*[ WSB ]_.

November 3, 2017

Dearest friend,

  The erasure of cursive from the pedagogic strategies of core curriculum signals a loss in the culture, a fork towards the information age .   Art, in the form of elaborate, thoughtful letters such as those of John and Abigail fossilize before us into petroglyphs like trilobites from the Cambrian explosion .   Extant messages know not the dipped quill from the inkwell, the measured meditations scribed on parchment under the flicker of candlelight, for now, electrons snuff out the tapers of yesteryears and speed instant thought from geocentric orbits as light skips along the aether .   Does it matter, dear friend, in a world where change is the only constant, the uncertainty of quantum mechanics creeping into every facet of foundation, maybe ?

  The loops and swirls repeated ad nauseum on ruled newsprint paper until the death of the hand in cramping paralysis, regarded at the time as pointless exercise, have indeed been deemed just so, a waste of the scholastic time allotted, time better purposed by grounding the student in education geared for the cog-less machinery of the digital future, so :    keyboarding .   The solid earth on which one tottled forward on in insouciant surety proves to be riddled with limestone caverns and shifts underfoot .   Has my brief time been wasted in groundwork unfounded ?   The binary code sweeps away such expertise as quaint calligraphic messaging and multiplicative grid rote into the ash-heap of the obsolete .

Unfailingly yours,

Sinn Blwch Rappel

P.S.   The frames of the flipbook shuffle by so quickly that my eyes water from the ruffled air .

*[ WSB ]_.

A golden boy
With forty–nine amulets
And an ochroid mask ;

From nested coffins
Travels to the afterlife,
The feet sandaled white ;

Steps from sarcophagus .
The way perilous,
The fronded body shielded

By cartonnage,
He begins to recite
The verses across auric

Tongue, before the heart
Silenced by a blond scarab
Is judged ’gainst feather .

The knot of Isis
Loosens, and the boy looks
Into the eye of Horus .

*[ WSB ]_.

Scenes of agony and horror all too familiar
—In ’merica .
Ten mass shootings a week .

Firearm injuries :
Leading cause of death among people
< 24 in the United States .

2015 through 2020: at least 2,070 unintentional shootings
By children under 18 in the US :
765 deaths and 1,366 injuries .

Firearm deaths over the past three decades—
A total of more than 1 million lives lost since 1990 .

A burden unequal .
Homicide rate among young Black men :
142 homicide deaths for every 100,000 Black men ages 20 to 24—
10 times higher than the overall rate .

There are about 393 million privately owned firearms in the US :
120 guns for every 100 Americans .
—No other nation has more civilian guns than people .

Mass shooting :
At least four people are shot,
Excluding the ƒ⋂Ͻkᴉɳ⅁ shooter .

Remember, we’re alone .
It does not have to be this way .
Laws to curb gun deaths in other countries achieved significant results .

Australia .
Less than two weeks after Australia’s worst mass shooting,
The federal government banned rapid–fire rifles / shotguns, and unified gun licensing / registration .
Gun deaths in Australia fell by more than 50% .

The government’s 1997 buyback program—
Led to an average drop in firearm suicide rates of 74% .

South Africa .
Gun–related deaths almost halved over a 10–year period after
The Firearms Control Act of 2000 .
Much more difficult to obtain a firearm .

Britain .
Tightened its gun laws and banned most private handgun ownership
After a mass shooting in 1996, a move that saw
Gun deaths drop by almost a quarter over a decade .

But America’s gun culture is a global outlier .
For now, and for how long,
Must the deadly cycle of violence continue ?

:   What about all the gunless cold, dead hands ?

* Versification | “ Three weeks and 39 mass shootings.   This is America in 2023 . ” Paul LeBlanc / CNN

*[ WSB ]_.

I ain’t about to drink peas .
Ashleigh contains multitudes 

Just a black screen,
The [Music] makes me nervous .
Magnificent, the planets and the sun .
The Dawn of Man ;
Too quiet ;  I don’t like it .
Oh my God, are those ant eaters ?
I just don’t feel like they’re real :
Never seen one .

That reaction is appropriate :   touch it—
What’s the worst that can happen ?

So thus, the first tool was made :   a hammer,
Tool and weapon ;
That’s why the anteaters are falling over dead .
Kill, beat his ass :   survival of the fittest—
The internal monologue .

Cohesive notes in harmony,
The offices from all angles—
A beautiful little landing dance .
You are cleared through voice print identification—
We have face ID .

Oh my God !   I love those chairs !

I’m sorry sweetheart but I can’t .
Why not ?
Daddy is in outer space .
What is a bush baby ?
I’m just on my way up to Clavius,—
And I definitely know what they’re talking about .

Why wear these ridiculous looking caps
And not find some extra-hold hairspray ?

The astronaut suits in this movie look like HVAC pipe .
I never thought I’d be scared of a metal slab
Jabbed in the ground .

To be a singer for this soundtrack, could you imagine
Just going in a booth, and the director saying :
moan—like a lament .

Getting a workout sideways .
I don’t like a computer saying they’re conscious .
Do you believe that Hal has genuine emotions ?
Good question .
Of course, he’s programmed that way
To make it easier for us to talk to him .
Why is this starting to really stress me out ?

O listen !   If the smartest computer is worried about it,
I’m worried about it .
Concerned that the computer was faking genuine concern,
And I fell for it .

I would not survive a long–term space mission,
Or a short-term one for that matter .
The close–up of the little red dot of HAL really stresses me out .
It’s puzzling .
Running cross–checking routines to determine reliability of this conclusion ;
Hal caught in a lie .

I wish I’d known there is an intermission .

Stop looking at me, I feel the red eyeball on me .
If Hal’s in charge of keeping those people hibernated,
There’s nothing stopping him from killing all three of those people ;

I could never exist in silence .

Open the pod bay doors please HAL—
You don’t really have remorse .
Will you stop Dave ?
Why is this so unsettling to me .
I’m afraid .
No you’re not, you can’t feel emotions .
No it’s not Dave, you gotta focus,
You gotta focus .
I can feel it—
Good I hope it hurts .
Oh my God, HAL saying I can feel it over and over again .
And he taught me to sing a song ;
No thanks, don’t want to hear it,
Sorry no .
But you’ll look sweet upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two .

Good day gentlemen .
Whose voice is that ?
Four–million–year–old black monolith
Deliberately buried neath the lunar surface . . .
[Music] Only have 30 more minutes left;
Everybody’s dead except Dave ;
He just found out that he’s headed to life on Jupiter
To find out why this monolith is monolithing .

I guess just because he’s the smartest computer ;
He didn’t want human error to ruin the mission ;
He trusted himself more than he trusted his teammates ;
You know, I get that .

[Lightshow]
Cuts back to Bowman,
I just want to stay on the lights .
I don’t like his face being scared .
Oh this one’s nice :   this is what it feels like the inside of a lava lamp .
The Kubrick stare: through the eyebrows ;
Jack Nicholson did it in The Shining ;
Jenna Ortega as Wednesday .

How the hell you end up in this room ?
What makes this movie so unsettling ?
Not in a scary way, uncomfortable .
The monolith, the blackness .
Black rectangle, then symbolically The Big Bang,
and the monkeys, pre–human,
and then BOOM, monolith .
And then the discovery of weapons,
and then BOOM,
fast forward :   space travel, get to the moon,
BOOM: monolith .
The third one about Jupiter,
The last thing :

The unknown force moves everything along .

* versification :   script :   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1CL-GYq_3M&t=601s :
Ashleigh Burton .

*[ WSB ]_.

Warnings unheeded,
Encroachment by the assailant
Would cosh him dearly .

*[ WSB ]_.

Eyes hypnotized, the hoodwinked
Come online in flutter blink .

Mocked, the mogul in send up
Soaks everything in ketchup .
Jackdaw caws and caterwauls,
Plates ended by shatter wall .

All bad—horseback post for weeks—
Cornered he geckers and shrieks :
Like never before | discontent,
But never shall I be impotent,

For godlike is my sunglow sheen—
Skin like beta-carotene .

*[ WSB ]_.

Square Roots:

1. Increment
2. Nightfall
3. Revel
4. Flatworm
5. Glass Eye
6. Cubism
7. Tirukkuṛaḷ Rules
8. The Witch
9. Cosmic Plato
10. Eden
11. The Sea
12. First Light
13. Rollercoaster
14. Motion is Relative
15. The Grasslands

1
Increment |Eko|

Growth.

[ TOC ]

*[ WSB ]_.

2
Nightfall |Biter|

Veiled teal :
Stars wheel .

[ TOC ]

*[ WSB ]_.

3
Revel |Trier|

Drink the wine !
Dance in time !
Joy be thine !

[ TOC ]

*[ WSB ]_.

4
Flatworm |Quarter|

Bilateral
With no tube in—
Side is for all
Gas diffusion .

[ TOC ]

*[ WSB ]_.

5
Glass Eye |Fiver|

Bill “ the Butcher’s ” glass
Eye brings quivers stark,
From the knife–tip glance
On the crystal arc—
Peal :   an icy trance .

[ TOC ]

*[ WSB ]_.

6
Cubism |Sixy|

Mr Boxx’s head is
A cubical graph, a
Rhombic hexahedron .
Six square pyramids hide
In eleven nets flat—
So square among boxes .

[ TOC ]

*[ WSB ]_.

7
Tirukkuṛaḷ Rules |Septer|

Couplets on morality
And ethics form the vision :
Tamil book for India .
The spear of bloodletting rests
For the staff of righteousness .
The kingdom withers under
The baton of submission .

[ TOC ]

*[ WSB ]_.

8
The Witch |Ahter|

The crone in her hovel alone
Chants by fire crackling under plants
And parts, once having hearts and bones .
Cackles ring from circled incants
Of bewitched verses stitched in skin .
The chemic cauldron smokes splenic :
The din stops, the goddess steps—yin
Drawn white in the Yule dawn scenic .

[ TOC ]

*[ WSB ]_.

9
Cosmic Plato |Niner|

Stabbing heat of the tetrahedron,
The stars blaze .   Tessellation of ground,
The hexahedron squares against water’s
Icosahedral flow .   The Wind’s round
Cheeks breathe miniscule octahedrons
across the compass rose .   Beyond the
Lapis vault, the constellations rest
In dodecahedrons of darkness .
All is protracted geometry .

[ TOC ]

*[ WSB ]_.

10
Eden |Dasher|

The living clay moistened with saliva
Surveys the garden planted midst desert
And mountains, the misty morning sylvan .
Spider webs of neurons weave in response,
Glyphs on the melted wax :   the human script .
Primal fruit tempts this offshoot of phyla
Despite the pine seeds and acorns peppered
Cross the fertile soil graced by four rivers .
Subtle, the serpent waits with scales of bronze—
Hominids break from paradise eclipsed .

[ TOC ]

*[ WSB ]_.

11
The Sea |Hender|

Ocean followed the molten planet orange,
Cooling darker to end in blackest basalt :
The basin .   The hissing vapor encircles,
Then falls torrential upon the smoking world ;
Aftermath :   the empty primordial sea,
Soon to be teeming with specimens of life .
Far out to sea, far below sun :   the abyss
Harbors ebony pools mythic with monsters,
Underlings of the dragon goddess of old .
Near the waves, fish doff plates of armor, swimming
Streamlined above the coral branches spreading .

[ TOC ]

*[ WSB ]_.

12
First Light |Duodenur|

Three hundred thousand kilometers per second :
The distant sky imparts the past :   sunshine in eight
Minutes ;  Betelgeuse may have flashed super nova
And bloomed nebular under six hundred forty–
Two years .   Run the clock backwards and the cosmos shrinks
Smaller until the whole universe is a star
For seventeen minutes .   Hydrogen forms, fuses
Into helium, gamma radiation trapped .
The white–hot, dense plasma continues to expand,
Cool until three hundred thousand years after The
Big Bang, when light shone, and space became transparent .

[ TOC ]

*[ WSB ]_.

13
Rollercoaster |Treader|

Relentlessly chain clinking to the coaster’s apex,
Tightening the gut in preparation for the plunge
When the grapnels of gravity slingshot the thrill ride
Headlong toward the singularity in the void,
Centered in the starkness of chaos huggermugger
Ever waiting the wheels to roll slower to a crawl,
An end like the beginning of the climb to the prime
At the precipice of the tallest parabola :
A bittersweet moment teetering with potential
For g–force helixes and hairpins and barreling
Over tracks of amplitude in adrenaline rush ;
Realizing however, from the start of the ride
That mechanical friction dooms all machines to stall .

[ TOC ]

*[ WSB ]_.

14
Motion is Relative |Fourteener|

Race toward the Western rim and the sun will rise again ;
Faster :   gravity and day will fall behind the raw night
Comprised of billions of bygone days darkened by distance—
Circadian clocks tick to the calculus of motion .
The Earth with debonair tilt waltzes the changeable moon,
Unsettled in unbalance from an impingent outset ;
Day & night, and the wheel of the seasons offer context .
The grand, seeming quietness of galaxies swirl in space–
Time, the fabric unfurled quicker and quicker by darkness
From a quantum source of infinite turmoil, uncertain .
Meaning exists in eddies at the edges of chaos
Where sentience manages to emerge from the looking–glass
Particles, a floodplain stasis after a white–water
Onslaught from a furious spring into cosmic offshoots .

[ TOC ]

*[ WSB ]_.

15

The Grasslands |Fifteener|

Grass carpets continents One fifth the blueprints current the drift
In naps :   tropical, temperate, and tundra ;  flooded, zeric
And montane ;  grasslands various didst spread to end Cretaceous
—Sundry graminoids dotted by sedge, rushed to the forest edge—
[ Buffalo, blue brush, red oat; purple needle, lemon, and Rhodes ]
The drumming hooves heard mutually, with the upping of herbs .
Lo the buffalo ruffled low, snuffling clumps from undersnow,
Tallgrass in loess and till, nitrogen from the urine spilled ;
Bands of pronghorns, prairie-born, munch scrub until the white rump warns .
And grassy–sand springboks prong, and lope shrubland in harem throngs,
While the tommie gazelles sail through shimmer of wildebeest trails,
And galloping Great Steppes, pangaré takhis with buzzcut necks .
Forsooth .   Cranes wade swamp blades, as sharp-tooth gators slide Everglades .
Beyond the fence the moocows moo, grazing green pastures like gnu
Blue numbers on savanna midst brays of wavering zĕbra .

[ TOC ]

*[ WSB ]_.

*[ WSB ]_.

— Truman Capote —
from :   Music for Chameleons

*[ WSB ]_.