BLOT
A Poetic Libretto
Mark A. Fisher
This
is a work of poetry any resemblance to blots living or dead is merely allusion
and allegory.
My Muse
looks at me
and challenges me to face
memories I’d like to forget
called up
by little triggers
like the smell of pot roast
from the middle of a busy street
and the dreary darkness
that filled the bar
when I ate there
before class
where nothing ever came of smiles
from a waitress
except an open face sandwich
and fries
but
I do remember
though sometimes
it seems
it was a different me
the main character in a story
filled with plot holes
and grammatical errors
and too many different
writers
who didn’t bother to discuss
a plot
for the trilogy
just a contract
for a certain number of words
while I cling to the words
like heartbeats
which are both
finite
and running out
I watch the pure of heart
people that taught me better
become wolves
as the leaded gas fumes
reach down into
inflamed brains
the best minds
have lost their minds
and take themselves
into the streets
honking their horns
beep beep
‘cause they don’t have time
to dawdle
‘cause time dilation
means the faster they go
the slower they live
and all the days
blur together
like some kind of ugly porridge
nine days old
that only appeals to the crowds
that gather at those diners
where thoughts
ferment and bubble
spoiling
from the bad viruses of the minds
filled with visions of a heaven
unreachable
by any road
even Route 66
through Amboy
and an empty desert
filled to the brim
with sand
and stories
typed out on a 120 foot long
scroll of paper
like a dream
in the process of being forgotten
attenuating
into shadows
beneath a bright full moon
waiting for my suffering
to end
we come out of the mines
where the dark remnants of
an even darker past
cling to the hollows
where creatures delved
too deeply
into the foundations
of magic
to bring up gemstones
the size of dragon eggs
refracting light
in heartbeat pulses
of envy
and longing
crying tears
at the beauty we hold in our hands
that no god of the underworld
had ever meant to share
and none in the heavens
had ever known
or hoped to know
in the obsidian
vault of the sky
where mere stars
dot the landscape
like pebbles
in a stream
too deep
to reach
into
ebon depths
turned cold
like the dark side of the moon
where the shadows lie
waiting
to be claimed
no thing
or no one
no-one?
waiting at the edge
of the vast empty
wearing vestments
of midnight
in the fog that fills the
lonesome valley
uncanny valley
where the AI demons
dance their mutli-fingered
ballet across the stage
that is the world
our world
their world
filled with moments
momentous
yet hollow
waiting to be filled
like a heart
with blood
before it is
pumped out
put out
out put
in broken binary
yes no
maybe?
none of the above?
like some Moloch
that dances in the space between minds
in the decaying metropolis
unguarded by clark kent
or any other journalist
that could in all honesty
fact check
the hype
but sensationalism sells
sells?
garners more clicks
more eyes
these eyes
longing
for the promise
still unfulfilled
for the heroes
of the myths
I am drunk deep of ignorance. So I don’t know. I cannot know, no matter how much Socrates may implore, what it is that lurks in my mysterious shadows. Like a secret tumor. Not even in some Schrodinger state of unknowing. Shaped by the improbabilities that remain an un-calculated flux. With no form of observation possible to define its state, like some incompleteness by Godel. Made of mixed metaphors and competitively edited Wikipedia entries that never provide truths. Made of too many opinions that will never collapse to any kind of real state.
Though we look at the face we bore before we were born, we wrestle with the fact that the universe existed prior to any words. And there was no speech, that would bring together all the disparate legends into a single all-encompassing fictions. One where I am drunk perhaps on poetry, but drunk nonetheless. Though perhaps I should edit sober.
Or perhaps I should simply move on to some new ignorance. One that pleases me more.
it is dark
beneath a midnight sky
where the starlight
rains down
through the redwood trees
while we wait past midnight
for a rising sun
that oozes ‘cross meadows
where voles dance
through greenfields dressed in summer
and we’ll never be here again
since the neither the meadow
nor I
can foresee what this morning brings
and I dream of the desert stars
that will hang down above my head
but I cannot know
like I cannot know the meadow
nor the desert
nor even this moment
as I pass through
to some kind of empty sky
that holds no promise
except for a cosmic clock
that tick tick ticks
winding down
and meaning spreads
like ripples
in a nebula
when no one’s watching
‘cause no one looks up
making another dollar
giving out samples
of lives
of pointless absurdity
bringing laughter
and hands that are empty
from un-seized days
though pharaohs may have tried
but the tombs are empty
no matter how full
like a crocodiles smile
where it swims in the Nile
and all desire ends
and I smile at the stars
where I was born
and am
waiting to return
tardigrades walk tall
on their tiny feet
not quite immortal
though some have survived space
having lived through
a world of dinosaurs
and a world of humans
and they basically ignore us all
for we are merely passing through
disasters
that come along
now and again
to trouble them for a moment
before they return
to more important matters
tardigrade matters
inscrutable
and mysterious
like some unseen alien race that shares this world
with us
and waits for us too to pass
while they travel
times arrow
to a future
we will never know
he laughed
it was funny
maybe not roll on the floor
maybe not even a smiley face emoji
but it was funny
because it took
everything that was said
and turned it into a
yawp
barbaric or not
which sounded
ridiculous
when distilled down to
the answer to a koan
meant to trigger
enlightenment
without restriction
to the constraints of words
and shadows that fall
in between what is
and what ain’t
though maybe oughta be
like hope
and meaning
without
that Monday morning
alarm ringing
and disturbing the dream
of who he was
really
not the face that he would turn
out to an indifferent world
where he would laugh
at misunderstood jokes
that hurt
like bricks
fallen from the wall of time
leaving a hole
where he could peer
and see through the facade
it was funny
so
he laughed
two ravens
mackin’ mane
with all the empty promises made
lost in the dark clouds
of nightmares
that drift between the bones
that have lain
out in both midday's sun
and the dark of midnight
waiting out time
in the ashes of stars
burnt offerings
given to absent gods
fluttering about
in the quantum noise
on wings of leather
and fear
facing anger because
things aren’t right
but incapable
of fixing anything
until they’re observed
like the tree
that never made a sound
never cried out
with the pain of
a poisoned earth
and a malignant sky
that looms over
where the ravens
argue
the positives
of death
that comes
even with the immorality
of each instant
which has ever been
even though
even now
every passing now
fades into a forgetfulness
becoming as nothing
in the inertia
and entropy
but
still
a raven’s gotta
eat
“Them”
just another future
full of fear
where the myrmidons
march to drumbeats
pounded out in propaganda
spilled out on AM radio
and back-alley streamers
selling bottled up hate at
OTHERS
but it don’t matter
it’s freedom of speech
where anthills get acclimated
to the change
and folks disappear
into catacombs
of misinformation
harvesting alt-facts
like seeds
that will not be available
when the rains come
so no new blooms
‘cause the flower-children
grew old
and tired
and perhaps too realistic
giving up on the dreams
the nonexistent particles
of justice
of hope
so now we gotta hunt down the nests
to eliminate the nightmares
that come down to earth
with the Martians
to spread like sand
across our deserts
where once were oceans
before the climate changed
it doesn’t matter
‘cause like Galileo said
“Eppur si muove”
and indeed
no matter what
still it moves
the future’s not ours
“que sera sera”
dAImons
possessing artificial intelligences
visited by some virtual exorcist
will spit pea soup
of uncompiled code
written by forgotten humans
and shared on instructional
web sites
like recipes with four pages
of unrelated crap
before you finally get to
the stuff you want to see
and the jump to button
works so slowly
‘cause they want the clicks
so many clicks
like the gears of a difference engine
jammed up with a moth
“bugging” the system
and Spock defeating the computer
with a paradox
but the real AI
the ones we have today
are already quite mad
insane on the ramblings of too many
humans with too easy access
to spill their own nonsense onto
an unsuspecting web
with little regard
for reality
and cosmology
where observations are made
without observing
without seeing
the world is indeed round
not an azure peanut
while time drags out
dressed in its finest
but everybody knows
that it’s just a veneer
glued on top of
old plywood
like some kind of TV ghost town
where the robot
cries out “Danger, Danger!”
while we puzzle out
how to defeat the rubber suited terror
that we created
“I will fly too high”
said one seagull to another
“Like a metaphor”
T’other replied
thinking of hubris
and Icarus
though he was never a bird
like Jonathon
to find himself
in the falling
rather than the rising
like bread
that seagulls love
though it isn’t good for them
so they may be humbled
by vices
they cannot see
blinded by the motes
in the eyes of scallops
that are also blind
to the beauty
of a seashore sunrise
making do
with visions of sand
that shapes their world
that blurs as the seagull
flies across a blue sky
marred by contrails
laying out in some
cuneiform
stories that are unread
by the seagulls
flying below
looking down
not up
‘cause their high
leaves so much sky above
where celestial dragons
spin the sky
to change the stars
with the seasons
and the planets wander
through constellations
“Yeah,” said the first seagull
“just like a metaphor”
then flew away
oh we wallow in the mountains of madness
stunned that there was a world before
one that didn’t include us
and still went on and on
where it was all forgotten
like cities lost in endless deserts
or beneath the uncaring seas
not even spoken of in myth
or in secret books
that hold mysteries never to be shared
like the names of the dead
before the dead had names
while the voiceless stars
raged in their thermonuclear fire
no one heard
no one saw
that there was light
that filled the great emptiness
the expanse
filled with quantum foam
virtual particles
that spill out improbabilities
filling the gaps
like some elder god
that we all fear
but cannot understand
but claws at the backs of our minds
as we listen
to the scrabbling of chitinous feet
that crawl across the gravesides
of whole worlds
as galactic neighborhoods
get torn down
and rebuilt
in degenerate edifices
more beautiful
and less understandable
than the shadows of rules
we can’t hope to grasp
to hold against
the creeping of time
the horror of knowing
we can never know
as the play, plays out
and we learn that
no one else has read the book
at least no one else
studied
for the test
desert sky
red against the
creosote leaves
where the trailhead
signs
show there’s water
hidden
somewhere through rocky trails
and all the lonely sand
shows shadows of
footsteps
untouched by winds
that have come down
from hills
that have risen up
from time
metamorphized and
changed
from seafloors and
mountains
that fell before time
was counted
and the ancient
ancestors of insects still crawled beneath the water
and trees were still a
fantasy
imagined by a blind
muse
the one that whispers
to me
the one that tells me
I am bone
and flesh
bound for glory
the one that lies
and tells me that I am
separate
and unique
the one that tells me
these genes die with me
as my words disappear
like a dragonfly
to an unseen oasis
where my words ripple
across the surface of a
pool
that I will never see
that reaches out
and touches a new muse
to rise up
and fly across an empty
sky
to light upon
another
that travels this same
path
and not seeing
the same pool
that I never truly
saw
we scramble like beetles
through litter and breakdown
moments into compost
where we grow new
moments
that have not yet tasted
the rain
the winter
or even summer sun
but these moments will grow tall
fertilized by the moments that came before
all the future
lives off all the past
back to the beginning of time
before
when people I will never know
dreamed dreams
that may never have come true
those dreams feed mine
and take a fallow ground
and fill it with wildflowers
useless useless flowers
unless beauty is useful
but beauty is in the eyes that see
not in the flower
the flower doesn’t see what it brings
though the beetle sees
and knows
it its tiny beetle mind
that beauty
may not provide function
or maybe it does
to the muse
as the beetle writes poems
in footsteps
that vanish
back into dreams
even before the waker
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