#213 The Survivor

That was the year
we wintered in
Montparnasse. The 
ferry, I remember, 
was empty apart
from us, might never 
have sailed except 
its skipper lived 
on the other side 
of the river & she 
wanted to get 
home that night. Up-
stream was thick
with forest. There
were fireworks 
somewhere. I heard 
them, but I did not 
see their bloom.

#212 Applied Dialectics

thesis
                     poetry

antithesis
                     war

synthesis
                     woetry

#211 The Light-Breaker

History is. Typhoon.
The Bay of Bengal.

Ship washed up. Large.
Left there. Broken down

by locals. Scrap, metal,
parts to use. Such

plenitude never seen
before. New industry.

Now stretches for many
kilometers along the

beaches of Bangladesh.
Pollution prevails. Most

things done by hand or
not much more advanced.

Small men or children
in narrow passageways.

What air there is is
full of toxins. Is death.

Is dangerous. Is life.
Is nothing else to do.

The countryside destroyed.

     *

Breaking lights is different.

Is still to do with ships.
Broken down. Small parts

of them. Collected. Port-
holes. Filled with sky

or sometimes emptiness.
Is clean. Is dirty. Distance.

#210 The Promised Land (2)

Short-range ordered
nanoholes can
improve the health
of rice farmers &
consumers or even,
with the addition
of the new bad-boy
vibe, form a picture of
a dying Michael Jackson
that's part solid, part
liquid. Such prototyping,
with its specially de-
signed cells & the use
of heat sinks, would
seem to be an inbuilt
aspect of our human
software; but the only
constant factor in
natural phenomena
is universal change—
a life-size figurative
re-enactment of da
Vinci's Last Supper
made from wax just
doesn't cut it as a
wonder of the world.

#209 The Automaton

No cat to
bell, but
the grelot
keeps on
mindless-
ly looking
for one.

#208 The Literal Meaning IV

Sad woman. Is
not. Is neither.

Men falling from
the sky, rosaries

of stars, a castle
in the Pyrenees,

transparency, a
fence of sentinels

or sentiment, win-
dows which are

mirrors of the soul.
Were not. Were

never. All is allusion.

#207 The Spy

The premise of Sun Tzu's The Art of Espionage, a prequel writen to cash in on the runaway success of The Art of War, is that though the world of Espionage obeys the rules of Heaven, the life force of the individual spy is, a priori, out of balance.

A posteriori, how they end up is governed by which principle holds sway within them. Too much yin & the spy may be consumed by elements of self-destruction, display a subconscious desire to be outed, manifest it through actions such as dressing up as Gerard Depardieu in drag & living their life entirely in the dark. Too much yang & they become spy-hunter, keyhole peeper, closet cannibal, turning on their own, seeing them as enemy equal to those on the opposing side.

It's a precursor to the classic predator / prey model later postulated by both Lotka & Volterra, with the ratio of yin to yang determining who is x & y in the differentiated equation. But this is a finite model with an endpoint of zero. Too much egocentricity, too much paranoia. It does not stop when all known spies have been consumed; there must be others out there. Trust no-one, not even oneself. Eliminate them all.

#206 Meditation

Buddham saranam gacchāmi

Photo editing software. Someone sporting riding breeches. Retailer-perceived brand equity. Guides to the different stages of German intellectual development. Visual parallels made between the use of pesticides & degradation of the land. An exodus of female talent. A problem assuming added significance in view of rapid globalization. Temporal logics. Improper drainage. You need to upgrade your Flash Player.

Dhammam saranam gacchāmi

Steel doesn't protect sugar farmers. Nothing was found today during a search in South Carolina for missing Chili teenager Brittanee Drexel. Optical signals affected by an external magnetic field. The fringe that consumes. Size 34B Black with silver sequins, silver beads & silver beaded trim. Policy endogeneity. A neckline like that would be bad for makeup. What does it cost? Sort it out monkey nuts!

Sangham saranam gacchāmi

Nothing has proven to be better than this song. Eliminating artificial lighting. The strip-searching of women in Australian prisons. Price competition produces mixed results. Clothing that is all natural & free of toxins. Large as the executions arrive. Lighting a fire. An embroidered osteopath. A trance duo based in the U.S.A. Common bugs can freeze the machine. Is there any way to make my chest look bigger?

I go for refuge in the Buddha.
I go for refuge in the Dharma.
I go for refuge in the Sangha.

#205 Discourse on Method (2)

In there for
show, or
core co-
ordinate?
Descartes—
bald, be-
spectacled,
but not at all
bewildered
by the juxta-
position of
the box &
horse's bell
Magritte has
placed be-
fore him.

To him
two objects
in Euclidian
space; a three-
dimensional
definition
makes all
things
relative.

#204 Quand l'heure sonnera

Venus de
Milo, hot-
air balloon,
sky/sea/sand—
writing down
the elements
doesn't have
the tension
of a painterly
arrangement

unless you
know the sub-
text. So. Some
clues. Start
with a child-
hood incident.
Continue with
de Chirico.

#203 Souvenir de voyage

There was a sea-
side somewhere,
but nowhere near
the sea. We walked
along it, kicking
at rocks, ignoring
strangers until
they'd passed. "Who
was that masked
man?" I asked.