Pterosaurs soar on thermals diurnal;
gifted flight, fabric tight, light-lifted
high o’er crags of cliff to circle-drift,
like stringless kites flung at the sun.

*[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]

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.

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.

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.

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.