between a prayer for the telescope
 
and a prayer for the microscope
 
pixels flare into the image of an atom
 
in an anthill an airplane entering
 
the troposphere an idea orbiting
 
that of human cognition in the authoritative
 
shape of earth seen from elsewhere
 
antiquating the 20th century’s
 
representational doubt or doubting
 
all representations of ownership
 
in our condensed book of vigilance
 
where the absence of a crown
 
shows hierarchy to have no color
 
I prefer the muddy ghost of one
 
sustained cello note over one
 
hundred thousand science experiments
 
I prefer two electrified balloons
 
pushing away from each other
 
like localized points of reference
 
perhaps one can love the academic sentence
 
for its ethical contortions the footnote
 
for its fishhooks pulling up islands
 
from an ocean floor perhaps a barge
 
passing below a bridge exemplifies
 
a green horizon free from the expectation
 
of green blackened with carbon completely
 
submerged the egg holds around it
 
a fine film of air it is silver the silver
 
of barges and the silver of bridges
 
a perfect pear-shaped lampshade
 
bringing to the room an understanding
 
of artifice the silver shape of Colorado
 
in spring its glossy parody of an ideal
 
landscape shattered by the airplane window
 
crossed-out like the X wedged into
 
a representation of the upper atmosphere
 
the sun’s light is white this is the light
 
of example a world within a red lampshade
 
whose idea of orange is a tiny dandelion
 
giving to a field its greenness anyone
 
can bend and scatter blue and violet rays
 
but who puts together a life by praising
 
mathematical air around an elephant
 
half of the sky excuses itself
 
from such a question sixty-five million
 
years ago an asteroid smashed into
 
the earth what remains is loneliness
 
for the nihilistic imperative withdrawn
 
as Copernicus withered as an oak leaf
 
clinging like an aura of classical inevitability
 
around the little effort it takes to imagine
 
a scorpion you don’t admire an icon you
 
just click on it the airplane and the
 
atmosphere were never one spiraling
 
through a pre-Mayan zero’s impossible
 
boundary the barge and the bridge were
 
never one a seed disintegrates in soil
 
complete potentiality comes to the elephant
 
and the egg one validates the other’s
 
annulment reaching toward the lamp
 
someone’s decided the world’s too full
 
of illumination both captain and pilot
 
survive scrutiny as the barge destroys
 
the view from the bridge and the
 
nomenclature of clouds gives the day
 
another creation myth to ignore the guts
 
of a piano would make a good example
 
but of what I’m unsure so we continue
 
to engineer our architectural music
 
taking cues from Chaucer like clues
 
from the hourglass shape of a Chinese
 
alchemist’s furnace too much symbolism
 
annihilates the sublimated form therefore
 
no one mentions swans anymore would you
 
rather have a goddess of terror
 
to whom goats are sacrificed or
 
the implications of Eve signifying human
 
sensitivity entrenched in the post-
 
European psyche for another millennium
 
I’m through thinking in images says
 
the bodily eye to its narrative
 
dismemberment while a decapitated head
 
rolls out of the cliché and I’ve built
 
another victim of fully embodied rhetoric
 
and in this lies the difference between
 
picture and proposition between
 
thinking afresh as if nothing had happened
 
and taking a tidal wave apart a salty
 
phoneme sinks in sand it is not
 
novel pictorial noise but the limits
 
of draftsmanship standing for the limits
 
of earthly existence removed from
 
the videocassette multi-petalled rose-like
 
I give you permission to see beneath
 
the apparent image of the flower
 
in this model two prongs of a fork
 
are pushed into a cork J’Lyn moves
 
from Joshua Paul and Kristin expand
 
without tipping or toppling over the fern
 
marks an absolute conclusion simplistic
 
and perishable impermanence yes
 
the gymnast considers another balancing
 
experiment and our boat demonstrates
 
a failure to parse the greenest of sentences
 
the fork however is easily returned
 
to the drawer the fern to the forest
 
airplane to the air and the elephant
 
to the twisted nucleotides that give it order
 
after the piano was repaired its music
 
seems dated derivative as attention
 
tossed to the ruptured balloon ruining
 
the experiment’s proof of repulsion
 
but proving sideways listening a kind
 
of detonation a miniature electric cell
 
in which notes are to noise as bees
 
are to a shaft of wheat compressed
 
into the best tasting bread things don’t
 
correspond they coalesce a lion crushes
 
a dandelion a crown crushes abstract
 
autonomy Dante damns his enemies
 
in every new translation as all true images
 
are collapsing again into the earth
 
we enter the Clouds of Magellan
 
only to drift like heterogeneous ideas
 
yoked together by violets this is
 
the terrible loneliness of an electron’s
 
orbit botany and pornography fused
 
into the most aerodynamic of asteroids
 
goodbye Hegelian aliens the rational alone
 
is a real hinge pulpy and puffy children
 
swing in summertime alive as animation
 
so much for the playground hypothesis
 
of a disaster movie ripping open
 
an already cauterized cultural wound
 
you like novels and I like nudity
 
underneath all utilitarian and decorative statesy67
 
an instrument of epiphany sits unstrung
 
as a book of etiquette from the age
 
of cause and effect American acoustics
 
thrive in their theatrical qualities
 
while the sky drained of any significance
 
drops like a curtain over our embrace
 
of reading into the empirical now
 
the piano implicates us in its generous
 
and possessive melody the cricket emerges
 
an imago parents roam from room
 
to room demolishing themselves
 
like Socratic students both egg
 
and airplane crack leaving no other trace
 
than the transitory and arbitrary volume
 
of a little air tender wreckage
 
grass nailed objectively to the ground