Grids

Cities of industry and embattled order,

Mind-grids of rational madness,

Interconnected buildings and beings!

A world is being produced, transported and traded.

Hands in ancient Mesopotamia

Roll mud into bricks, stacking,constructing

Ziggurats,metropolises,maps

To measure time and space,

Reniassance perspectival paintings,

Moveable type and vast machines,

Architecture of all eras,

The Internet.



Bureaucrats in ancient Thebes

Draw up plans for new cities;

Alexander the Great unrolls a map

Of Persia, his finger tracing conquest;

Monastic choirs raise their voices,

Flowing with the notes on the page;

Medieval merchants open their chapbooks,

Filling the pews like figures in a ledger.



Electronic cuneiform flickers across my sight,

Star-grain scattered in the breeze,

Babylonian astronomy for the modern world,

Astrology to arrange my fortunes.

I am a maker and breaker of tablets,

Pyramidologist of days,

Seeking the hidden chambers and tunnels

That destiny intimates.



Pacific islanders crouch in their canoes,

Constructing wave-maps from palm fronds,

Weaving grids that their bodies test

Against the winds and sway.

Through the crosses-and-circles of cathedral cities,

Through seasons and circadian rhythms,

I pace my own Jerusalem,beating the bounds,

As the Milky Way’s drum resonates C major.

I hold up my guidonian hand

To orchestrate music in the whirlpool air.

Am I looking at or through the screen?

(The veil that trains me in optics).



Northern Protestant and/or Southern Catholic?

Sometimes I am not sure which Bible to read.

Anyhow, I am in the frame,

Silent cinema’s furious hero.

My hands are those of a prehistoric fisherman,

Weaving flax into nets.

Force vectors firework their arcs about me,

As I bumble through this tumult

Of chaos becoming order, order becoming chaos,

Angel-translator of intelligences,

Fool for knowledge and love.