If sense was so common
you would make sense
[semicolon however comma]

you rail, you flail,
your brain is in jail;
falling in a coffin,
clawhammer and nail.

Sealed in a bubble bobbing
on a sea of trouble;
semipermeable—
selected voices whisper
past bluster blisters:

impenetration
by talking-point bullets,
past self-sealing double
phospholipid sequestration
of cortextual analysis:

A pricking tickle
of pickled grey matter
sampled simple black&white,
voltage of doltage tissue applied;
insipid synapses lurch
with trigger issues until:
It’s alive!

Resurrection:
in the dread of night,
the undead hatters march.

*[ WSB ]_.

Matins and vespers,
antipodean:
a resolution from resolution
and refresh rates,
an analog log
that journals journey internal,
ruminating numinous;
prayer and birdsong
innate,
liminal hymnal
parsed on parchment—
residue of night
cured in curlicue light,
Apollonian.

*[ WSB ]_.

Programming all day on the Commodore
64 outputs a mediocre score.

Such a step down from war-room machines
with tape reels, punch cards, and eerie green screens;
the dot matrix printers hammering glyphs,
zipping out reams: my reluctance to shift

toward digital homes, from analogue
continuity—the move from prologue
of gigantic boxes of vacuum tubes
to pocket phones replacing mainframe rooms.

The information age grows like kudzu:
resistance futile, chips in all purviews.
From punch cards of Babbage to Turing-complete;
to a world-wide net of nothing discrete.

Great! Information now, not later—
but look out for the Terminator.

*[ WSB ]_.

Cutting the Martian landscape
the rivers did rage,
rocks scarred by waterways

fanning out, deltaic flow:
under rutting rove,
mosaic of Jezero.

Like shaken bones stratified,
glimmer of lake dried,
ruby stones testify.

*[ WSB ]_.

Version | Elena Bionysheva-Abramova photograph

Industrial Pittsburg
smokingstacks stuck
ore factorial coarsing
from smelted combust,
bits of orange burn dusted
from molten pour,
pig-iron crust on the floor:

casting from coke-fired
furnaces, and rolling out
municipal blocks.

Unearthed,
a kingdom come,
the steelwork done.

*[ WSB ]_.

Version | Don Davis

Past heliopause,
twin sisters:
one needs some hearing aids, and
one has lost some sense of touch—
not tired in retirement,
the undiscovered country awaits
the voyagers.

*[ WSB ]_.

In the frame:
the frame that moves
so still,
the four points
shake in the breeze:
thermal.

Celluloid
stories before
and aft,
run their courses
and stop:
terminal end
slapping.

In the space
near the stillness
of atoms —
a still life
hushes before
boiling.

*[ WSB ]_.

Eleven May
is the very day
I entered the play.

In a year of yarrow,
bones soft on the morrow:

shot from a sling,
in orbit I sing—
a satellite swing
dispersing.

*[ WSB ]_.

Anti-American tirades;
the lemmings leap, falling bones.
Leaning by: the dirt-crusted spades.

*[ WSB ]_.

Next Level

Forgetting wariness allows friendliness,
warlike defenses fall:
that is the weak-link.
Human.
The higher animals [all of them],
move beyond the fight, the flight,
to the friendship, organic addition —
the next level;

not robotic, but conscious decision;
branches removed from
poriferan clades,
ancient.
Is befriending strangers defining,
like having prominent chins ?
Yes, even connections with contraptions:
being human.

The whirring machines like tail-wagging dogs,
no judgment or demands.
Thus, some will become
hermits.
Although one may decompose off-grid,
mother is there at birth.
The essentiality of language
beckons loners

hence from the dark shadows of the wield
to lightsome sward, where most
take it to the next
level.
Beyond the hearty handshakes of brothers,
to a union of auras
in beaded light-years spun like cotton webs:
awe from laced hands.

Eros is the losing of one’s mind,
level by next level;
from limbs conjoined to
the kiss,
and even closer: [CENSORED], the goal
being — one human being:
subtraction through addition; questioning
entry level

compared to subsequent levels ventured:
social evolution,
family to clans,
nations
of lonely people seeking others
reflecting back their shadows,
heartening each to brave the next level —
not always up.

*[ WSB ]_.