Kismet

“Fate Tempting” by Jeff Christensen

life patterns
unpredictable
light and dark
speckled hours
days nights
shaping years
arbitrarily
sequenced
now subtle
then lurid like
splotch and spot
chaos of an
ocelot pelt
skin of time
map of feats
broken circlets
stretched taut
for the race
some call journey
whose triumph
though ever a
time and space
accident
moves upon
purposeful bones
supple mind
and an eye
who can see
the big changes
before they arrive

Chaos Theory

“Butterfly Effect” by Adriana Groza

 

fickle caprice
compels tiny triggers
of force majeure moments
butterflies cause hurricanes
borrowed pennies cause revolutions
we just can’t predict
if what where or when

 

(originally posted April 2013)

Timestorm

 

“Cosmic Chaos Theory” by MasPix

 

time a construct of mind

metaphysically shaped

as a purposeful arrow

so fleet in its flight

at the height of a life

it accelerates reaching

for tempo of starlight

enlisting the storm

in that sky above skies

where all pieces of

darkness and light

all beginnings and ends

swirl together and swarm

in apparently putative

chaos of cosmos

tomorrows and yesterdays

blended in hurtling

mythic menageries

motions disturbed

here and there

by conspicuous stillness

fixed cold constellations

that light up the brain

to appreciate

just how to measure

the changing beliefs

of prehistory

even amidst the

galactic commotions

of raging existence

Blizzard

 

“Abstract Chaos” by Jennifer Tonya Clayton

 

unspent winter fury

unleashed upon spring

snowdrops and violets

confused by the calendar

vie for safe haven

beneath brusque abuse

of a blinding white wind

broken sightlines

lost traces of tracks

unto summer leave

seasons uncertain

too cold to remember

their proper progression

their rota of primacy

woe to the trained

mind of time and

assiduous habits of men

disconcerted put off

their perpetual regimen

caught in a special insanity

conscious of chaos

pregnant with threat of

the worst kind of change

a state in which

God only knows

what comes next

Fractals

Image from sprott.physics.wisc.edu

 

immeasurable smallness of infinity
regressive mirrors of self
kaleidoscope glimpses
repeating in patterns
exquisite with beauty

iteration by formulae
manifest self-similar shapes
implausibly marked
with both limited area
and limitless perimeter

populates nearly
all aspects of nature
most cosmic to most subatomic
including the ultra-unseen
beyond both extremes

undergirds metaphysics
delineates dreamscapes
lays floor to ontology
rafters of ill-behaved chaos
and beams of complexity theory

they make for more elegant
sharper geometry
giving all science
more accurate measures
and tools for prediction

Fractal Wisdom

 

“Perplexity” by Claudia Goodell

 

 

a riot of sameness
possessing illusions
at distance of difference
self-similar shapes
not of one two or three
but a fourth finely
fractioned dimension
right there just in front
of mathematical
Mandelbrot minds
but behind out of reach
of Euclidean eyes

here lies nature
evolved with
atomical symmetries
playful and modest
disporting in chaos
of quirks and complexities
finding itself more
predictable than it
intended revealed as
recursive of motion
and form adding
knowledge to laws
of quantum disorder

taken together
the concept of fractals
annuls intuition
allows mathematicians
and scientists insight
to see the more sharply
events that are probable
giving philosophers
poets and painters
new visions of
all that is possible

 

 

From my books Human Waters and Legacies (vol. 2)

Butterfly Effect

“The Butterfly Effect 2012”
Painting by Gena
From artmajeur.com

accept this odd world for its chaos
its irreproducible chains of events
those accidental pairings of ancestors

had a butterfly distracted just one of
my ten-thousand family tree kisses
or one of its flirtatious meetings of eyes

perhaps you would be writing this verse
in my stead perhaps I would be reading
these lines from a different perspective

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

each breeze
has an impetus
haphazard flutter
of unwary wings
or a woolgathered
exhale of boredom

some breezes
accelerate
into a gust
and some gusts
protract in
hospitable air

here is wind
joyful blown
and some winds
catch a turn
pick up circular
speed in the
pull of a vortex

here is a storm
and some storms
gather power
barometry
grants to a
gradient isobar

here is a hurricane
living and breathing
blowing and growing
an entity rare
with a force
both exquisite
and terrible

some hurricanes
hellbent possessed
of a character
human intense
driving madly
voracious for
warmth selfish
callous and careless
of causing calamity

fluttering wings
point of origin
for a nonlinear
system determinist
propagates life
full engorged with
an energy able to
alter the world

Progress of Chaos

“Surviving Chaos”
Painting by Sedrick Huckaby
From dallasartsrevue.com

before demiurge
the formless
the void
unbehaved
not yet taught
of cosmogony

ultimate freedom
ungoverned
unprincipled
leaderless
anarchy
carries the day

growing backwards
approaching
pre-ethical state
the uncivilized
savage reclaimed
of his power

devolving
society
seismically fractured
destabilized order
engulfing
the future

Locus

Chaoscope
Illustration from nedbatchelder.com

we speak often of nowhere
as if it exists nonexistently
like some black hole philosophy
spiraling nothingness
darkling trite adages
tongue-tied by space-time
unripe and unlit
by a plausible idiom

anywhere ails in a similar way
tossed from nonchalant lips
unaware of its truth
given physics of chaos
too thinly instilled
quanta hardly achieve
erudition in liberal
artisan speech

unsatisfied rigor of lesser trained
impatient minds leads
to rationalizing
in shorthand
simplistic but safely
concluding that
everywhere is in fact
somewhere

Chaos Theory

“Butterflies in Your Stomach”
Painting by Kathleen L. Flanagan
at motivationalmoments.blogspot.com

fickle caprice
compels tiny triggers
of force majeure moments
butterflies cause hurricanes
borrowed pennies cause revolutions
we just can’t predict
if, what, where or when