
We are not connected,
We never were,
Though my mind deceives me
Every night, as I’m reminded
What could have been.
I lay in the dark
Imagining you watching me,
Always watching me,
As I watch you.
But it’s about me,
This recurring dream,
This nightmare I haven’t reconciled,
Teaching me to let you go,
In body and spirit
Never to see you again.
I am not for you,
I will stop watching you,
Pretending I love you,
That I’m someone important
To someone I never knew.
Be gone from my dreams,
Vanish like the daylight
You so often gave me
When my spirit
Wandered in darkness.
People don’t see me
The way I see you,
Your pictures posted on the feed
As if they were mine for the taking.
It was all I wanted back then,
To have a picture of you,
To hold in my hands forever,
An imprint of desire
Tattooed on my palms,
Now enshrined by my eyes
That glitter before the screen.
It will take all my strength
Not to visit you,
To release the power
You bewitched over me,
That inspired me to travel,
Foolishly imitating
Your fragments of impression,
To not become ghosted
By my own feed of shame.

Pencil

Some call it senseless
To write a poem
That doesn’t rhyme.
I call it liberating
To be free of conventions,
To maximize potential,
The ingenuity of possibility.
A pencil that dances
Is a mind that explores
Every angle of a memory,
Leaving traces of truth
On a surgical atlas,
Locations excracted from soul,
Scribbled out of chaos, into order,
Bending time to the whims of chance.
How free it is, to write from the heart,
To write what you know,
Without worrying about the rules.
The pencil that roams
Through cracks in the structure
Often finds the weakness therein,
Gathering unseen support
For emotional destinies
Undetected by measure and reason.

The Tulip Rainbow

    It was the best day of the year for tulips, a Saturday in mid-April as they were peeking, so we naively left at 9 in the morning thinking we were beating the traffic, only to find that it had beaten us. For two hours we sat in it, from 10 to 12, wondering if we would ever get to park, patiently willing our bladders to stay strong, shameful about participating with other polluters idling in the presence of nature, all for a short glimpse at one of her great splendors.
    When we got there, we wondered if it would be worth the boredom, the cramped spaces, the putrid exhaust, as crowds gathered at the entrance, more lines, more people waiting to ascend the escalator before the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
    Then we were inside, where heaven opened her gates, angels lifted us on prisms of photographs bending to the ground where sky meets petal. Agape we stood, mesmerized by their colors, running on thirst and only wanting fragrance, pearly tendrils of joy anchoring them to the ground, to become immortalized on someone's social media feed. They were purple, they were red, pink, orange, white, yellow, and blue, radiant bands of beauty where light surrendered to the stalwart Earth, begging it to capture its latent forms, the infinite potential of arranged color, a palette for the artist in the sky who sings, be fruitful and multiply.
    Soft as the April snow they waved in the wind, inviting us to plant memories in the garden, ephemeral lives for ephemeral smiles that crystallized into icicles for the light's coronation.

    There are places like this, far beyond and in between years that echo through cathedral's agleam, intent on bearing witness to the supreme creations that glitter the globe in altars of wonder. It was worth it, we said, it always is, as longevity in suffering is the price for joy's brevity.

Spring Bubbles

 Suddenly there were bubbles, 
 Billowing over the green yard
 Sauntered by spring, randomly flying

 As Beabadobee sang "You're Here That's the Thing", 

 A vernal mania,

 A bottle of soap unleashed on the blossoms.
 Thousands of bubbles they fluttered,
 Blasted forth by a gentle wind
 Waving goodbye, outside my window
 As I lay in bed on this lazy afternoon,
 A happy Friday, a sunny day,
 With time moving slowly

 Like the children's laughter.
 The bubbles lift with each loving cackle,
 Floating skyward in conjoined forces,
 The wind and the merriment sending them soaring,
 Off on a short-lived odyssey to burst,
 The music shielding them, uniting them
 In an ambient sorbet to kiss the flowers.
 She walks in, smiling, the face of the season,
 Radiant with the pink of painted wings,
 Asking me to come out, reminding me
 How much I love her.

King vs Trump: The Court's Legacy Decision

    Once the dust has settled on our country and it is long gone, the ideology that marked its legacy will weigh heaviest on a scale of justice.  The two strongest ideologies in our country are racially based, whether we recognize it or not.  We fought the Civil War over racial justice, the result echoing through to today.  There has never been an extended military conflict on our soil that didn't involve race.  It runs through our blood, like the pathogen of a incurable disease.

    Martin Luther King Jr. would have been a prophet in Biblical times.  He stood up for the oppressed, gave up his life for the opportunity to change society, and preached for equality like none before him.  He was crucified by tyrants of oppression, like the religious zealots of antiquity.  He charged his sermons with so much racial activism that it disrupted the established order.  Being imprisoned 29 times didn't phase him.  Many times he willingly turned himself in, to make the power of civil disobience stronger.  The effect made his followers all the more adamant that they were right, that the law didn't apply to them, that nothing could stop them, for they were sanctioned by God.

    Fast forward to today and we have a similar public figure who is fanatically lauded for his determination and charisma, but for the opposite ideology.  Trump's positions on race and immigration are the reverse of King's principles of inclusion.  Misinformation and ignorance are given a pass for the sake of staying consolidated.  A poorly handled pandemic and attempted insurrection didn't change people's minds.  Anything he says and does is applauded by mobs of people, as if he were the same caliber preacher King was, albeit a corrupt one.  Perhaps the most amazing parallel is that his recent legal proceedings are perceived in the same manner King's was: unfair prosecution that is politically motivated in an attempt to silence an enlightened and dangerous person, someone who threatens the perceived order of establishment.

    King was given a holiday and canonized by the Holy Orthodox Church.  If Trump is victorious in changing society, imagine the accolades he will receive.  He may be far removed from sainthood, but Evangelicals are the most vociferous of his advocates.  Trump is a hero in the eyes of many religious fanatics, having populated the Supreme Court with justices that overturned Roe v Wade.  And what would the court say after America turns to ash, when the ideologies of King v Trump clash for the final determination of our legacy by historians?  The 5-4 vote will have to favor someone.  

    Progress is sometimes a bumpy road.  It will depend on whether the next bump lasts longer than America's death.

Majolica

    It was the finest city in the world. People came for miles to witness its beauty. The buildings were glazed mandalas of innumerable color, shapened by architects and artisans that sang hallelujah to the heavens. Kama sutra poses were sculpted in relief on tanned temples between ceramic towers. Majolica the blessed, Majolica the naked, landlocked jewel in the Vanilla Mountains. The people were free, inequality was low, education was permanent, war abolished. It was ruled by women.
    Until one day the men came, and it was destroyed. Glass shattered in malachite shards, beauty parlors obliviated by violence. They pillaged, they raped, they overthrew the matriarchs. Majolica the flayed, Majolica the defiled, sunken ship of broken treasures in a sea of sorrow. All that survived were words, a single book unearthed from the rubble. It spoke of a utopia that nobody believed could exist, that gradually spread to the corners of the world fringed by the old order. It was the story of her existence, that lost city which honored truth, and therefore beauty. Her tendrils crawled out of the crypt of history, wrapped around every modern city, choked the engineered throat, rose from the dead. Emancipated by words, they were her victory march. 
    You can't kill an idea. You can't learn more from victory than defeat.

Star Factory

  Ovulation of cosmogenesis the clock balloon manufacturers, inflating wisps of ionic-amniotic fluid, magnetized aflame, burning to forge creation, the proteins swarming as toolbits, constructing a ladder to the rainbow. Fetal smiles that shine over the gaseous garden like angels in bondage, dancing in time lapse as the embryos take shape, goldenrod fingers probing the distance, softly gathering momentum for a birthday in heaven. Swirling they tune in spherical distortion the angular collapse of energy, planting bones in the disks, seeds of cadency aloft taking root, where harmony becomes inaudible. They fuse, they explode, they see the light, bursting through the continuum on wings of pain, the core erupting, the mother screaming, the elements convalescing, assembling order from disaster. She holds them, her planets in blankets, caressing them to orbit in a gravity of love, forever caring, forever smiling, the nebula parting for their home, a place in a basket, a warm place.

The Golden Chandelier

 We take flight on wings of glass,
 The bonnie sea dreaming ceaselessly,
 Your cat-shaped hair a tiara agleam,
 The pink sky washed by alpenglow.
 Diadem of winter parched on your temple
 That phases through the billowy cushions
 Aloft, a sprinkle of dawn on your pillow
 To kiss the auroras good night.
 Daylight enters the morning palanquin,
 Awakening our arabesque trellises,
 Coaxing them out of their slumber
 To lift us over the snowy mountains.
 Clouds rise with us to greet the crest,
 Where children fly upon white doves,
 Singing psalms to the mountain climbers,
 Scattered rays of joy upon their faces.
 Here there are roads paved by rainbows
 Leading to castles built on floating quartz,
 Freeways of the liberated transporting
 The ascended off the wind torn peaks.
 Together we are one, suspended in love,
 Entwined in laces of polar passion,
 Serenated by children, pianos of peace,
 Violins of stellar matrimony, in unison,
 Glowing inside a golden chandelier.