cuneus + forma

 

                                    I

 

A shame that selfsame vehicle that spirits us away

to the factories of monotony should likewise serve to drag us

backwards to guilt or should that guilt construct

factories of its own spewing virulent pollutants

 

into waterways and oceans resulting in thermostatic

heating and ice cap melt then much further in debt

we'd find ourselves there estranged from us and thus

restrained under the shadowy weight of six figures

 

accumulated like a cloud over time, our phantom, our

financial freak-out sending us back to rethink energies

inspiring in the first place without which we wouldn't

be ourselves yet without which it need not be figured

 

Under the arrangement of digits that flummox

and annoy us, below the loyalty to moneyed surplus

what we become is that which threatens to destroy us

like an ear hears buzzing oceans within a shell

the warnings we fear are the selfsame ones of ourselves

of our vertical need to be first to the heights redoubling

its intractable charm of production— our inheritance

 

 

                                    II

 

United we stand on top of old laws in search of new laws

the way building the Tower of Babel was a group effort

and our dumb charms remind us we're smaller than the sky

 

disorganized and selfishly dragging us forward toward

the empty soapbox face that stands in a crowded hall

sad as Eros, builder of cities writing upon city walls

 

hoping out of consensus emerges a new new: between

here and now and global hysteria imagine these pieces of past

present and what's next to come to be building a new new

 

the bee dreams-up the flower, the flower dreams-up the bee

but neither bee nor flower dreams-up a statue to Liberty

Or the unfunny kicker that the more money money needs

 

from us the more monotony likewise serves to employ us

against which our calculations suggest launching headlong 

into selfhood to make room for reconsideration or  re-

calculation: a new voice dipping back to a different

time when villagers baked bricks for a building and hand

stacked stones one by one, Earth's rich resources inspired

 

construction, reed fringed streams cut across the land

where fruits and vegetables grew, one by one the civilization

between the rivers absorbed nutrients of the land

 

Wedge and shape pressed messages for materials

into clay tablets and writing was formed & fastened

to the human animal, ancient Mesopotamians thus

 

constructed one voice still withdrawing deeper into our mind's

gullible  echo chamber sounding a hope for new beginnings

which when you consider it, is ubiquitous in any case

 

                                    III

 

Try and say it the way it is

 

 

            Try to remember how it was

 

Speak without façade

            about the thing as it appears

                       

                        in the city, town, suburb, farm or field, meadow

 

On a dirt road in Missoula, look at the mountain

            and see how it never stays the same

 

                                    an axe in Chile strikes  against anthracite

                                                maybe to replace skyscraper steel

 

            business is booming at the university

                        drawing is dead, take shelter

 

                                                            Look at a building

                                                                        see the structure set free

                                                            against its backdrop

 

enter the building

            a view through roof truss

between a sleeping loft and gallery

            a blind, gigantic space

                                                                        or a domain of sticks and wires

 

                                                            a room on its way to becoming another

                                                room

                        exists in a perpetual

state of construction— ragged exterior and roof bending

                         down to become a floor—

unfixed, unfinished

           

                                                            temporal disequilibrium dizzies from within;

            exhausts

 

Entropy pulls together the materials                                                

            Remember history

                                             symmetricallly mirrored

 

                                                                                                 Don't forget the future

The building is a figment of the imagination

                                                            that is also tangible—

 

 

                                    The further inside you go, the further outside you get

 

 

 

There is only ever what actually happens

 

 

                                                Every building imagines a city

 

 

 

See the building is a

                        verb