Slowly
We learned new ways
To have meaning
Purpose
New ways to love
And be loved
In return
The prophet, Sullivan, preached
Writing the gospel of
Purpose Informs Art
On landscapes and city streets
Ah, sighs Calatrava
And erects his Mona Lisa smile
Its contrarian pulse
The blood flowing through Valencia’s veins
As form takes flight
With function on its wing
I revel in dreamy whimsy
With purpose in the wake
I can’t perch where the caged bird sings
But to her fearful trill
Take up harmony
This free bird sings so to keep her wing
Themes and thoughts that did emerge
With promise of infinity
Then vanished at a wall
Leaving not a word at all
Instead I wrote this deathly dirge
To writer’s block I fall
She shook a little with her distress
Speaking between tightened lips
Just barely containing a primal scream
I don’t mind the old-Earth tenements
Their utilitarian simplicity
But why does every other building
Have to look like the cover
Of an Arthur C. Clarke paperback
Couldn’t we come up with
A more interesting ‘future’
Than one dreamed up by hack illustrators
Over two centuries ago
Jinessa was just getting started
When she goes full rant
You can either cower and exit
Or saddle up and ride it for the eight count
I struggled to get a foot in the stirrup
As her exasperation rose
Oh my gawd
But it feels like someone
Stripped the life out of the colour wheel
I mean I get it
Proxima is not good old Sol
But why does it have to suck
All the juice out of orange
All the indigo out of the sky
All the crimson out of my hair!
She’d wanted the change
As much as I did
Coming here was her idea
It took most of our combined savings
And a serious cut in our lifestyle
To pull it off
Those tenements she mentioned
Were functional and clean
But hardly the standard she’d lived in
All her deeply privileged existence
And why does the atmosphere have to smell
Like fucking plum pudding
What is up with that
Even a hamburger tastes like
A sickeningly sweet yet
Gaggingly pungent holiday desert
Why doesn’t it explain all that
In the brochures
How was it kept out of the news
But life with Jinessa was a bit of a rodeo
Whether it was staged here on Proxima b
Or back on Earth
Truth is I love this most about her
Well not so much the ranting
In them the complexity of life
Perfect imperfection
Destabilized and fortified
A confusion of order
A diffusion of resolution
I breathe in
The beauty of opposites
Comprising the oneness
Of being
Now I cannot sleep
The monumental lines of architecture
Seemed to flex
As a bow drawn by its string
Then paused there
Taught, straining
As if for a steadying breath
The release
Was even more startling
And he felt the shock wave
When the discharged tension
Shook the earth
As the mammoth thing
Quite simply
Leapt from the ground
Untethered as it was
From gravity
It swam lazily
Through the thin atmosphere
Toward a horizon
It would soon enough
Disappear beyond
Illumined texture
Shadowed depth
Through synthesis, form
So am I expressed
Unconfined
By black or white
No, I: all the subtle tones
Of possibility
Pix to Words 