Eye on the Universe

2 | E y e o n t h e U n i v e r s e

Eye on the Universe

By Gail Gray

Differentia Press

Santa Maria, CA


Eye on the Universe

By Gail Gray

Copyright © 2009

All Rights Reserved.

Published by Differentia Press

Book Design by Felino A. Soriano

Cover Art, courtesy of Ciocanel Razvan

Except for the sole purpose for use in reviews, no portion of this book may be reproduced in any

form, without the written permission from the publisher.

Differentia Press

Santa Maria, CA 93458

[email protected]

Differentia Press Poetic Collections of the

│Experimental Spectrum│

differentiapress.com


Dedicated to: the writers, poets, artists, artisans, theoretical physicists, astrophysicists,

astrologers, musicians, dancers, poi spinners, and skateboarders who strive to connect all the

strings, especially those I know personally. You inspired this collection. You know who you are.


Acknowledgements

Thanks to the following publications who published some of the poems in this collection:

Counterexample Poetics: Collapse, Summons to the Creative

ditch,: The Ribbon Effect

Troubadour Press 21: Eye on the Universe


Table of Contents

Flux………………………………………………………………………………………………12

Venus in Copper…………………………………………………………………………………13

Primary Struggle…………………………………………………………………………………14

Eye on the Universe……………………………………………………………………………...15

Stumbling………………………………………………………………………………………...16

Collapse………………………………………………………………………………………….17

After the Pledge………………………………………………………………………………….18

The Ribbon Effect………………………………………………………………………………..20

Absinthe Round Table…………………………………………………………………………...21

Hecate Gathers Her Contemporary Garments…………………………………………………...23

Summons to the Creative………………………………………………………………………...25

Thanks to a Reminder from Duane Locke……………………………………………………….26

Bomb……………………………………………………………………………………………..27

Miscalculations…………………………………………………………………………………..28

Global Creed……………………………………………………………………………………..29

Self Juggling on Art Crawls……………………………………………………………………...30


Eye on the Universe


"Art is always a complex beyond science. It is a statement of one in the face of the

all; not a statement by one for the use of all."

"The practice of an art or arts, is as essential to the whole man as a knowledge of

science. This is not because of what art is, but because of what art does to the

artist."

—John Fowles, The Aristos


Flux

Pontia…that dangling moment…

as Aristotle spoke…pontia:

the place of the unknown;

of what may happen

stretched

between

the rush

of cause

& the stamp of effect.

Not caught

like an insect in a jar.

Not designed like a city or society.

or planned like religion or dogma.

But like an illusive unknown metal

smelted from the ore,

eager to rush headlong.

The catalyst coins its pleasure

in change……caught in a poem

sensed in song

glimpsed in a painting;.

graced in dance

or the hesitant kiss -

that dangling moment

intent

to rush you

tingling

to wonder.


Venus in Copper

She dresses her venus in copper. Under room temperature her high electrical properties, thermal conductivity, transforms daily dynamics. Live fully alive! Bask in warmth and fire! There’s red in the fall of her cloth for a reason. Not to mention the oligodynamic effect… a copper scalpel cauterizes as it cuts…. impulses dancing with the body’s electrical system healing as it slices. Her solo orbiting s-electron Prove her a malleable metal ready for change and costume. He’ll never be bored. She’ll don oxide crystals like gems. Oxygen makes her green. Dusky looks from beneath the shadows her goal: mossing hearts, stirring memories, imagination verdigrised two lovers, flagrant Epicureans in a meadow fragrant.


Primary Struggle

Each of my lungs

harbors a tree of life

attached to the Axis Mundi.

My scoliosis spine warps,

influenced by earth’s

four degree wobble. This

decision, descent to the human,

complicated by slumbering

memories of soul,

slug slow, trapped

on this crooked staff

laboriously unwraps

the connection.


Eye on the Universe

The god’s eye

of the Etched

Hourglass nebula

glaring from ring fire tubes,

withholds and offers answers.

The thin king gathers

telescopes and cosmos maps

gazes back. He’ll always be

last, this power

struggle a given.

Heart racing, 8,000 light years

distant, mind quickened,

smitten, he gasps

as the dying star

haloes it’s exit…

grace delivered,

a casual

wave hello.


Stumbling My beliefs, hang in this buried place, disintegrate, brittle as ancient gauze, tomb wrappings caked with the leavings, the offerings of philosophers and prophets. My hands hold shreds of Hegel, dust bits of Sartre. I can’t stay centered among the living dead. Reminders: don’t believe what you see; don’t believe what they say. The actual world’s beauty waits beneath the sham it’s luster opaque beneath the hollow stare. Once it shimmied behind a veil; Once it quivered beneath the sea; Once it strode between dust storms. This is just a test. I must remember this is just a test. when we regain our senses there is only awe.


Collapse

They saw in layers, perhaps collapsed

then expanded,

Orwell, Nostradamus, Cayce, DaVinci, Verne

trusting vision

better than our

20/20 laser-corrected eyes,

Technicolor contacts and

blue-tooth body attachments…

precursors of trans-humanism.

What frantic frenzy would Beethoven write

to score the downward sliding promises

and elevated graphs?

Quantum physicians put on their poker faces,

play bingo with metaphysicians while

Heraclitus referees,

his hands itching to jot down

fragments, despite knowing

they may never be read.


After The Pledge

The disappearance so easy but the Turn

transports one to the other's game.

In four different states,

a left-handed handshake affirms. Instant karma's

too slow for the initiate.

Tesla tried to warn us.

The killing's in the waiting;

always a crook'd (not crook-ed) finger

away…

these little charades these shared secrets;

Fowles wrote the map on Heraclitus scraps.

Feeling alone in the presence

of others knowing the difference…

a foreign place of beginning, a repeat, shifting of spirals,

individual beads strung on wires.

Moore than one Thomas, mentioned the method:

slipknot from one to the other.

Jung recommended:

gravitational slide-ride to spike the experience.

Mousetrap games echo time-delayed sequence. Einstein smiles at the magic.

No need for trickery.

No Six Flag mesmer, the slow realization

as concrete as that nail

in your heart, or palms.

The alembic of memories


breathes, once the Prestige

of spirit takes wing,

Rook takes king.

Cycles require more than one revolution.


The Ribbon Effect

As all accelerates, physicists crack

theorems quick as whips,

as do poets with the Logos.

Artists’ compositions

yearn. Fragments coalesce.

The innards of atoms

compelled to connect…

fling questions like slingshots,

faster than the Haldon Collider

splits and smashes

diverse arts: seeds towards the whole;

the encompassing universe within

a complex

craving…

misled in seeking answers

when the answer lies

in our craving

to be known

by one.

“Forget naïve reality,” quantum

scientists warn, “consciousness

does more than observe.”

The fractal messages contort

to awareness

response of grandeur…

an elegant design.

Paint, notes,

words and numbers

invoke the numinous…

grace in a moment;

or all of time combined.

The sublime attempts to stroke

the cheek of Eros.

A child is born

knowing;

owns it all once again

twirling….

holding ribbons

overhead.


Absinthe Round Table The stars forgot their plastic presence, shift to beforetime, recall their essence. Inner gaseous fire meets the gaze, as in centuries past. This year of rare eclipses, planetary alignments, their drama, made redundant. Who can compete? Ghost kisses of Le Fey Verde deny January midnight’s chilling death-threat shoulder-grip. Instead, she exhales the breathy curl, sensuous verde spiriteaux once reviled, once again, releaser of secrets. Conchis and Magus, offers the universe. Tibetan bells, Morphic whines, Saurian Meditation entwine aroma of cloven smoke; entangled. Forbidden realm the space between, the place beyond. The ancients applaud. Queen of the café societies, from Bohemia to Prague. Mistress of Paris, consort of Rimbaud, Verlaine, Lautrec; instigator of Van Gogh and Wilde. Habitué of New Orleans. Crowley in the contemplation of mages, sipped and observed her fountain, surrounded by supplicants at the ritual bathe. From Café Slavia to Catalonia, how many have known her wiles? This green goddess escapes the worldly hand of law, returns, summons new subjects. Reciprocal hunger for essence, misted hint… complete sentience, lingers on tongues, miasmic spell. Simple distillation of leaves, flowers (fennel, star anise, hyssop, and melissa macerated in the alembic bride of Atremisia absinthium) or ally of Foxglove, Monk’s, Hood, Henbane, Nightshade. Her ever-lengthening tendrils more entwined than Pre-Raphaelite brushstrokes; more inclined toward forever… than alchemists ministrations.


In verdant knowledge, she whispers… to invite… to dine on the unknown to divine.


Hecate Gathers Her Temporary Garments

Follow

her pomegranate trail,

trailed by autumn leaf whispers,

ankle-bell; finger cymbal summons.

Germinate

transport

seeds

in fecund mire.

Gaze,

in drowning pools

time has no evidence,

only ripple;

ever-widening vision

Physicists attest

air enclosed in water,

element begets element.

Traverse

on these fertile steps

this narrow path,

Turn away

far from vagary time

clocks are a-foul, each

losing time at different times

reminders

of Einstein and Hawking, Greene and Bohn

Ascend

endless stairs,

leaving stone for

darkened pastures,

Travel beyond

walls of memory…

the ever-present edge

Boundaries

rendered non-existent.

Leap


other dimensions,

places once forgotten.

dissolve the prison

Proclaim

….nothing is static

only ever-reaching

spirals and cycles

R e c r e a t e t h e u n i v e r s e


Summons to the Creative

Feel the pull,

as if the gravity of meaning, the gravity

of galaxies light years traveled

lured you from your safely shaped life;

refused “no” for an answer

offered no quarter to distractions, evasions,

escape. At first an invitation to

participation mystique

but the yawn is needy for spokesmen

and heralds of transcendence. The universal tug

wins, the house fixed by the planets you

chose at birth.

Collective man must have a voice,

dispersing your personal desires

as if scattering marbles. The hand on

your shoulder, snaking into your mind

is the spirit fed on the lives of your

influences. As society crumbles

the summons becomes louder, crueler,

keener. You may attempt to elude, but

night wakenings, day nightmares pursue

in packs, teeth eager for tendons…all for the benefit

of those unequipped.

You…sacrificed upon humanity’s steps…

divine device…cued

to hear, interpret the whispers


Thanks to the Reminder from Duane Locke

Having to undo unlearn

replace the lies with inner thrum

and strum. Always the encroachment;

the insidious lethargy of forget

until the build-up, mounded high in drifts

of grief to fill the void of lies with smudge, a black

hole sucking back each illumination

turns pinpoints into drains greedy suck to every pore

of hard-won self. The clapping hands;

the audience happy to purchase

falsehoods of security, line the gauntlet, smile as you

slide away. Your drowning memories ache to touch the page.

The Braille of your awkward

awakened moments, fragile as blotter paper quivers beneath a pen

all too desperate to spit, spill or smear.


Bomb I never asked for this terminal coat never signed up for this shuffle ride so I’ll stretch a penline to all those hanging heads nodding poignant pomegranate greetings; to all those ink & paint stained hands spreading edges as easy as opening crooked, ill-hung shutters, soul and heart scraps cascading thick as confetti tossed from the balcony, one foot looped around rusted iron, arms flung wide in Icarus mimicry; to all those calloused fingers intimate with the midnight satisfaction of the last note. I might hide away where only the conductor can see me might bury my screams in the train whistle’s echo, but I’ve arranged a line of pirated canon primed and loaded with stanzas; a restless coffee-stained finger eager to hit ENTER


miscalculation

the ticking away of days

holds no meaning

for squirrels or angels.

becoming….

both ends and means

is a sideways process

sand mandalas

blown by the breathy sigh

of what next?

expand the grand design

our meager worries,

incomprehensible to

3-legged turtles who

step-step-thump

to 100% authenticity,

betray us

while our fingers

struggle to restrain

the curtain, pockets

of asteroids hurl eight balls

aimed at our squeamish guts,

laughing

at the

finite


G l o b a l G r e e d

Look to the spears

slicing their space in the sky,

church spires, the vacant glass

stare of banks, steel phallic

telecommunication

towers,

breeding dependency with every

website hit; spreading

fear culture more deadly

than pandemic flu; more insidious

than a hand snaking up the skirt

of liberty.

The individual translated into

a series of 1`s and 0’s

corralled.

Electric web, a coiled razorwire fence,

stretching it’s insatiable fingers

grasping beyond the

territorial.


S e l f - J u g g l i n g

o n A r t C r a w l s

On art gallery crawls

Pendleton Street Arts district

I meet the inner trickster,

juggler of choices and Harlequin diamonds

who learns through play.

There’s no guarantee

the danger’s removed

but if we Iook sideways

through cracked ears

and pin-holed hearts,

memory twists

to its own

lyrical device

there being no truth,

only perception.

Potential is a Mirabilis

poi-spinning synchronicity

in flames of choice

washing midnight skies.

Faces,

occluded

by the flaming staff,

remind:

plastic protection melts

under such heat.

The reach meant not for self

but heights

displays itself hands-deep in South Carolina clay; after-cooling rounds of Yling Yling;

talk of Dali, the Aristos, Stephen King.

Street-poets twist

influences, dreams,

reflection, symbols

revealed on sidewalks:

as chaotic as careening

blind-folded in bumper cars

New Orleans, Crash! Irag Crash!

Van Gogh Crash! Melange.


Once cast aside,

these seekers,

unveil reluctant heroes

who driven, deep-drink the elements:

water, air, fire and water

to await the spark…

the primordial pivotal

Spark.

Eye on the Universe

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