Deadly Pollen | Page 3

Stephen Oliver
lean to, against the?sky in crazy surrealist back drop,?expressionist haze is shock amongst?rubble and safety helmets spotted?lamp-lit - an engine harvests an infant,?luckily, dead pale but pained; dust?cakes sudden caves by a broken?10th floor grounded, bedraggled beneath?re-inforcing caged. Tectonic plates?lock brake drums an instant on the?Richter scale. Taiwan slips
on the tooth of a cog.
*
Generalization of Old World?caught in the plane's sweep. Look up!?sound makes memory after.?Dragging loss is violence; O ye?who suffer banishment, nourishment?grounded. Dearth 'tis. Rabble is?ordinary, a thing apart, the jackal?at play, toying with world's diamonds,?spittle aglitter. Laughter strewn,?down-compressed to mud. From whence?the swing and arc, blood's roar rose,?gave judder to the first step - before?the word, the wind in the word;?rabble speech was. In the beginning.
*
CEOs in castles cascade?in cash, silent as a cyber virus -?the invisible hides cause-and-effect,?stock taken, bartered in Japan -?via Belarus every back yard where?falls a city's shadow looming?over the last, dead chimney pot,?not even moon can empty its?chamber pot of yellow, silver slops?into alleyways crackling with?plastic syringes, used condoms,?blood trails, slewed off into a?wilderness of free ways, high rise.?O the dead arise in elevators nightly?as Pharisees burst into the Temple.
*
Footprints for satellites??An old game. The Mayas knew it;?land forms camouflaged, star?charts, airy bestiaries, eagle, lama,?beastback mountain sides, white?pebbled Milky Way, an ancestral?footbridge. Look down or up,?backwards or forwards. Weirdly,?rotating our options, weighing odds;?caught in bristling cyberspace?or a stone corbelled chamber.?Either way, it'll make you dizzy.?Once is as it ever was, ever shall be:?Gods walk out upon a path of stars.
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Is recollection seeing anew,?old pieces, rearranged, seemingly??Letting go of nothing suggests: -?(like) air conditioning, computer hum.?Waiting for nothing. Omphalos;?world-centre, mind nadir, still point?about which everything revolves.?God's paper chase. Omphalos,?mind's umbilical. Stone sunk?to bottom of the lake is memory,?incarnation. Mind skip back before?instinct saw dark eclipse. Sky shield.?Moon boss. Through vast chthonic?reservoirs, horizon, swept aside.
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So. Earth's most dramatic?'bald spot', (ozone hole) is down?to 15 million sq miles over?Antarctica as of Oct, 2002. Shrinkage,?Big Time. One year's reading on?reduced cfcs doth not a trend make.?Is this happy hour? Fewer recalcitrants?maced? Hair-gel instead of hair?spray? Asthmatic winds rake pebbles?in dry Arctic valleys. Presidents?and dictators square off. Puritanism?v Tribalism. Doomsday's a?syndicated affair. Life's Good.
*
I wanted to reach my hand into?the side of that mountain.?The Romans waited, the Jews died.?Made a sacrificial altar,?such as Abraham had to his God.?A small cave, pocketed at the?base of Massada. Better death than?surrender - a courageous act?for living against the odds. Day?by day danger renews, retribution?neither diminishes nor goes?away. To every Age a new generation,?bigger weapons to sound the void.
*
Your breasts in the mirror,?still life of gourds. Bossed shields.?The white-washed room peeled,?flaked, wooden shutters opened?on the small harbour quay -?a restaurateur tipped his garbage?casually into the Mediterranean.?A night of fish bones, cigarette butts,?bobbed in an oily slick. West,?into shadow, Ant��no?s anchored off?the headland, outboard silenced,?dynamite exploding like an octopus?under a shoal of fish beneath.
*
Alcatraz not Minoan ruins.?Morning mist hangs its garden off?Golden Gate bridge. Men in?fog loom large. Fog or ram's horn??Container ship - warrior barge,?passes under with another load of?Japanese cars to feast upon?freeways. 'Straight guys are at a?premium' you said. (Or so I?overheard). Seven months under?your roof in your bed. I never got?to Texas - never hit Route 66.?Marooned on my Isle, deep within?that lustful, solitary confinement.
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Do words bring to mind flat?sided buildings, cliff face, waterfall??Each emotion to its respective?season and climate. Age means era,?epoch, each physical transformation?(our) body plays out. Journey?from foot to fossil print, the single?breath, misting to humidness.?Blood shadows a dense valley;?untidy buildings, an old saw-mill;?blood thins to Gods' ichor. I approach?you like a drive-in movie. Memory's?what we miss, we spool reels of it.
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Serpent-backed bridge profiled:?the city, chalk-toned, laid out like a?shooting gallery. From Green?Point (sub-net ghosting to Georges?Head) a V of gulls speedily hugging?the harbour; its surface serried,?grey disturbances. Wind grain. Yachts?coasting, canvas slap. Manly ferries,?(green, beige upperwork) slide?between white, salt-shaker buoys.?Trouble in Paradise? Never!?Spring thunder ain't no car bomb.
*
One quadrant of sky turns,?face up, black as the ace of spades.?Much as a God can manage?muttering from the side of his mouth.?Star flecks, nova spittle. Rage of?emptiness pours through, for the hell?of it, endlessly. Looking back to?what beginning. The whole shebang?advances toward, beyond our?best efforts. We live under a Niagra?of star fall, huge optics dilate time,?blackness like velvet slips over?chrome. Sounds of nothingness?strung between a singlet of lights.
*
Barrel of the sun, gun-wad,?cloud packed, cools to Napoleonic?afterglow. The sun is soldier?and hero, after all; always on call?to strike the last pose, profiling?its rays across the grateful landscape.?Ragged mountains lift up to meet?it, plains puff out chests, the sea?a carnival of light, ice packs?bristle, glaciers growl. Time spins?on a coin. Horizon shakes its?dirty mat over cityscape, over glass?and concrete conspiracies -?roads burn fuses into nightways.
*
Rubbed off sky exposes an?undercoat of white that is really?fuzzed, mid-day heat. Birds?change over shifts. Things settle.?Shadow drops under eaves, tier?by tier. Melaleuca is
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