new age of a boneless god andrew mccallum
new age of a boneless god andrew mccallum
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physics beyond the standard model and so
the closer he looks at things the further away they seem
at supper after a hard day at the universe he finds himself slipping through his food his own hands wave
at him from behind a mountain of peas
stars and planets dance
with molecules on his fingertips.
after a hard day at the universe he
tumbles through himself flies through the galaxies of his own heart
in the presence of his own family he feels he is falling through an infinite series of nothings this morning when he went into the broomcupboard of the electron looking for quarks and neutrinos it opened into a ballroom the ballroom
into a plain into the steppes of mother russia
and he saw men hauling barges up the volga chanting faintly for their daily bread
it’s not that he longs for the old newtonian days (though
some homely matter and simple gravity might be reassuring
some good old equalbutopposite forces to hold him in equilibrium) it’s not that he hasn’t learned how to balance
well on the seesaws of paradox
it is what he sees in the eyes of his children –
the infinite black holes the ransomed light at their heart –
that grieves him
postmillennium for two millennia our bones ached in the middle ages they were stretched according to gothic canons of beauty during the renaissance soldiers whipped them
on pillars with lashes of oxleather
in the era of classicism architects put into practice the rule of the golden section (for some reason called the bed of procrustes ) during the first world war dogs dragged them from one front line to another during the second they rendered up soap in postwar times each small bone was stripped there
where it was difficult to even piss in the cold
and here
buzzing with flies in parliament square
in the century’s last decade
one could see machines crushing bones (but more often it was arthritis and radiculitis that bent them) but as pseudocajetan writes after the year two thousand bones will disappear and mankind will ascend to the new age of a boneless god
C/2007 N3 (Lulin) skywanderer set out from nowhere without destination falling aimlessly forever a slingshot of light deflected around our sun a greenish cast we say gleaming ice and dust poisonous cyanogens diatomic carbon gases descriptions we play out like fishing lines but beyond our words... do you in your wandering brush the shoreline of infinity
here is time becoming in a threedimensional space is somehow transformed into being in a fourdimensional world
Albert Einstein
I glance into the mirror and find my hair is white the mirror welcomes my image then welcomes the image of the empty room I dream a belldomed winter’s sky I watch its blizzard sink into snowy silence here midnight robs sundials of meaning as time robs clocks of meaning a fir tree opens out into the green flame of its shape to annunciate time through the ancient myth of now
improving the human: being an etymological excursion with pseudonymous allusions all neatly set out as bricolage in fewer than 50 lines 1
to turn to profit…
to our market stall the prospective parents come with their shopping lists human being has become a commodity, the only question that remains is who shall pay the vendor – a licensing State or private commissioners – Luis Tabucchi 2
to raise to a better quality or condition…
following plato from the cave into sunlight they approach the good good is an unreachable sun, there is only what is better in relation to what is worse, what is deserving in relation to what is undeserving – Jesper Petterson 3
to test, show worthy…
quality control
god marks each loaf it approves with a deep thumbprint wow! this is amazing, i'll bake him a little longer to make sure he's done, there! i'll test him, [pokes finger in man's abdomen], perfect! [belly button appears] – Lise Sarraute 4
to be ahead of…
modes of existence i teach you the superman the last shall be first it’s nothing personal, i’m not saying that, as a cripple, we value you any less than we would have an ablebodied child, it’s just that from an objective point of view it would have been better all round had you never been born – Ola Johansson 5
…that which is of or belonging to earth
a spadeful of dirt excavated from the grave tumbling back in adam is described in the Tractate Sanhedrin 38b as a golem since his dust was ‘kneaded
into a shapeless husk’, like adam all golems are created from earth, they are a creation of those who are very holy and close to god, a very holy person is one who strives to approach god and in that pursuit gains some of god's wisdom and power, one of those powers is the creation of life – Mosche Tomek
gravity breaking of membrane fragile fruit – withering embryos curling within eggs living beings so friable so prone to overgrowth and imbalance inside the rose petal a blue skeleton your atoms now are smashing against the atoms of your chair what is keeping you together the pull of the moon the arms of a lover the gravity of cherry to cherry stone keep it from breaking apart keep things from being broken apart gather things together thyroid womb heart build a nest avoid the rays that seek to destroy you at molecular level seek the sea its great embrace water and light moving in wave formations keeping it all together
if my mother were to die what about me how could I survive I who am just one of her conclusions a suffix a terminal in her airport an appendix an extremity of her urge to live tending (inevitably) towards death I am just a fingernail of hers rebellious grown too long an ovule that has gone astray a tiny hair of hers that lost its way and temporarily attained independent flight that got into its head little by little that it could live on its own could live and die by itself I am one of her tears that has congealed solidified grown turned into a man hardened so much it became a statue of salt seeing the dead and weeping for them wandering and weeping for the dead
in the realm of the dead in the stockyards and the supermarkets I am just a tumour of hers that has grown unnaturally big and now no longer knows how to get back inside that wonders how from one single woman beautiful and sad I was duplicated so that now we are two
I loved my mother for each molecule... I loved her subatomically for each particle each tissue each muscular fascia each small adipose agglutination each muscle group the peritoneum was my world’s ptolemaic shroud the peritoneum was the world’s end and the universe’s edge and the universe was round a perfect curve the world’s perfect curvature as only a mother’s womb can be
lost at sea the sea wrenched him open entered him until he was separate no longer sent him on the currentroad to the far meeting of air and water as he dissolved into the great ocean his limbs twined with those of other creatures to form compound monsters combing the depths with cloudy fingers the waves whispered but their message was unclear myriad voices murmured stories washed white as bone lands tried to hold him with hands of clay but the tide pulled him onwards adrift shapeshifting lost
by the lochan wherever there is water there is wild water wild as a maelstrom water wild as water always is despite whatever habitations might encroach upon the shore here where buses whoosh and diesels generate breeze plays upon the sunlit lochan wavelets rippling the deep blue sky reeds swaying like shy dancers this is what the gulls and coots and herons know that wherever there is water there is wild and the water’s wildness is within them too this is what the whispering water knows in its wild watery way that all things that breathe and pulse all things are mostly water whatever sees water is water whatever drinks water is water drinking feel the wildness of the water within this flask of flesh this wineskin of ourselves that siphons water into flickers of consciousness where wateryeyed we look upon a watery world
our tongues taste eternally the watery wild of ourselves bathing we feel the slight membrane of skin that separates ourselves water from water which is why water is restful why our watery eyes are drawn to water are hypnotised by water’s moods and movement it is the wildness that we are and will be when one day we flow back see the waterlight glinting on these wavelets a hundred thousand ancestors’ eyes long since returned to the source wick the water that is you to light your candleeyes wherever there is water there is wild
poetically man dwells specks of lifestuff flurry around me they come in drifts or singly like snowflakes moments fall in my ears their music sometimes discordant although mostly remembered as harmony I trim each chance to a syllabic sliver line them up seal them my friends admire my effort or mock it this impulse to control past and present yet I persist I edit images into those fragments rearrange attempt to appreciate this life this urge seashells bird nests rocking chairs deer spirals moons and words language is the hub
the house of being I go there I roam in it and look at me now a scrapmerchant in a world of words and particles their confetti aswirl around my head while the unremembered falls away falls on my bare feet which tap and twirl unheeded in the dust
white craw publishing 2016