I wrote this science fiction blank verse poem soon after reading about Birkeland currents and going "Whoah! Cool!" at the sheer amount of amps involved. Imagining a Birkeland lattice or array capable of tapping that trove was a natural extension. One of my flatmates sardonically speculated that the changes in the magnetosphere consequent upon our, well, slurping from it might unpleasantly destabilize "things", consequences unknown! Well, let us do as we usually do, release a technology into the "wilds" without having studied it intensively to root out any negative effects which might follow from its use... We seem to have made a bad habit of doing that, technocratic savages that we are.
"Patent Application" 8-28-10 Christchurch
The distant tether of the 5-Austral-
is Birkeland Aerostat Array, 5A
for short, was like a boy with 18 balloons,
Breath puffing from his mouth in rich volcan-
ic locomotive plumes of CO2;
Or even like Medusa, snake mouths lung-
ing into the magnetosphere to sip
A million amps or so like butterflies
Alighting on a wild auroral orchid.
T. Appleman
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Commonsism/Comparative Ideology
The phrase "comparative religion" is fairly common; less common is the phrase "comparative ideology". On the face of it, this discrepancy is both unnecessary & dangerous. We are living, like it or not, in the Age of Economic Ideology, yet we approach religion in a comparative or ecumenical fashion absent from our consideration of economic ideology.
The economic ideologies of the last few centuries run the gamut from capitalism to Marxism to anarchism to single tax to ethnocentric nationalism to social credit to steady state: an incomplete list within & without which myriads of fusion ideologies -- such as anarcho-capitalism or anarcho-communism -- exist.
Commonsism (a neologism for purposes of placing the issue into sharp relief), as a particular form of comparative ideology, suggests two things about the above ideologies:
1. The economic ideologies of the last few centuries are an attempt to address the societal disruptions which have arisen in response to inclosure of the Commons & the later-and-overlapping Industrial Revolution... Put another way, these societal disruptions have arisen due to the absence of a Commons which previously underpinned society.
2. The commonality between the economic ideologies opposed to capitalism -- from Marxism to anarchism to single tax to ethnocentric nationalism to social credit to steady state -- is the attempt to reformulate the inclosed Commons in a format appropriate to the times in which the reformulation is to occur.
A Commons, stripped of its particular historical associations and distilled to an abstract essence, is the common inheritance the absence of which necessarily results in societal disruption. The present, debt-ridden economic system regards reformulations of the Commons as unwanted disruptions of the free flow of Capital.
It remains to say in what way that each of the above ideologies represents a reformulation of the commons. Briefly, Marxism's reformulation of the Commons is redistribution of wealth; anarchism's reformulation of the Commons is redistribution of wealth & power; single (land) tax's reformulation of the Commons is the taxing of a resource considered the common inheritance of all; ethnic nationalism's reformulation of the Commons is the linkage of privilege with a common socio-genetic inheritance; social credit's reformulation of the Commons is the issue of a national dividend on the basis of a common inheritance of industrial & other techniques; and steady state's reformulation of the Commons is that of the Earth's being a common inheritance both of the present and of future generations.
A treatise might be written on this topic, Commonsim, but the essential points have been made. Some reformulation of the Commons is humane; the present system, leading as it does to a Babel & a shattering of Babel, can & does dehumanize people, making atomized men into mere bricks. It matters little whether a mere brick has a high salary & all the trappings of respectability in the eyes of his contemporaries if he has lost his humanity & become the accelerating slave of the development of Machines, the flow of Capital, & the feedback loop between them.
The economic ideologies of the last few centuries run the gamut from capitalism to Marxism to anarchism to single tax to ethnocentric nationalism to social credit to steady state: an incomplete list within & without which myriads of fusion ideologies -- such as anarcho-capitalism or anarcho-communism -- exist.
Commonsism (a neologism for purposes of placing the issue into sharp relief), as a particular form of comparative ideology, suggests two things about the above ideologies:
1. The economic ideologies of the last few centuries are an attempt to address the societal disruptions which have arisen in response to inclosure of the Commons & the later-and-overlapping Industrial Revolution... Put another way, these societal disruptions have arisen due to the absence of a Commons which previously underpinned society.
2. The commonality between the economic ideologies opposed to capitalism -- from Marxism to anarchism to single tax to ethnocentric nationalism to social credit to steady state -- is the attempt to reformulate the inclosed Commons in a format appropriate to the times in which the reformulation is to occur.
A Commons, stripped of its particular historical associations and distilled to an abstract essence, is the common inheritance the absence of which necessarily results in societal disruption. The present, debt-ridden economic system regards reformulations of the Commons as unwanted disruptions of the free flow of Capital.
It remains to say in what way that each of the above ideologies represents a reformulation of the commons. Briefly, Marxism's reformulation of the Commons is redistribution of wealth; anarchism's reformulation of the Commons is redistribution of wealth & power; single (land) tax's reformulation of the Commons is the taxing of a resource considered the common inheritance of all; ethnic nationalism's reformulation of the Commons is the linkage of privilege with a common socio-genetic inheritance; social credit's reformulation of the Commons is the issue of a national dividend on the basis of a common inheritance of industrial & other techniques; and steady state's reformulation of the Commons is that of the Earth's being a common inheritance both of the present and of future generations.
A treatise might be written on this topic, Commonsim, but the essential points have been made. Some reformulation of the Commons is humane; the present system, leading as it does to a Babel & a shattering of Babel, can & does dehumanize people, making atomized men into mere bricks. It matters little whether a mere brick has a high salary & all the trappings of respectability in the eyes of his contemporaries if he has lost his humanity & become the accelerating slave of the development of Machines, the flow of Capital, & the feedback loop between them.
2 poems inspired by jobs in Welly
"Jobbing home greased in a tunnel of week" (irregular dactylic lines collaged with iambic quatrain)
The weather is inside and out of the kitchen
The hills of Wellington washed out with glare,
At four in the morning. The sun, when it rises,
The colors silenced brightly, palely, when
Awakens my eyes, which were dreaming of kitchens
A tunnel of monsoon inserts its layer
And of paying attention to slicing le pain * [*Fr. the bread]
Of fog, mist, cloud, and rain: men in a pen
As the heat makes me sweat and the wind darkens me
“Kitchenhand” (heroic couplets collaged with iambic bimeter quatrain)
I’ve finally gotten rid of social skills;
I have more space, more freedom, than the shills
And slaves I know, more empathy for minds
In bodies, for the thousand types of kinds,
The slaves and shills.
My silence jobs here, in this older place
Than any I have jobbed, with its calm pace,
Apparently smoothed into quietude,
Contrasting with the jobs that I have rued
To pay the bills
And taking little of my useful time.
A supervisor sprinkles sprigs of thyme
On racks of lamb strategically rowed-up
Atop greens, kumaras for men to sup
And hit the hills
Amidst an alcoholic glaze, perhaps
Of cider, dark-brown stout, gold beer, their laps
Warm with two leaning thighs or cold as space,
Cold as the way these live without a trace.
Politeness kills
* I don't approve of making money off of poetry... Even if I did approve of commercial poetry, it would still be almost impossible to make a living off of it, which is good. Part of the strength of poetry is, after all, the fact that careerist & ladder-climbing/pushing-shoving people are less likely to migrate to it; they would rather migrate to other professions which offer them higher dividends. As a consequence, those who write poetry are insulated from consciously or unconsciously writing what will "sell", which makes poetry at least one-eyed in the land of the blind. As Emily Dickinson wrote, "Reduce no noble spirit to disgrace of price".
As a corollary to not making money off of poetry, a poet must often -- as is quite natural and 'lemons/lemonade' useful -- simultaneously do work unrelated to poetry which pays the bills; this situation affords the poet new vantage points. The above poems represent products composed as a result of such new vantage points.
Both poems involve the collage of formal constituents. The modern world, with all of its simultaneous mediums of communication & sudden juxtapositions, is itself a collage. The atmosphere of the poems is an attempt to suggest pregnant menace without any of the standard tropes thereof.
The weather is inside and out of the kitchen
The hills of Wellington washed out with glare,
At four in the morning. The sun, when it rises,
The colors silenced brightly, palely, when
Awakens my eyes, which were dreaming of kitchens
A tunnel of monsoon inserts its layer
And of paying attention to slicing le pain * [*Fr. the bread]
Of fog, mist, cloud, and rain: men in a pen
As the heat makes me sweat and the wind darkens me
“Kitchenhand” (heroic couplets collaged with iambic bimeter quatrain)
I’ve finally gotten rid of social skills;
I have more space, more freedom, than the shills
And slaves I know, more empathy for minds
In bodies, for the thousand types of kinds,
The slaves and shills.
My silence jobs here, in this older place
Than any I have jobbed, with its calm pace,
Apparently smoothed into quietude,
Contrasting with the jobs that I have rued
To pay the bills
And taking little of my useful time.
A supervisor sprinkles sprigs of thyme
On racks of lamb strategically rowed-up
Atop greens, kumaras for men to sup
And hit the hills
Amidst an alcoholic glaze, perhaps
Of cider, dark-brown stout, gold beer, their laps
Warm with two leaning thighs or cold as space,
Cold as the way these live without a trace.
Politeness kills
* I don't approve of making money off of poetry... Even if I did approve of commercial poetry, it would still be almost impossible to make a living off of it, which is good. Part of the strength of poetry is, after all, the fact that careerist & ladder-climbing/pushing-shoving people are less likely to migrate to it; they would rather migrate to other professions which offer them higher dividends. As a consequence, those who write poetry are insulated from consciously or unconsciously writing what will "sell", which makes poetry at least one-eyed in the land of the blind. As Emily Dickinson wrote, "Reduce no noble spirit to disgrace of price".
As a corollary to not making money off of poetry, a poet must often -- as is quite natural and 'lemons/lemonade' useful -- simultaneously do work unrelated to poetry which pays the bills; this situation affords the poet new vantage points. The above poems represent products composed as a result of such new vantage points.
Both poems involve the collage of formal constituents. The modern world, with all of its simultaneous mediums of communication & sudden juxtapositions, is itself a collage. The atmosphere of the poems is an attempt to suggest pregnant menace without any of the standard tropes thereof.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
The gods are back! (7 poems about human behavior & the pantheon)
"Homo ecosystem" (trochaic fourteeners)
Warriors will be warriors, taking over territory.
Maori warriors conquered Moriori territory
As the British conquered Maori territory. Nature
Could care less, approving as It does of warriors' conquests,
Helots' insurrections, adaptations of all genres.
“A paraphrase of Euhemerus” (iambic quatrain)
The procreative impulse actually
Exists. The gods of Love & War are real.
The Pagan pantheon is factually
Correct; it's how live humans think & feel.
"The God of War" (blank verse)
The God of War invaded Russia twice
Because he was the God of War; that is,
Considerations of logistics &
Supply -- & even victory -- don't exist
For Him. The need for War, a nice long War,
Is all that matters to the God of War.
"Jungian and/or” (iambic quatrain)
The fractal pantheons of human gods
Who are the peoples rise with beating minds
Rejoicing madly, thrashing with their rods
The night as destiny the conscious winds
“Credo” (dactylic couplet)
This is the world we are building now trestle by trestle:
Not with a God or Its absence but Gods do we wrestle.
“‘Conspiracy Theory’ Theory’” (blank verse)
Without conspiracy there never would
Have been a Russian Revolution nor
Napoleon’s ascent nor Caesar's death,
Nor would “the Colonists’” secession, the
United States. It is quite natural that
A rhetoric developed over time
The central plank of whose polemic is
A strange denial of conspiracy --
That is, of how we human beings act:
We humans have a vested interest in
Inaccurate portrayals of our acts.
“Golgotha --> Simon Cyrenean --> Wotan” (alternation of iambic & trochaic)
Alert digression -- transversely bridging
Branches on the human category
Tree - comprises veering vantage points of
Indices of synonyms & difference
Between levels of the mind; that is, of
Thought the winding wind & whirling abode
Of men. O white sun, bright white, fog-cloaked sun!
Photons far dissipating, perilous, --
Through fogs of warfare, past Where Dragons Be --
Escape mere wounded hours, sunning joy’s
Whole purpose. Joy magnanimous & still
As battle slumbers in axial points.
The Pagan Inquisition comes! The gods are back.
*All poems by T. Appleman. The final poem requires a bit of explanation, because it depends on knowing a particular definition I give to something related to thought: a difference between levels of the mind, just as wind is the flow of air from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure, & just as hydroelectric power generates as water flows from higher to lower & thus turns the turbines. The final poem is also a poetic response to having read Carl Jung's essay on Wotanism, the continuum of crucifixion 'settings' I sketch out in the title being a natural extension therefrom.
Warriors will be warriors, taking over territory.
Maori warriors conquered Moriori territory
As the British conquered Maori territory. Nature
Could care less, approving as It does of warriors' conquests,
Helots' insurrections, adaptations of all genres.
“A paraphrase of Euhemerus” (iambic quatrain)
The procreative impulse actually
Exists. The gods of Love & War are real.
The Pagan pantheon is factually
Correct; it's how live humans think & feel.
"The God of War" (blank verse)
The God of War invaded Russia twice
Because he was the God of War; that is,
Considerations of logistics &
Supply -- & even victory -- don't exist
For Him. The need for War, a nice long War,
Is all that matters to the God of War.
"Jungian and/or” (iambic quatrain)
The fractal pantheons of human gods
Who are the peoples rise with beating minds
Rejoicing madly, thrashing with their rods
The night as destiny the conscious winds
“Credo” (dactylic couplet)
This is the world we are building now trestle by trestle:
Not with a God or Its absence but Gods do we wrestle.
“‘Conspiracy Theory’ Theory’” (blank verse)
Without conspiracy there never would
Have been a Russian Revolution nor
Napoleon’s ascent nor Caesar's death,
Nor would “the Colonists’” secession, the
United States. It is quite natural that
A rhetoric developed over time
The central plank of whose polemic is
A strange denial of conspiracy --
That is, of how we human beings act:
We humans have a vested interest in
Inaccurate portrayals of our acts.
“Golgotha --> Simon Cyrenean --> Wotan” (alternation of iambic & trochaic)
Alert digression -- transversely bridging
Branches on the human category
Tree - comprises veering vantage points of
Indices of synonyms & difference
Between levels of the mind; that is, of
Thought the winding wind & whirling abode
Of men. O white sun, bright white, fog-cloaked sun!
Photons far dissipating, perilous, --
Through fogs of warfare, past Where Dragons Be --
Escape mere wounded hours, sunning joy’s
Whole purpose. Joy magnanimous & still
As battle slumbers in axial points.
The Pagan Inquisition comes! The gods are back.
*All poems by T. Appleman. The final poem requires a bit of explanation, because it depends on knowing a particular definition I give to something related to thought: a difference between levels of the mind, just as wind is the flow of air from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure, & just as hydroelectric power generates as water flows from higher to lower & thus turns the turbines. The final poem is also a poetic response to having read Carl Jung's essay on Wotanism, the continuum of crucifixion 'settings' I sketch out in the title being a natural extension therefrom.
2 Meteorological Sonnets
“Neon Gray”
Goodbye, O Sun! Gray cloud must cover you
With sodden ashes, shrouding thoughts I need,
The nourishing photons I need, the blue
Of a high-pressured day I need, my reed
Bent further than it strictly speaking should.
Obliged by circumstances to be meek,
I’d storm the very clouds if I but could,
& shoving them aside I’d take a peek
At what the selfish, drifting brutes
Were keeping to themselves: the open blue!
The swirling elements are in cahoots...
No culprit shows its mug, to shoot or sue.
I won’t stay long in places it does this!
The moral’s this: give Weather’s slums a miss.
"Contraction & Magnanimity"
Grim sky looms low, a sickly, writhing void
Inside of one. Nightmarish graygrim days
And that low-pressure with which they're alloyed
Replace habitual disciplines with haze
As harsh self-criticisms smirk and feud.
No progress and no product is enough
On such a day, with static gray imbued;
One's very soul departs one in a huff...
But grander days of gliding, godlike clouds
Proclaiming an exact munificence --
Recalled to mind -- oppose these banshee shrouds
Of a particular deluge... Intense,
Far, warming, this light yoke of hours starts.
A whole begins to coalesce from parts.
* Both poems by T. Appleman
There is a particular sky visible on overcast days in NZ -- a bright gray sky which suggested the phrase "neon gray" to me; both of these Elizabethan sonnets are a response to that sky, which I do not remember having seen prior to immigrating to NZ almost five years ago.
Goodbye, O Sun! Gray cloud must cover you
With sodden ashes, shrouding thoughts I need,
The nourishing photons I need, the blue
Of a high-pressured day I need, my reed
Bent further than it strictly speaking should.
Obliged by circumstances to be meek,
I’d storm the very clouds if I but could,
& shoving them aside I’d take a peek
At what the selfish, drifting brutes
Were keeping to themselves: the open blue!
The swirling elements are in cahoots...
No culprit shows its mug, to shoot or sue.
I won’t stay long in places it does this!
The moral’s this: give Weather’s slums a miss.
"Contraction & Magnanimity"
Grim sky looms low, a sickly, writhing void
Inside of one. Nightmarish graygrim days
And that low-pressure with which they're alloyed
Replace habitual disciplines with haze
As harsh self-criticisms smirk and feud.
No progress and no product is enough
On such a day, with static gray imbued;
One's very soul departs one in a huff...
But grander days of gliding, godlike clouds
Proclaiming an exact munificence --
Recalled to mind -- oppose these banshee shrouds
Of a particular deluge... Intense,
Far, warming, this light yoke of hours starts.
A whole begins to coalesce from parts.
* Both poems by T. Appleman
There is a particular sky visible on overcast days in NZ -- a bright gray sky which suggested the phrase "neon gray" to me; both of these Elizabethan sonnets are a response to that sky, which I do not remember having seen prior to immigrating to NZ almost five years ago.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Hopkins/Thomas Study
"Hopkins/Thomas Study" (sprung rhythm)
Spark Motes of dust float in the beam
Through canopy of bed and wood
Good
Of opened drawer and canopy
Of forest down on pioneer men
Inn
Rangers Beggars Merchants Speeches
In this floating world suspended
Hid
Like masters under canopy
And cover of a palanquin
Men
Straining lift with slavery or
Drunkenness of moon mating
Rutting
Simply, masters, servants, but no
Enoch's Enoch's Enoch's walk, no
Clue
I could not pass that place of job
Without between its hovering
Shivering
Like Vaseline between a lens
A blur obscuring it with crud
Blood
Along a twisted plastic seam
Of rubber coming out of groove
Grove
Grease-packed, long moist with stolen sweat
Of Man amongst the man-shaped thieves
Droves
Of Man with whom he has, at times,
To dread and to associate.
Eliminate
Thus twisted by the barbarous
I could not pass that place so grew
Knew
I would eventually escape
Into the words that bury them
Drum
Mass graves' hundred millions where once
Tens of millions lived too, longing,
Stringing
Beads on rosaries and stringing
Up unnecessary man-shapes
Grapes
Exploding as high pressure lights
Imploding as they reel from heights
Wits
Lanternfish of riots, winters,
Shouts and dreams, exploding Tzar killed
Lulled
By propaganda teeming from
The crowd programmed by snore of sky
High
Poem by T. Appleman
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
umpteenth draft of Enoch Walked poetry collection
Given that I'm not supposed to publish simultaneously, I've removed the poems previously posted here. I only created this account in the first place so as to be able to comment on a blog the prose and sentiments of which I much admired; I am unsure now as to whether I wish to retain it.
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