The Wheel Of Life

(on Hugh Everett’s Theory of the Universal Wave Function)

Our Mystery dreamt of a sea

That turned into a library

Each borrower could take a book

But here’s the bit that he mistook

Those reads the critics liked to tout

You’d come and find a page ripped out

Why, even chapters moved elsewhere

Which left no sense in what was there

Now having only one of each

Those shelves left most tales out of reach

How soon this sea-librarian

Turned non-egalitarian

There’s really nowhere to begin

I sense it’s quite a spin we’re in

It’s inside down and upside out

With no way off the roundabout

But who’s the whirler – Time or Me

Am I the train or scenery

Can causeffects and Hope elope

To ride upon the zoetrope?

Let’s leave that ocean as a sea

And seize a possibility

The text becomes more writerly

When superwaves write poetry

For if you can still follow me

The plot must have consistency

To place a story in the verse

There’s just one human universe

And if the logic we extend

We’ll find beginning in the end

Though if we could step out the rhyme

We’d see a rock unchanged by Time

Cento [attribution]

The mummy cloths expose an ancient breast. [Dylan Thomas]

My enemy had bidden me as guest. [Norman Cameron]

How he would place his hand beside his ear, [Samuel Taylor Coleridge]

O where are you going? Stay with me here! [W.H. Auden]

The clouds cast moving shadows on the land.  [Philip Larkin]

I fly to thee, and fully understand [George Herbert]

No genuine insight ever comes to her.  [William Wordsworth]

I am the lost heart of a murderer [Margaret Atwood]

The daughter, with hands outstretched to the fire [Stephen Spender]

And cots, and hamlets, and faint city-spire; [Samuel Taylor Coleridge]

How oft hereafter will she wax and wane; [Omar Khayyám/Edward FitzGerald]

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain. [Vladimir Nabokov]

So through that unripe day you bore your head, [Philip Larkin]

Impinging on the slow shores of the dead.  [Kenneth Allott]

And all thy heart lies open unto me. [Alfred, Lord Tennyson]

Like life and fear, a dark reality.  [Percy Bysshe Shelley]

Your body that includes everything [Margaret Atwood]

Are you prepared for what the night will bring?  [Philip Larkin]

Love paired ascends as beating wings in flight – [keyfeatures]

proud nowhere of earth’s most prodigious night [e.e. cummings]

All things recall one heart-sick memory;- [Walter de la Mare]

A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me. [Alfred, Lord Tennyson]

Buds of invention many a hundred year, [Thomas Carew]

Gleam delicately through the azure clear;   [John Keats]

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, [John Keats]

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; [W.B. Yeats]

We too eat and grow fat, you aren’t content, [Margaret Atwood]

When I walk out, I am a great event.  [Sylvia Plath]

You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage; [John Donne]

The debts of our penurious bankrupt age; [Thomas Carew]

But you are you, Time is not yours alone, [David Gascoyne]

I can reduce all feelings but this one. [Lord Byron]

If hands could free you, heart, where would you fly?  [Philip Larkin]

Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by,  [William Shakespeare]

Yet works on uselessly with shortened breath.  [Philip Larkin]

Is this my lover then?  This death, this death?  [Sylvia Plath]

The still, sad music of humanity,  [William Wordsworth]

So much for art.  So much for prophecy.  [Margaret Atwood]

Cento

The mummy cloths expose an ancient breast.

My enemy had bidden me as guest.

How he would place his hand beside his ear,

O where are you going? Stay with me here!

The clouds cast moving shadows on the land. 

I fly to thee, and fully understand

No genuine insight ever comes to her. 

I am the lost heart of a murderer

The daughter, with hands outstretched to the fire

And cots, and hamlets, and faint city-spire;

How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain.

So through that unripe day you bore your head,

Impinging on the slow shores of the dead. 

And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Like life and fear, a dark reality. 

Your body that includes everything

Are you prepared for what the night will bring? 

Love paired ascends as beating wings in flight –

proud nowhere of earth’s most prodigious night

All things recall one heart-sick memory;-

A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

Buds of invention many a hundred year,

Gleam delicately through the azure clear;  

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

We too eat and grow fat, you aren’t content,

When I walk out, I am a great event. 

You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;

The debts of our penurious bankrupt age;

But you are you, Time is not yours alone,

I can reduce all feelings but this one.

If hands could free you, heart, where would you fly? 

Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by, 

Yet works on uselessly with shortened breath. 

Is this my lover then?  This death, this death? 

The still, sad music of humanity, 

So much for art.  So much for prophecy.  

Celestial Polynesia With No Canoe

"Your answers are smart but too high for my flock",

Said a prominent man in a beard, cross and frock.

Let’s call Him a mixture of Love and Mathematics,

With answersingenesis for the fanatics;

Even for me ‘cos I only need sciences

For checking lesions and household appliances.

When I want stories with some deeper meaning,

I reserve my right to indulge a leaning

For histories spoken before printing presses,

Writ down, then translated, by more men in dresses.

Sort of a fairytale crossed with a fable;

Aesop meets Disney meets Grimm Cain and Abel.

All of you boffins with your wild surmises

Think that your checking will bring us surprises.

(Well there’s no guessing what you think the prize is!)

Maybe a booby that somehow excises

God with some planetary Polynesia?

How you’re forgetting our blesséd amnesia!

Alien life-forms stuck without canoes? 

We’ll beam them the bibles!  This could be Good News.

We nod and cough sagely whilst quietly wishing

This will require going cross-galactic fishing.

What a swell chance to expand congregations,

With charity missions to some stellar nations.

Such astronomical future discovery

Won’t rock the Vatican, upset the Trinity,

Cease or resolve endless Abu-Ali questions,

Stop Rabbinic musings or scripture digestions.

What’s that you say on beliefs sacré mental?

You claim it’s invention, bread could well be lentil,

Had history/geography been vegetarian

In not-yet-made-up Nazarene lands agrarian,

That it’s quite likely wine might be Red Bull,

Had the ferment of the place not been full?

Indeed, you assert,  flesh will-o-the-wisps

Might be WKD washing down Walkers crisps.

We can’t argue wafers and vin shiraz

Were across cultures or nature.  That jazz.

Does lifestyle 0 A.D. Australia

Show our teachings to be a failure?

Unknown and unmentioned then ways aboriginal

Don’t contradict us.  You must be more original!

No, it seems more than likely whatever you find

Will not change what’s made up ‘cos we’ve made up our mind.

Love at first slight

Here.  Deep in my snail caravan

I put on the show for you.

Cups and saucers polished and placed,

Hide the chipped one!

Crumbs and cracks disguised

Under rugs and linen.

My disheveled conch into which no visitors come

(No invitations were sent)

Has been swept and washed.  Ordered.

Now you stand at the door.

In the moment

I look through new eyes.

Feel the awkwardness of imperfection;

The tired decoration and shabby bookshelf -

A dripping tap!

I see only the largeness of spaces

Left vacant with hope.

Won’t you fill me?

Dreaded realisation -

This is no diarised event

But your casual passing.

Scraping the guest list of

V.I.P. (very incidental person)

One hundred and sixteen

No service is required to wed the thoughts

Of those whose nature by the same aligns.

Love needs no reason, though with reason courts

Parallel shifts to her desire’s designs.

With sigh that carries to the final breath,

Weathered boat that bravely won’t be broken,

Keeping true course until her sinking death.

Mute rhapsodist, her value unspoken.

Though sands and hands the lineaments mark,

Most treasured features seasons can’t surpass.

She is the light that shines until last dark -

And does not flicker or soot up the glass.

        If in this sentiment I be mistook,

        I neither loved nor understood a book.

Voice of the Beehive

A single self cannot make conscious thought.

It’s the hive mind that gives awareness wrought

With dialogue.  In dreams the parts at play

Divide.  Illusions that informed the day

With sense of one are lifted in that drift

Of sleep and glimpses (half remembered) gift

An image of the swarm.  A buzzing sign

Transmitters and receivers both design

Where chattering must filter through; One wire

Wherein the selves’ shared circuit mixed desire

Is unified.  This means persistence wins.

The schizophrenic way it all begins

Is hidden in a voice. Where this breaks down

The absence lets us really go to town

Like bees.

Seizing more than one singly sees.

From opposites expressed confusions rain

Ant noises on the disconnected brain,

Yet still push to pull ourselves together.

Collect thoughts.  A giant net to tether

Butterflies which fan a flickering flame

(Those extra moves that play a different game

Than that recorded).  And liquidity

Paints waking wholes in rainbowed quiddity.