from This Household of Earthly Nature
this biometrics grid this falling flower
this seismograph of chemicals that steer us
tinker with it, gently— after all
it is your one and only life, you may as well
try to enjoy it
the generality of death, the specificity of care
cave drawings in LED etch-a-sketch my hand dark blue
marble ball with weld-seam visible and gold-plated electric lichen
there is music playing dyssynchronous with this orbit
and then you see it: how can I describe it
the surface was encrusted with lateral lines
signs and figures and then a new dimension arose
“out of darkness [ours]” google
suggests a question and I can click
to reveal an answer google
suggests a question and I can click
to reveal an answer google
suggests a question and I can click
to be absolved
who will win the golden testicle?
your portal verification code is []
o this magnetic
transcriptase has conspired, you know,
to hold us, gently or not, in its green
and vibrating rings
“it would have been beautiful” if we had instead been
inimitable dew, or pathogens, the color of water before
the first flood, dust, or various other things.
now it is December. chickadees and goldfinches
at the feeder in the grey mist, chickadees and goldfinches
all the same. the electric birdbath keeps the water from freezing over,
this is what love is. they have fracked out
the crude oil for this. I don’t
know what to say.
“[the poet] judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling round a helpless thing” writes
Whitman— but it is us, old man, who are helplessly falling ‘round the sun, like this. [and then
there was 4.5 billion years of plummeting] [one more year to go I say] [I judge the angle of the
sun]
one
theory is that the first tools were likely not
spears and arrows but instead baskets and nets,
to carry things in or to trap small animals, fish.
to free up our hands, which can only hold so
many things. a surplus, what is more than our immediate hands can carry—
we are saving some grapes for later wait they
have undergone a change—
from a book on weaving baskets: “More than
mere containers, baskets, like their creators, are
what is inside as well as what is outside” and
later “weaving is an art of rhythm, form, and
time”
spears and arrows but instead baskets and nets,
to carry things in or to trap small animals, fish.
to free up our hands, which can only hold so
many things. a surplus, what is more than our immediate hands can carry—
we are saving some grapes for later wait they
have undergone a change—
from a book on weaving baskets: “More than
mere containers, baskets, like their creators, are
what is inside as well as what is outside” and
later “weaving is an art of rhythm, form, and
time”
the oscillating helix of the battery of time, and me.
the ship of death is late. there are “supply chain issues”
I place my order with the void, and pray.
it is with the weight of a feather
measured against prayer, or laughter it is a blue
gem ice cold there are no fields of heaven
you have to choose whom to forgive carefully
nothing ceases to exist this is crucially important
you have only one shot at this pull yourself together, Cody
the first seeds were hard and bitter the one life you have to live
when you get home Marc will make you a cheesecake and you will survive the winter.
the horses stomp in the fields of heaven, they do not stomp for thee.
I gather honeysuckle vines along the creek, alone,
and you come with me
*
WATCH THESE RARE OCEAN CREATURES CAUGHT
ON CANDID ROBOT CAMERA
THE DIRTY ROAD TO CLEAN ENERGY; HOW THE ELECTRIC
VEHICLE BOOM IS RAVAGING THE ENVIRONMENT
Nicolai Tesla’s father wanted him to be a priest; [thus] he became an engineer
they are strip-mining for nickel in Sulawesi, they are earth-blasting for cobalt in the Congo, “In
Chile, huge evaporation pools draw lithium out of the salt flats of the Atacama Desert” prices for
these minerals are “soaring” O eagle of my same heart, is this how you make a battery? Okay,
pinnacle of man, end-game of the species, storage-cell of the past into the future, volage meter of
my same charged soul, vast and trunkless legs of steel will power up in the desert, streamlined
recursive non-consciousness of our next being, Large Millimeter Array [in what] relationship of
Awe to Despair in the electric sensors, store up some awe for me, o oscillating thing.
ritual motion around a center; this is how a battery works.
mitochondria press protons across a fatty membrane; charged
acid of the first ectoplasmic urge, this is how you do work: each
electron a prayer, carried along in the current
vinegar: diode: soul
joules heaped up on joules, whole piles of them
a cache: a logical pyramid; a nest
a cache: a hole in the ground, where we store
what is more than we can carry, where it rots; memory
a place for what is left over once the calculations
are all done: zero out the zero-sum and what remains
is the whole world of moving things; no rest
in the thermodynamic flow, sunlight, coffee-cup, radiant
body, swapping electrons through daily ritual, motion
of touch, spark plug, myelin sheath, where we store
the shining fats for future thought, because we love
our future self, all our future’s selves fractaling outward this
dominion of earth piling up its electricity in us
it is different to enact a complex sequence;
that’s what I learned when I researched the difference between just
eating sugar and eating things that break down
into sugar this is the space between
the universe appreciates a complex sequence
I pour battery acid into the six
cells of the 4-wheeler battery and connect
two alligator clip clamps on a drip
charge plugged in to a wall outlet to the collective
hive mind burning coal or fracking oil
in Oklahoma and humming; I am redistributing
the pleasure circuitry of the world. I ride the 4wheeler
“into the sunset” just kidding I try
to be back home by dark, like the warm-
blooded, diurnal mammal I am
that the earth “caught life” as a planet might catch a virus
atmospheric oxygen, clear skies, blue seas… and bluer than blue,
what eyes, could see— it will strike us down
I gather honeysuckle vines for baskets while my dogs lie patiently in the leaves
the plans are in the works to grind up and 3D print the regolith on the moon into a landing pad,
roads, buildings. “this is how you know they’re serious” the UniverseToday newsletter says,
“when they start planning infrastructure”
“but fundamentally” Tor Norretranders writes, “the nonconscious body is not under the control of
consciousness… The body is part of a biological metabolism with the living system on the
planet—and this participation is not subject to the power of the consciousness. We do not have
access, via the body’s own means, to changing the role each of us plays on earth. We are part of a
living system to which we are so adapted that there is no freedom to get off.”
a field is a value or set of values assigned to every point in space; “it helps to think of mass as a
property of objects and fields as a property of space” the YouTube physicist says
The Field of The World— today— 60°F day after days and days of rain, sun, steam off the creek,
table, deck, dishes, tree trunks steaming, lichen and bark, wet leaves, trash— and all the amorous
frogs belting out their hymns in grunts and groans this warm December morning— futile in some
relation to joyful : futile in what relation to joyful
one planet: awake glow worm of my same heart in the morning, wiggling, opening up its
photosensitive cell clusters we call eyes, the baritone toads by the green pond, one hawk circling
the many little birds, all inquisitive, sensate, seeking—
more dire than myth more sensate than science more forgiven than iron cobalt silk
silos lithium ion battery acid milk roots dug up out of the dark earth forgiven by
combine and grid god damned city of cables I love you it is the first
morning forgiven here give it back I said give it back
all this machinery was invented yesterday, fig-leaf, ocular lasso, echolocation, levers, angels,
angles, fish-hooks, interiority, cam-shaft mount brackets, fuel pumps, reinforced steel beams,
proprioception, mirrors, permission, love— the vision multiplies as seeds
inverse relation; seeds [to] survival viable planet dandelion, amaranth, rabbit, tire-
factory, raceme or spoke; spoken of how many sugars in the hard seed to sprout now
or when what is saved up, spent
what hubris: “a manifestation of the universal consciousness” shut up sweet hairless ape of my
same hubris we are just lucky to even get to chicken scratch out this tiny amount of perception;
purple finch- claw wet bark some bugs a vague itch occasional desire a cool breeze maybe on a
hot day or the opposite, love
tiny eyes, kaleidoscope; vast quanta of unsensed world, scrim of awareness
just right on the surface barely even metabolic who needs a brain, anyway
not me
fragmented, broken cup, disturbance in the flow
entropy increases in a closed system, but! our world is an open system
thermodynamically speaking, says the book. so we aren’t
really breaking any laws by being here. it is not even that improbable.
we are not even that miraculous, shining in the tiny sun that made us, going
about our days.
we are holes in the universe
many holes, all at once.
strands of radiation flow around us
a cascade of impulse charges the net
whatever the caloric metabolism of a given planet, desire exists only in the distance between want
and fulfilment, thermodynamically speaking.
55 Cancri e is so close to its star that “the surface of the planet is an ocean of lava and its interior
may be filled with diamonds.” Okay, nerd. that sounds fake. that sounds beautiful. it is thus the
“dawn” of a “new day,” on earth as it is on 55 Cancri e, a new day which can be calculated as an
action potential or quantified as a cache of imagination-storage, a “unit” of “time” or just defined
in terms of light hitting the surface, for a bit, like this. coming up over that hill there, sliding
down these carbon-boned life forms we call trees.
the backward-forward arrow of memory to imagination
like this memory is reverse imagination in the entropic flow of time
flow back up, drop’t
yolk tucked back in, kindness encased
swallowed, whole
*
Richard
Feynman writes: “The atoms that are in
the brain are being replaced; the ones that were
there before have gone away. So what is this
mind of ours; what are these atoms with consciousness? Last weeks’ potatoes! They now
can remember what was going on in my mind a
year ago.”
the brain are being replaced; the ones that were
there before have gone away. So what is this
mind of ours; what are these atoms with consciousness? Last weeks’ potatoes! They now
can remember what was going on in my mind a
year ago.”
the joke goes: “I was born at night,
but I wasn’t born last night”. yes,
you were. human shaped luna moth of
non-functioning logic awake
in the automated substrata of eden’s weird hallways
stumbling around, fooling cash registers
with your magnificent cerulean wings
time, they say, will tell.
the meme on the internet says “everything will be okay,
eventually, in thousands of years, for rocks.”
tomorrow, they say, “never comes”
the transistor radios of my heart just the same
shouldering their looped parallel cables into the apex of distance,
the transformers go marching, marching, “across
the fruitless plain” O Nebraska of America’s harsh
winters, prospecting for a sense of place at the edges of the
known and unknown universe just the same.
sifting for diamonds at the “Crater of Diamonds State Park”;
just gravel and mud, dismal world stretching endless, furrowed into each direction, dug by the
heavy machinery’s metal teeth, churned earth, kinship rituals of suffering together, the pouring
rain, laughing late into the night, trying our best
what a family is, in each culture. what family is, to you.
weaving and unweaving the myth of coherence
weaving and unweaving the lineage of myth
direct current of one soul, alternating current
of many souls, go catch some beauty in the net.
go out and have some fun, poet, if you can figure out how.
*
a voltage is a difference outside of equilibrium
water-wheel on a sun-flood day, bright as becoming, the new
technologies: are you purposefully not understanding me?
day bright as a bell
day my small allotment of sun
ease-of-use [] a space of time
[a space held outside of time, for us]
I
think in order for artificial intelligence or robots to be
considered alive they would have to have the capacity to feel
pain, which is the manifestation of an excruciating need to
not be in pain, which is the expanded-field substrate in
which a sense of self can start to exist— put differently, what
would self-compel an AI, or an embodied robotic i
ntelligence, into interacting and moving around in
meaningful ways— why move at all? the two horses;
pleasure and pain drive the motile mechanism; in order to
carry forward that life inside it—
“and yet, it moves” murmurs Galileo, being led out of the
courtroom.
considered alive they would have to have the capacity to feel
pain, which is the manifestation of an excruciating need to
not be in pain, which is the expanded-field substrate in
which a sense of self can start to exist— put differently, what
would self-compel an AI, or an embodied robotic i
ntelligence, into interacting and moving around in
meaningful ways— why move at all? the two horses;
pleasure and pain drive the motile mechanism; in order to
carry forward that life inside it—
“and yet, it moves” murmurs Galileo, being led out of the
courtroom.
*
today’s biotech companies, todays baby formula factories, fragility of the U.S. power grid.
venturecapital. multi-nationals. mRNA vaccines. which symphony, this. permission to watch
the erector set erect the world. obligate symbiont, obligate-awareness, obligate kinship, obligate-
disavowel of care. Apple-Cash. “all investment carries the risk of loss” permission to never grow
old. the work of one’s body. the work of many hands. “Imagine the possibilities if you could
undo the gene that is responsible for…” I put on spf 30 sunblock and go stand naked in the sun.
spaceweather newsletter: “15 times black holes surprised us in 2022” I click on it
: an ad for an electric porche, 10 warning signs of dementia, an ad for early-investing in a
lithium startup, an ad for Glenfiddich whisky that says “time, re-imagined” and finally the article:
the most luminous quasar ever in existence / lab-grown black hole simulated using a single-file
chain of atoms / fastest growing black hole devours one earth per second / in November, scientists
discovered the closest black hole to earth.. “Gaia BH1 resides in a binary system whose other
member is a sunlike star”…
from here to Galilee beam me up, Nikolai take me with you
feed me the small fruits of some other brighter sun and acid rain furrowed land
terra informatis: grotesque palindrome: small ark
ache, acre, arc, or harbor— O Galileo, let down your hair
on that small island, a bigger beak—
who is it that is singing
“[OpenAI’s computer programed chatbot’s]
responses
read like a [person] who only knows the world
through reading about it on the internet. Worse, it
replies with unflinching certainty, even when writing
absolute nonsense”
and
“If DNA is the code of life, then outfits like GeneArt
are printshops — they synthesize custom strands of
DNA and ship them to scientists, who can use the
DNA to make a yeast cell glow in the dark, or to
create a plastic-eating bacterium, or to build a virus
from scratch”
read like a [person] who only knows the world
through reading about it on the internet. Worse, it
replies with unflinching certainty, even when writing
absolute nonsense”
and
“If DNA is the code of life, then outfits like GeneArt
are printshops — they synthesize custom strands of
DNA and ship them to scientists, who can use the
DNA to make a yeast cell glow in the dark, or to
create a plastic-eating bacterium, or to build a virus
from scratch”
I text Marc: “man fuck this wind” and he texts back
“tell me about it.” it is nice to be in the simulation together;
the sensed experience of the shared world; as locality
Tor Norretranders writes “the simulation of the world is replacing the world”
I check the weather app to see if I am cold
and Ammons: “anybody doesn’t believe in / reality should
/ try to start a dead car / on a 10-degree / morning”
where is the world’s interface? take me to it.
I have a swiveling wrench set, I have an impact driver,
a pry bar, a soldering gun, a welding machine, I have
a sharp vinegar, tweezers, a teeth-whitening kit, a vise-
grip, a 5 gallon jug of gasoline, fake olive oil, two-stroke
engine oil, a little lubricant, a pack of 6 lighters, a handful
of sunflower seeds, a butane torch,
and strong heart. I think
we ought to at least try to do something
( we are not yet
gods, more
muscle than
self— indecipherable
code, some
brief joys
suspended in there,
a flute )
I don’t know how to wire up the intricate
diodes the green circuit boards of the future
to mutate into a more beautiful coefficient
fuel efficient 5th dimensional
fragment of the universe, cell
division-long-as-time, growing
old in the interstice—
“on the wing” “on the line”
what is or is not left to chance
there has to be a place the filaments touch the earth
to accept the infernal charge
I have a tap-and-die set
to widen all the holes
I know how to set cement;
the “pillars” of “creation”
I know how to angle
the disc grinder of the soul
to facet the faces of god
to polish a cold hard stone
to tape a few wires together
“cathode” or “salvation”
the stars all night, turning in their sockets
diesel for their kingdoms; the diaphanous wings
of the solar array unfurl in its circumpolar orbit
the gentle non-sentience of lab-grown meat
breathing in hydrogen, helium, oxygen, fermenting
cellulose structures built of sunlight, halogen, fixing
sugars in the cellular matrix, fixing
the carburetor before dark
