Telecommunication

SetiDisc

To wrangle cosmic messages
extraterrestrial,
then wrestle fossick meaning
nested industrial
in anomalous transmissions.

Slinkage of interstellar waves,
arithmetic coding in
flagellar rays with redshiftage
loaded poetic:
a bottomless acquisition.

RedBoxPlainSm*[ WSB ].

*Cigarettes:

Cigarettes
cause
cancer, leukemia, imp
                                                   ot
                                                    en
                                                   ce;
damage
your organs;
la fumée du tobac nuit aux enfants
Poison In Every Puff!

*[claw clause on every deadly wand:
toxic particulates fuming from
an intoxicating tip,
combustion tripping down on indulgence,
both ignorance and innocence suffering:
ash and sulfur—
a corporate incantation
]

RedBoxPlainSm*[ WSB ].

Night of the Livid Dead

Zombie
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.

RedBoxPlainSm*[ WSB ].

Journaling

Journal

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.

RedBoxPlainSm*[ WSB ].

Computer Screen

Terminator
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.

RedBoxPlainSm*[ WSB ].

Read Rocks

Delta

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.

RedBoxPlainSm*[ WSB ].

Hollowed Be Thy Frame

Smelt

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.

RedBoxPlainSm*[ WSB ].

Still Life

FilmMelt
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.

RedBoxPlainSm*[ WSB ].