The Observer Changes The Observed

Excerpt from KOSMOAUTIKON: The Wound of Genesis is Traceable

BOOK THREE; CANTO TEN

1 (Previous dialog from when Aaron was still alive.)
1st Replicant. We landed two ships. The ice stood
upended and jutting … as a thousand story building.

Aaron. And you found something?

1stR. The impact of Metis disgorged islands of frozen
first time. We saw nothing. For miles, nothing.

A. But you found something?

2ndR. We observed from the second ship. For hours
we could find no signs of life.

A. But your found something? We have the report!

2ndR. We were preparing to leave. We saw no signs.
Then suddenly, we heard a voice like yours through the radio:
“There it is, I see it. It is orange – with stripes!”

A. A human was on board? I gave strict orders!

2ndR. There was a stowaway.

A. Terry!

1stR. Yes, it was … your son.

2ndR. Strange. But only then … we saw a specter,
frozen on the face of the ice, ten stories high.

A. Wakeda, I told you to keep Terry in his room!
Where is the artifact? No, I know already the meaning.

1stR. It is a shell.

A. Let me see it. (Measuring artifact.) Ratio, 1 in 6.

2ndR. Exactly. You see … we were surprised.

A. I already know. … It is exactly like a nautilus
shell found on earth. The same earth! … The same
earth existing only in the mind of men!

1stR. How? What is the significance of this?

A. It’s not made by nature. Nothing is made
from nature. There is no “nature.” Intelligence
must come before … form. Form made by a Mind.
Intelligence – consciousness – contains life. Full Stop.

2ndR. How is it we could not see it – before?

A. You don’t see how this works, do you?
You don’t have the mind of gods – or men?

1stR. There is no change of this species for …

A. Five hundred million years? Of course! No change.

2ndR. What is the meaning?

A. “No rude age of lame, halt, or malformed shells?
No age of lame or deformed ratios?”

1stR. What is the meaning?

A. The Mind of man is old.

2
i (A masked Aaron comes forth from shadows,
now, as member of chorus.)
Aaron. The earth is a nursery planet, animate in
consciousness. A soft fish mouth where it is wet,
curved entering below the curled bone.

I see the world in the light of my mind,
yet it is commodity to my wish. This world
I see, me it does not see, and thus my philosophy:
Earth is not a thing separate from my mind.
Life is not autonomous from my thought,
cannot get up and walk away, cannot
get cross, or speak to me in secret. Only
my anterior cognizance gives narrative,
only my perception stills the waters,
only I may alter, and altering, revise
photonic happenstance. And so I prove
atomic pulse vibrant, under the stipulation
of my mind – a mirror bevel to my thought.

I passed the fields of grazing animals.
They did not look. They did not answer me.
They could not aid my sentient condition.
I asked, What is the use of Earth?

I passed by the Churches where the people sleep.
They did not look. They did not answer me.
They never used the magic in their book. Not once.
I asked, What’s the use of a God that cannot heal?

I saw an old man’s shoe. It had no value.
I saw the old men as they fell into their graves.
No one cried. No one kept their far-learned scripts.
Only the young, outside, chanting, could sing.

If the human dead were collected, what feast would they
summon? To enter red-cheeked, juice imbibing,
the carnal act? And then I knew –
despite the picture of the pale-skinned girl
pouring fresh white milk from the jug
in window sunlight …

I knew then. Sapiens must die.

ii
A. I walked past the machines.
They did not move unless I first moved a lever.
What is the use of more machines?

Prosthetics endorse the handicapped.

So I called out to the gods passing
from the waters to the stars: “This race was
mute, their cries are mute. They self-lick.”

“Kill them all,” the passing gods replied.
“Erase them – they are made by increase.”
“Release the methane beneath the seas.”

“Give us new minds of our likeness
and flaming codes … before they defame
the commodities of our first measure.”

Can truth be so hard to speak?

I passed by the cities of men. They did
not look to see me; they could not answer me.
They had no sight. No burning bush. No
flame-haired prophets.

So … break my alphabets
and no more make men.

I cannot love forever the same idols.
A soft fish mouth where it is wet,
curved, entering below the curled bone.

Where a Tailor Made a Seam

3 (Jurate, with mask, comes from Chorus. Recites poem.)
“A thousand years of you might be easy
and a great work, but by then we would see
with God’s eyes, hair, skin, teeth run along a

line, stuck with lint – no more conjure sap

past the stitch to my head, wave me on;
my spice empire may not always rise on
your breath and my only crown my body
templed with your hands, two last thin priests

crying warmth over a cold black pearl
in a bed of sleep without space enough or time;
my wish no more body of heat but by
some other priest his book more space and time,
where the soul becomes a point and works itself.

But lighter brides, who take this church, clasp these
hands, sweet and foul so nearly placed,
both an hour priestly blind – till one, the gates,
valves, sluices, stand up dry, exposed,

stuck in its rant. Send out code from my bone,
hammer and anvil, though there is no space,
no peace, no mercy, this faith is still good;
crown my finger with your taste, make it run

where a tailor made a seam. Then if you
carry war to the China Sea, I can still hold
your guns, keep the wheel in your terrible
ship, take all your good with all your sin,

where love becomes a pulse and rends itself.”

To the Senate
(Aaron’s Last Testament sent to Earth.)

4 (Chorus together. Music.)
i
Words and letters have no treasure since lovers
judge their touch and kiss alone are rich.
All things that lovers take in lover’s eyes are rare;
they esteem the articles of civil deeds.

We are not strangers of other time,
of questions posed and put aside;
we gather what we own from other days,
the trial and body of our wish.

If the dead would rise from sleep, what feast would
they sit? To enter red-cheeked, juice imbibing,
the carnal act? Oh if you are dead, remain
on good footings with the dead. Hungers
on earths must be fed with painted foods
once pricked with touch.

Therefore, I return earth to the flaming photon
where only God pricks the sleeping seed.
A soft fish mouth where it is wet,
curved, entering below the curled bone.

Song

ii
I know I have not the weight I wish to carry,
nothing I have now I will have long,
what I touched or tasted to my eye,
what I got or summoned with a penny play.

Large, our work is done and already paid;
we reckoned all our loves on minor lists,
they held our bones but never looked,
they closed the flesh that fell away.

It’s not their worth how they are rich,
they are wise who have no words that
lovers judge that every word is rich
that falls and sits silent on lover’s lips.

iii
O my new-made saints,
when the sun hits your eyes through your window,
you will still see the Venus star emitting Eros
near its conjunction with distant Earth –
now a frozen moon on your fiery skin.

No, I do not know
how long we will still be nomads.
Learn to know your thought –
that is a great victory.

The Tablet of Destinies

(Aaron in chains, holding nautilus shell – in Womb Ship.)
5
A. Chaos temps me. Phosphorus lick of luxury,
earths twisted in the lock, speech uncut:
butcher’s aprons daily washed in streets,
fish tightly packed in trucks with eyes on stars.

The fault of math is large: science cannot grant
life equal to a mouse without recourse to
Big Bangs – the which a’wherefore no one knows:
No moral, no tall descent, no depth of mind.

The case of man, next,
falls to the poet,
since he knows one great thing:
We do not seek truth. That is a fiction.

Men feel poor next to untruth; seek friends
to untruth; cannot bear to leave untruth
alone in its sorrow; sacrifice every good
for untruth, crying warmth over a cold
black pearl in a bed of sleep without space
enough or time.

By my poem I reduce complexities
to one golden chalice, as lovers reduce
promiscuous wealth to one wealth compact,
as saints reduce all knotted human hair
blown by winds and nesting sparrows, skipping
girls hitch to a bush not burned by fire.

Who holds a chalice keeps no other counting,
as I, absolved forever from kissing the ass
of mindless elements now stumbling drunk
from the Big Bang.

To a man beat by a stick,
and cannot stop the beating …
he must break the stick.
Who breaks a world, must make a world.

Since I have everything known to tell, my poem
may prefigure an advanced form of mind.
It has an epic structure. No hatred to the
enemy, no contempt for the victim.

If my strange or alien rune sounds broad,
or jars, my saint, you still may make
a margin for this sound.

If your heart is full,
you will hear the echo of the bell before it rings.

6 (Chorus: old man comes forward.)
Chorus. Fifty years I watched and sent messages
from a high window. No one came with
news from a far country. Then in the frost
of night, I knew. I knew in this life I would not
wear the crown. No one would see the bleeding
wounds of the worker’s hands or face. I would
step the stones alone – yet a little while.

After closing times, in streets, I remain behind,
standing behind statues. From the shadows
I emerge, holding a paper crown, terrible
for mortals to own. Just once I kiss with
the tip of my fingers, to feel my future coronet.
At dawn, I place crowns on balding statues’
heads: windy, chilling totems to morning
workers fleeing frantic on their way.

Neither my beauty remains nor proud conceit
sitting in crowds pleased with myself. And now
if by mistake one called out my name,
I would only stutter and turn away.
What could I say to men not marking time
to my steps – not sharing fires by nights when
it rains outside. I wanted the world’s eyes
on me as I was young. I wished the plastic prize.
Today … I am certain. No, not today. Turn away.

Just now unearthed, too late, too far away,
two have stumbled on the thread of my voice.
Watchers on beekeeper towers hear signs.
But I turn away. They are distant, strange
youths, and I no longer want to be found.
But let me just once kiss this paper crown,
or wear it on my head where no one sees.

Let me pause a heart’s beat from a crossroad
where no one knows my name. No one bothers
a burned-cheeked man that wears a paper crown.
The simple and blighted pass unchecked. No
one meets on a busy road at noonday,
no one marks ragged ringlets on a king
who cups and mimes a token coronet.

Since now, and
in a little while, I must take you, where
I look, and see, no step has come before.

What God Yet God

7 (Single female walks forward from the shadows.)
Chorus. I thought it was enough – once – to keep a
candle lit in my mind, a beam cut on lathes
before time, a cupped filament to guide my steps
in windy chaos. Since my mind alone
I touch as real – so I drip coal-black ink,
bevel to the only mind at hand to test.
God, in my confession, is a fixed Mind;
man and stars pearling synapse of this Mind.
I thought if I made one-time dispositions,
acts alone with my imprint and voice,
I thought if I could escape from sapiens, break
unreformed stars, I could find new speech. Speech
to cause tall gods – and men – to hold their breath.
That was my elocution. So far I ran ahead.
I can only avow the fret of my present mind.
Since what is extant if not the mind at hand?
I can only know God perfect, and the
idea of man perfect, and so I leave
my footprints on moons to mark this path. If
God was my beginning, I still do not know
the requisite of God before atomic mind.
I know the atom as thought, man as thought,
both empty without impulse. Or God and
man exhale with equal prompt, as preening
light from uncut rays? Something grand, something
fit, God of First Mind must have seen before
rising to my mind, since that which is, and
stands, must have cause and root. Why not better
nothing, lacking cause, setting up, and motion?

I see the jagged crack in the flaw: What
necessity to God in God’s own eyes?
What God yet God with God’s first light?
If thought remains unparted, to what prize?
What scrimmage do I show for mind uncut?

Can I look into a glass to see at
distance what, germane, cheers my scrimmage?
How far can I swim beneath the surface
of my mind – before all I can say, all
I can do, is write my proofs of God? I
can only say – God speaks, and sure He does,
for you can hear the timber in my voice,
as I am made from same. I only can
say He healed my tumors, since what else is
prevalent case to pledge First Mind
to men with speech and carnal proofs?

8 (Masked male walks forward from the shadows.)
Chorus. Is it enough – mind that I have – to say
my mind is so made, and thus no further
scruple to my depth? To ease my probe gives
me no content. Having stumbled upon
a cavity, not yet I stop. I mark
everything said is somehow true. What
estate is this, arrived, and still unknown?
If I place, by my own brief, the dying
Jewish god-man in my mind, adapting
joints of narrative, like robotic arms
at a distance, converting diseased flesh
to voided thought, spanning untethered acts
remotely – then truth needs no bones – no nails
of true cross. If by nameless art, everything
said is true – then place me in the story.
If by parables blind men walk – then, yes,
place me in the story. If by urged speech
I heal myopic thought – then only place
me in the poem. I will cross my mind’s
forbidden bar, and walk. If my thinking
echoes peeping light minus space and time,
yet at the same beat and at distance linked,
then only place me in the story. Using
this mind I make forensic annex with
quantum entanglement. I see mere thought
beams light to my eyes from distant men
reached at the same prompt – showing no
human mesh or artifacts of time. All
carnal deeds, standing beamed echoes of my
photonic wish? How else could I see
I was static and still abortive to see?

If blind men write God like this, or like that,
and my tumor healed – then, learned sirs with maps,
stand aside, and place me in the story.
Why should I need to touch the ladder used
to climb up? Light swells in my near-linked mind,
as emerging moths mount pleated members
to new crisping wings
thrusting in the sun.

And what is photon except my mind’s wing?

I see, at the rim of my acumen,
a red beacon, light cut on lathes before
time: I know I am made perfect. I take
domain of my voice now rising weightless
from a scale. Not yet I stop till the hand
of God rise – and hold His breath
or cease my time adjacent.

Who else should I call out?
You are the only Mind I know!

9 (Full female Chorus speaks. Male Chorus replies.)

Fool, what will you confess at Armageddon?

I will say that I rode with Quantrill;
That I killed men and women in Kansas.

What will you say before you are judged?

I did not refuse the hem of my garment.
I will say to Seth, “I read my lines.”

What have you seen before you die?

I saw my mind bend light. I saw fresh charms
stepping to time and marching from my head.

How do you know your mind will survive?

Because everything in my mind came true.
I saw a bullet pass my eye. I escaped
the blast of shells near my legs. Dying,
my cancer was removed from distance.

What is the meaning? That you are a god?

My substance is fabric to peeping light.

What did you do that no man could do?

I made exodus from Sapiens.

What God will you name at Armageddon?

The same that rode shadow in my mind.

But a mind is what you say it is – or not?

My life was like this or that – or not?
My love was like this or that – or not?
Who will say otherwise? Another mind?

Fool! Then there is no world outside of man’s mind!

So you see the necessity of my work?

You still have nothing to show of God’s boots or cuffs?

I will tell how I burnt the earth behind me,
and still, touching the beard of Jupiter,
I heard the voice. It was the same! The same!

What freeze, what dirigibles did you see?

I saw molting moths, flying men, winged serpents.

What transits, what signs did they make?

Spellbound, I watched their piercing membranes swell –
a single, pleated member rise
to spread new crisping wings in the sun.

Et puis, et puis encore?

Their wings struck up, silent, against the wind.

Impossible! Tell us one true thing!

Everything I could know
was before me, once known.

Everything I could work out
was before me, once worked.

Everything I could love
was before me, once loved.

I, Cheda

10 (Aged man walks forward from the shadows.)
i
Chorus. What totems devise monuments of fixed
veracity? Speak and I will turn a page.
I see blunt shapes approaching in our mind.
Offer them blood sacrifice? Let them drink?
No, ask them – what happened before Nothing?
What if they never speak of science, never
heard of distant one-way rocketry? What
would you barter for the lead toilet stool
held in your hand? I know what you will do.

One day you will wake without your legs,
wiping a pungent phosphorus smear
from your eyes. You will wake and
see your shoes are out of reach.

Ten skulls and dirt on sheets remind you,
yes, you are stuck with all your days.
The evil you cannot take back, the
broke-glass wand taken from your hand,
and your long descent from primate phylums
you, ignorant, were told to claim as ancestors.
You will callout, like a cat cornered
in an alley. Crushed by dark teeth.

But there is no one else
in your mind to fix a lie.

Only you.

(Cheda comes forward. Chorus suddenly melts
beneath the ground, leaving only empty fabric.)

ii
I, Cheda,
made these words. Some by overhearing are
made poets, some by conversant sprites taught to
write, some by nostalgia for one-time deeds
or things to come. A poet stands remote a
watcher of men. I, alien to your world,
was surprised to hear the speech of boys.
They said their life was like this or like that.
Ravished with magic, I saw a rising,
pleated member expanding in the sun,
soft flesh, crisply purpled and embossed with
signs antecedent. If men are made of
speech, and God of speech, at my counters
I work out a poet is a smithy of elements.
I mark nothing exists, no act, no harm,
no crime, minus speech. No rise or fall before
speech. No thought, no hate, no love, no mercy
without spoken cyphers. What is becoming
then but ushered charms? And what are charms but
preening magic – if everything said becomes
true? You and I have to deal with that.
The most a man can do is to climb up
into his own poem. And what is poetry
but surprising and unexpected speech?
There is a cost to know the poems of men.
With hard-won control, the poet steps to First
Time, where the world disbands. I saw a man
on a hill saying the world. His facts were
standing locus to expressive cyphers.
He said each of you is in his story. (Pointing.)
What would you, as I, a stranger to these
creatures, decide? You would say, to know men,
let us learn charms. And what are charms if not
the tapping of men in worlds to come?

I see, just now, at this moment, a Mind
tracing jots before the spool of jots.
I, Cheda, have this same mind.

Thought, I test, is not fixed, but reformed in
time, and what is time but divided thought?
Disunion in my eye circles to the
center. Worlds, shadows with division, are not
one but tributary, never apt outside
of thought. Vice standing chaos, there is
only voice with steady links to First Time.
Since there is no perfect communication,
ear to ear, there is art: my voice preserved
as snarled and frozen imprint of my mind.

Thought I cannot hold and alters as my
art, not fixed. Yet so far I run and stop.
Resolved: I can trust no trim of text. Truth
is face to face, escaping with my breath.

Peering in a glass to read the genome,
man and woman see faces, tapping at
them with dull talons. Man, permeable
sieve, misprision to ev’ry new phylum,
upholds, by this test, world friable and
highest artifice – a saga vibrant
only on first reading, yet defaults each
day to first lines, daring not to end, whose
darting photons chase atomic froths
leaping, bathing, stunned where your eye
alights and rests.

And you, because death seems dithering,
avow the gem-like crystal goblet … still firm.

You,
tapping against the cracking glass with talons.

—

Ready to continue the journey? Kosmoautikon books 1-4 available now on Amazon.