An electric wire holds life, like this dawn,
high over the gutter, of the infinite
city, where Jacob Schwarz sees his only Keds,
dangling above him. He cannot get them down,
though he shakes like the dark wing of an unmade
bird, under his bosom, for a wind to blow
him to freedom. He learns, like others, the way
they multiply, and rot, on utility
wires, and that Zebby O'Toole runs the show
on Harmon Street. In a few days they will be
worthless, for the weather, and the sun-blanched white
Jacob mouths vague locutions. His curbside seat
ends any thoughts of what loss is. For his Keds
his head moves 80° in the starsight.
Copyright Ó by Dan Schneider
What Turing knew is that 1 or 2 were more
than mere numbers, beauties, or markers of place,
laying powerless and prone in their own space,
nonexistent till pondered by computers,
organic or not, for the subtle motions
of emotions belonging to them, in shifts
of state. Anyone can relate to the drift
of numerals, from the infinite oceans
of conscious thoughts, where no regions of the heart
can distinguish dyspeptic pepperonis
from insights, that change the worlds we think and see,
or that they create. What Turing knew is that
science is sense made reason, that 1 or 2
are tools, and you are the memories of you.
Its camber up the ceramic white surface
fails again and again. The sides are too steep
as I imagine it. Its legs giving way
eight times as often until they cannot grace
themselves with an order. This time is to wait
for its strength to feed on its own, as I see
its outline dissipate from the bathtub's slope,
as it tries yet again. And I can relate
to its failure, no matter its own deftness
of being, as it tries again. With each slip
its focus shuts out the world, in relation
to escape. I simply take it in my grip,
wrapped in tissue, till it no longer misses
its life. Its struggle, itself, caked by motion.
Copyright Ó by Dan Schneider
FRANKENSTEIN MANQUE¢
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance-
it is the illusion of knowledge."
-Daniel J. Boorstin
What is there to say?- The incorporate things
were building within, as Victor played his hand,
proving the gravery of this newfound land
of science just that. When a creation sings
it is an ecstasy that has too many
forms. Under the shadow of the Jew he saw
his lot, and returned to it- willingly, too!
But his time had no pay. He was bodywise
but poor in his living, or making it more
than himself. When the creature opened its eyes
he saw it was less than the sum of his schemes,
and not the me modeled on his former self,
as any mother has felt, beneath the stealth
of pride boasted- then the return to the dream.
Copyright Ó by Dan Schneider
The idea of the eternal is not
Oracular in nature. Speed is not
inclined to the Divine, but to the thought
muscles which bid at this Poetry brought
to the few who can know, and the masses
who cannot. Witness, as the Life passes
from Light to you, whose Heart attempts to read
words buried like the Vision of the Dead
would do if it was; simply if it was-
not a higher caste is needed to cause
these lines of a Son of Delphic Descent
to impress their way to Disorderment
sought for by Kings, who for lack of it lie,
with both eyes blended in the World's reply.
Copyright Ó by Dan Schneider
TALLULAH BANKHEAD TO DEATH
1968
"I fail only myself." She is repeating.
Bereft of an audience, her thought failing
even that Alabama streak. She mutters
words no one recognizes. At least, not near
her they don't. Words like fuck, cunt, and lesbian
ring from nothing, a deeper than mountain need,
purer than the driven slush of her life. Here,
she rises to denounce all casting couch men,
all the poets who worship stasis and fear,
all the whores who deny they are cocksuckers
and bitches. "I really loathe this life, at times-
especially the bastards who see my greed
for living as some sinful thing. The poor, dumb
shits don't see God is empty- pass the bourbon....”
Copyright Ó by Dan Schneider
Under the winged tantrums of the sun-lovers
they drove, over the forests made detritus,
discordant, and brutal. Each formical slave
fixes its destiny to collective right.
Onward they mill in a blinded willingness,
worn simplified to an ignorance of time,
made null, the colonies revivifying
themselves on an evolutionary love
beyond logic. Impediments rise to fall
before the darkling blinks. Two millionfold ones
which run their worlds, and have a million years, fight,
stored up in their insistent genetic haul,
destroying all that merely flee or succumb,
are what lift their endless beings through the night.
Copyright Ó by Dan Schneider
WHY ARE MISSING LINKS MISSING?
Because 5 is not beyond imagining.
The cladists and, their brethren, taxonomists
all suppose species A is at a 0,
species B is at a 10. The break between
the two is the mythical, magical 5,
and plotted between both these extremes, of course,
are all the fossils that have ever been found.
If you are grounded in classification
you will search all your life for that number 5,
while all the 4s and 6s (not to mention
all the 4.ls through 9s, and 5.ls
through 9s) will slide on by, like they did in time,
the natural divide, where untidy truths
lay bare, and number 5 is where it will be.
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