Coriolis

 

“The Touch” by Elizabeth Chapman

 

motion in motion

swirled turns of the air

bend straight lines

corrupt stillness

destination is

movement alive

with geometry

place but a placename

location a notion

no here and no there

inertia the illusion of

standing one’s ground

against progress when

progress is constant

every man all alone

in his mind on a path

every path a distortion

of spatial intelligence

measured by wishes

a traveler’s enigma

compelled by a force

not in need of consent

the momentum of

angular mechanics

a world whose inhabitants

ever observers inside

a perpetual motion

can never know joy

of a physically

fixed sense of place

and yet find themselves

cast as explorers

intent to gaze inwardly

eyes full of solitude

deep with discovery

learning their way

to the every last spot

of creation

the gifts of existence

that sprang from a touch

by the fingers of God

 

****************************

“Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.”      – Thomas Merton

Mysterium

“Focal Point” by John L. Payne

 

ninety degrees
north and south
every nowhere
in chaos of locus
lost latitudes
parallels pulled
into infinitesimal
vanishing points

cold antipodes
unmoving hubs
who arrange
for a massive
perpetual spin

every anytime
nullifies clocks
time and motion
detached from
each other
deprived of
directional
linear passage

their concepts
disintegrate into
failed phrases
of here to there
now to then
voided of sense
in the space of
these places

existence itself
hangs on questions
philosophers pose
to smug physicists
questions whose
out-of-reach answers
disturb arcane rigors
of science and faith

leaving open perhaps
an oracular role
for some poet
for syntax that solves
and demystifies
magical places
allowing for natural
dynamic of being
to flourish
against all the odds
every nowhere at
north and south
ninety degrees

Beginnings

Carina Nebula as Captured by the Hubble Telescope

 

Secrets of creation hide deep in conflation

Of science with faith, of corpus with wraith,

Discrete bits of essence, immune from senescence,

That mark each warm creature, or cold lifeless feature,

Of all the known world, plus those unknown, thus hurled

Through vastness of space, push-pulled in their chase

By grave forces, unseen, save by eyes utmost keen

As detectors of naught, who find nothingness caught

By the physics of sleight, in mathematical light,

Racing outward, away from a focal array,

From a radiant heart that outburst apart

With the first stroke of time, Divine in its prime.

 

 

Before that release, all was soundless still peace,

When all matter, all dust, was consigned to the trust

Of that heart, then mere speck, the one salient check

Against stark eternity, charged with modernity,

Then, slowly it swelled, its inertia unquelled,

Now a tumescent part that grew into that heart

Whose eruption destroyed the limitless void,

And sent forth material, mixed with ethereal

Substance that surged, until order emerged

That conformed to base laws, posed by God as first cause,

And the cosmos took form in a most perfect storm

Whose primordial strife gave way to first life.

 

 

From my book Range of Motion

Nature of Violence

“Thus Spake Zarathustra” by Yury Fomichev

 

insatiable hunger of galaxies
driven to swallow each other
mad parsecs of mayhem
where trillions of stars
clash in vehement chaos
colliding destroying creating
recombinant violent things

new morphologies drawn
into volatile vacuums
that radically alter the
blood-gas of gravity
churning the was and the is
until notions of sameness
no longer obtain

cosmic rudiments torn
then rebonded reborn
black holes seething
reform into one singularity
lusting to deepen the warp
that would steepen the curve
giving spacetime its sway

inorganic materials
swarm in mad storms
of a seminal stardust
celestial wombs heave
with mysterious matter
grown angry and urgent
astronomy taken to tantrum

miasma inducing vast
indistinct spasms of nebulae
blackened and bruised
by the paradox force of
destructive creation
a brutal nativity given to
fierce cataclysmic explosions

in yield of atomical quanta
among which an infinitesimal
number of pieces give seed
to astonishing molecules
building block elements
marked by a rare bizarre
spark of potential for life

by such spawn of congenital
virtues of violence
we came to exist
and by being we came
to the thinking
and thought led to wonder
why we in our nature

behave with such cruelty
killing ourselves with
remorseless abandon
as if self-destruction
were hard-wired instinct
till wonder gave worry
and worry self-loathing

and here have we come
with our moral inventions
in love and in hate of a God
in our furious turns
testing ethics to pacify urges
subdue mitochondrial menace
yet failing by any true measure

and here have we come
to the brink of a nihilist fate
bloody garments our hairshirts
of ignorance not understanding
why some are so bad
yet uncomfortably certain
why some are so good

we appear to know less
than we knew in the cave
when the clan and the tribe
in their smallnesses
simplified choices
and rarely would make
a mistake more than once

and here have we come
to confront whom we are
our ugly incongruous selves
inconspicuous specks
in a universe troubled by
nature that stems from a
ruthless ancestral calamity

nucleotides flawed with
terrible nuance of
vicious propensity
slipped into primitive cells
and asserted themselves
co-dependent with acids
benign in defining identity

and here have we come
blest and cursed
good and evil within our
most ancient deep creases
of cosmic dichotomy
life in itself one long chance
to earn grace or damnation

 

**********************************

 

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” 

 – Friedrich Nietzsche

Dark Matter

“Dark Matter” by Troika

 

I am timeless
and massive
unseen but
all present
immune to
your physics
unfazed by
your light
entertained
by your blunt
metaphysics

I feed you
sustain you
surround you
absorb all
your darkness
your blackness
the worst of
your thoughts
and your words
said and done
now a part of me

oh but am I
so much more
beyond ken
and conception
all manifestation
of things
you are not
they are me
you have virtue
and beauty
mortality
weakness
and guilt
while it’s me
who owns
everything else

in this world
there are only
the two of us
we are that
binary substance
irrational
lopsided twins
of existence
the pair of us
zero sum actors
enacting reality
made from
our opposite flesh

mine so vast
yours so small
and yet you
you alone
are my reason
my purpose
without you
at last I am
nothing at all

 

Beginnings

“Pillars of Creation” – Photo by Hubble Telescope

Secrets of creation hide deep in conflation
Of science with faith, of corpus with wraith,
Discrete bits of essence, immune from senescence,
That mark each warm creature, or cold lifeless feature,
Of all the known world, plus those unknown, thus hurled
Through vastness of space, push-pulled in their chase
By grave forces, unseen, save by eyes utmost keen
As detectors of naught, who find nothingness caught
By the physics of sleight, in mathematical light,
Racing outward, away from a focal array,
From a radiant heart that outburst apart
With the first stroke of time, Divine in its prime.

Before that release, all was soundless still peace,
When all matter, all dust, was consigned to the trust
Of that heart, then mere speck, the one salient check
Against stark eternity, charged with modernity,
Then, slowly it swelled, its inertia unquelled,
Now a tumescent part that grew into that heart
Whose eruption destroyed the limitless void,
And sent forth material, mixed with ethereal
Substance that surged, until order emerged
That conformed to base laws, posed by God as first cause,
And the cosmos took form in a most perfect storm
Whose primordial strife gave way to first life.

 

 

(originally posted here April 2013 – written years before)

 

Tycho

Tycho Brahe’s Prosthetic Nose

(Regarding Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, 1546-1601)

 

silver nose in the air

eccentricities famous

enamored of liquor

and women and spheres

drew the heavens

mathematically

reaching degrees of

flamboyant precision

a swashbuckling genius

who cuckolded kings

while resolving the

naked eye parallax

rearranged stars in

new accurate catalog

left upon agonized death

come with rumors of

murder and intrigue

to one with a keener

copernican mind

johan kepler who gave us

celestial physics

the rest as they say

is but history

 

Brahe’s self-composed epitaph:
“He lived like a sage and died like a fool”

Time Before Time

 

“Planetary Plasmas” by Richard Ortolano

 

a lone singularity

infinite density

temporal spatial

dimensions as yet

nonexistent sheer

numberless absence

of space and of place

quantum vacuum

mathematically moribund

paradox of a particulate God

life and matter ex nihilo

cunningly curvingly

dovetailed to fit relativity

bent by uncertainty

Einstein and Heisenberg

iconoclastic in neat

intellectual joinery

only to find they’ve been

rendered asunder when

come to great clash with

arcane modern notions

of lawless invisible motion

a chaos of vibrating strings

singing cyclical songs of

expansion contraction

ethereal inhales and exhales

replete cosmogenesis

parallel opposite worlds

full of opposite parallel minds

time in omni-directional course

unpredictably carried by chance

forward backward and sideways

perhaps all is ever and always

an infinite multiverse

able to procreate gravity branes

who suspend every universe

each in its own isolation

or possibly even

produce countless

self-contained bubbles

discrete of existence

expanding for all of eternity

each cosmic entity destined

to never perceive any other

yet all must perforce face

the very same question

will time before time

be resolved and revealed

by theology steeped in

a fluid forensic philosophy

or will it happen that

better-made pictures

emerge from a faith in

untamed theoretical physics