Startled by Existence

or, Why most of you will never read this book.

From the journals of the Kirk - (November *1988)

Winged night in flight dots day!

Had an odd thought today. The birds are a swarm of peppercorn – long, like cirrus clouds or bunched long like floating Italian bread. Could these be the same birds that I’ve seen lift from the ground like little ball-clouds--all as one; Theyseem to be millions, traced by a membrane. They fly in unit, this time something like an undulating string of sausage. What kind of "brain" unites their flight – Who knows? I counted one bird-ribbon that must’ve taken ten minutes to pass. Maybe Tulsa is like a river-bed of bird flight …

Or could it be that if we saw our nation from above it would look like a damaged negative all scratched and spattered with bird stream. Deep grooves and gashes trailing north to south across the states.

This morning I lay on my back, and considered the birds as if underneath me, flying on their backs with bellies up. I lay on the ceiling of the world and saw the birds like swarming fish, deep within thin water. School after school of minnow-bird, all black in silhouette.

And then it struck me. I never saw a single bird!

In fact, what I took for bird, in flap and form, was really just where the sky failed to penetrate my eye. So what did I see?

All the sky not shaped like birds!

If I were to project a slide of some really black birds in flight against a screen, the black forms on that screen would result in those places where no light fell. If I were to take a picture of the birds in flight, only the light around the silhouette of birds in flight would strike the film. As the birds were absolute black, no light sped from their form into my eye or camera. No light from any bird (except maybe a glint on wing or something) ever shocked a film grain -- or the rod or cone field in my eye. And as no light ever fell – for that brief moment – on the film plain of my eye – no message poured down the optic nerve to the brain. In fact, each time that a bird-shaped void passed across my inner eye, that section of retina got a brief rest from the act of seeing. So what do black birds do? They provide quick rest for rod and cones!

Come to think of it, I’ve never read a word of type. As the black letters absorb light like a well and bounce none of it back at me (unless perhaps the ink is gray or has a gloss) no light from that letter ever stirs a cone to action. I only think that I am seeing the type, but I am really reading the white where the type is not. So all this staring at print is a sustained focus on peculiar shaped voids. And when we read a book, we really read everything but the book!

If by "night" means not to see,

and birds of darker-blacken be,

Does their flight impress the eye?

Or is it only sky,

fleeing from...

or rushing to their Void that does?

I saw IT

set below

on a velvet night,

like a sweep of burning liquid-crystal shard, or

animated net:

A network

of stunning amber Star-barns:

Cages catching embers strewn

on a mighty waffle press

to make:

A galaxy in 2-D grid,

A micro-chip ablaze, or

An even odder image of the inner earth aglow

with row

and ray

of pinhole pierce,

(Through the mantle deep)

Light seeping upward from

some

vast neon smelter

blasting underneath.

Be gentle with my mind

Oh Lord, for I am matter made

And matter born.

“BIG MART” 5/27/02

I was in the spirit on the Lord’s Day;

(Whether in my mind or out of it I can not tell.)

And I heard behind me, a voice

like the sound of many waters

rippin’ through

a tin kazoo …

“WaWa Wa Wa Wawa Woo”

And I saw before my eyes

a big and outstanding marvel:

Where once stood a forest

stood

a monolithic brick:

A city in a single form and dressed

in tincture of elephant and sky with garnish of red,

rising from a plain

of crushed obsidian.

And there before the mammoth wall,

a wetless sea, with tailess whales

circling the plain and searching for a place to rest.

Everywhere the oxidizing baskets

basking in between the whales.

Everywhere the streaming co-eds.

And I beheld two minimalistic-nods to art-deco:

Turrets strung above the gates and sporting signage:

“Always, Always”

hovering above twin falls.

Then, to my delight

the waters split

like a curtain pulled sideward,

and I saw, behind them a courtyard of the coarsest marble.

So I thought: What is the meaning of this crude stone?

Then a voice within my head replied: “This is rock of select-friction

chosen to protect owners of said city against law-suits should the people slip.”

And before I could, a voice outside my head replied:

Welcome to the Hall of Nations

Welcome to The Wood between the Worlds …

Welcome the Land where lives converge.

Welcome, Welcome, Welcome,

come and spend.

And Lo (and High)

I beheld grand and astonishing bedazzlements that no man can mention

save me:

I saw the beautiful bones of walking peasants

and the pleasant pies.

I saw cream of star, arranged in bars and bathing

Game-boys and socks, and a roof

like the state of Kansas -spanning from the east-wind to the west.

I saw visages and vectors

slung like blades: pictures of the smiling Associates

wearing wears.

I saw cattle-cars of goods and goods,

and the floor in between

like a gleaming grid, all wet with dried shellac.

---

The time is Ten O’clock on Sunday night.

Who would have thought to shop right now?

But one of every two hundred students in our big

college town is prancing down the isles

in the mating dance of eyes

and buying files.

One of every 1000 families is buying milk

and hose for his wife

and pencils for his kids.

And one of every me

can hardly take another ounce of pleasure.

--

Then as I skipped

(reeling as I do, in the I-AM of being)

One, like a son of Sam said:

Come, follow me and I will show you what ye seek.

Behold, the splints of

aromatic cedar

griping graphite from Ceylon

and mixed with Mississippi clay …

and sprayed in school-bus golden.

And I lookedat him

as if he were an imbecile… to which he then replied:

“Have you ever read ‘I, Pencil’

you should.”

--

Then were my eyes were opened to

the mystery of commerce

and the many antecedents

swirling on, or about my feet.

Here, the shining vinyl

made of peat bog and wax, and the man who feeds his

face by making it to gleam.

Here, the waiting bubbles like a secret code, hid

in syrup from Nebraska, caged in a can

from Alcoa.

Here, the tropic sun and silt

with caffeine kick, minted in Honduras.

Here the unseen trucks that course by night

to dump the living lobster

and the intricate outbursts

of the Japanese mind.

Here the masses from Malaysia,

China and Taiwan, bent across the polyester oil-fields

and cotton gins,

sowing seams

and clothing me in reams of labor

for an hour of my own.

Here the ground-up pigs on plates of foam,

and German brains, applied

to the beautiful gears.

Here the pulling on the teats of cows,

the purposed rot of milk, ...the graceful eggs.

Here, the chosen fonts

and art campaigns, athletes leaping from the boxes

to sell another flake.

Here (real time): The sons of Adam and the chicks of Eve,

weaving in and out of ears. Goateed men, pretending to like shopping

and the dames, with their gametes tucked inside, ready to

deliver new consumers.

Then did I behold (waiting with me in the chutes)

a multitude of kids, from every nation, tribe, and tongue:

Our baskets brimming in cilantro and the stuff

of every nation, tribe, and tongue;

Our lungs, twined in the air;

and I cried (with delight)

“Could this really be the Arkansas

that opposed integration?”

---

It stands in my mind

like a growing constant: things that are, are fed by many branches,

which in turn are fed by branches which in turn are fed by branches till

the only explanation for what is,

must never start with nothing

but with all.

Consider the power of the HAND,

and the infinite wisdom of the ONE

capable of chasing,

and igniting all loose ends,

then reduce and back away

until….

Wal-Mart rises,

not from any so called “bang”

but from The Big Condense.

The stars

trace a razored path

like a giant 3-D

Spiro-graph

 

That I go walking under,

 

Under the wild sky .

 

 

(3/91)

When funnel clouds clip rainbows

in our world, where the vestiges of Eden whirl

in a mash of mangled parrot wings

or Iris, smithereened to make

makeup,

We can see why rainbows flinch;

They don’t make it very long.

Banshee decibels defign, the decimating means:

Locomotive grinding wheel , cone of writhen hate,

vicious biting vapors, Hell-

icopter blades.

Each bashing is a moment-ary

Torque

Of glass,

disbanding shock,

Indigo

From icon wrenched

reched red,                   shrapnel  butterflies

Violet, 

         Violently constr ue d,             arch

From Arch etype

divorced.

(The sky is reeling odd tonight!)

I’ve read about those pristine days when rainbow shard was rare.

Lions still ate lily-pads, and rattlesnakes were raging fads

As playmates for the nursery.

Prisma-ash is pollen now,

Coursing through our breath,

Twisted beauty permeates, and I like eating meat.

The eyes of flies are pigment parks in geodesic dome,

Black radiance with chandelier, stuffed in honeycomb.

 

Oil on the parking lot, mimics Northern lights:

Borealis flares in beaded rain, on surfaces like night.

 

Death implied is banking, pivoting on air

A bloodied stink is calling to a colored thoroughfare.

 

Gliding white as whisper, missiles cruise the dark

Pilot fish are dental floss for shearing shard of shark.

 

The cacti in the desert, wear a brutal fringe,

Prickle pear, with rain, explode into a floral binge.

 

Snow flakes falling virgin white, in the tilted world

Would we know that dance at all, if sin were not unfurled?

 

 

Now I share my paradox:

I believe in paradise, with us once and yet to come:

"World without End…"

I believe in beauty too:

"Meadows from His garden here."

But these strange shattered-glories, fallen-splendors reign

Carving raging channels, deep within my brain

Of a convoluted beauty,

Heaven would exclude.

Note: This early poem totally baffled the class to which I presented it. Several praised the images, but it met with an almost universal “hungh”. One kid said that it said “nothing” well, then added that he liked it till it mentioned God. Now I don’t know if I missed on a communication level because the poem really is too abstract, or if I was simply working with alien themes. I wanted to press a religious question with out sounding like a bible.

To be honest, the title threw them. Folks were looking for the cathedral in the poem. But it wasn’t there. I was mixing metaphors and playing with a personal symbol. We tried not to explain our poems too much –“Bad form”; But I'll help you with the title at least.

Somewhere in the nineties a tornado hit our small college town of Stillwater Oklahoma. And not just one, but four separate cones descending like teats from an angry udder. It wasn’t a national story but it did leave a lot of broken glass and shingles and a flipped car or two in our apartment complex. Later, in typical space-head thinking, I imagined shattered glass tossed and lodged in spider webs … really ….like the bits of broken glass in church windows. The rest is yours.