 |
 |
 |
 |
Vol XLIV, The Secret Life of ChaosChristopher Khadem |
Christopher Khadem is a poet and journalist who lives in London, England. His work has previously appeared online and in-print on both sides of the Atlantic in The Catalonian Review,BlazeVox, Breadcrumb Scabs, Clockwise Cat and Leaf Garden Press. He edits the online contemporary art and poetry journal Disingenuous Twaddle.
The Secret Life of Chaos
-Ology.
An etymology of science.
Supercomputer is derivative.
zn+1 = zn2 + c
Let z be truth/beauty.
Morphogenesis (from the Greek morphê
shape and genesis creation, literally,
"beginning of the shape").
Think of a steady wind, blowing across a sand dune.
Self organisation.
His name was Alan Turing.
Nothing repeats exactly.
His name was Alan Turing.
He looks like John Wayne and Rudolph Hess.
I have a very specific definition, you nitwit chaoticist. Myriad people misuse me.
Keep saying it until it takes your breath away.
Her brain tells you you've inhaled too rapidly–
Predictability. Let's start with gravity,
Newtonianism can predict the future.
Our computer power is not sufficient.
Our brains are far too small.
O, that butterfly's wings in Brazil.
This is a classic example of a feedback loop,// the same mathematics is creating both order and chaos.// This is the closest things we have// at the moment// to the pure mathematics of nature.// It is woven very deeply to the fabric of the universe.
We set out to answer one simple question:
how did we get here?
But I digress
Two Soonetts
I
Looking in to the back of a spoon (as Parmigianino did it)
Trying to pronounce elliptical French at four in the morning
(Or was it German? Or Italian
It was one of the Modernist's stolen tongues, anyway,
And I think that might have been the point
Probably French)
As the sun rose like the moon, or
Like a yawning man's bald head hugged by
The parentheses of the clouds
A boules lawn was being planted, seed by seed
By tortoise men and turtle women, who
– in some months –
Will be closer to the dirt than the tips of the blades ever were.
II
But if the Earth is spinning and flying through the universe
Like a helicopter, then
What is gravity?
I don't know
Who it was who said
"Parenthesis and ellipsis are whole repetitions,
Full of themselves. Full of them, selves"
But they were right
(presumably, hence the marks).
Time blinks
Flinches uncomfortably
Infinity has changed from
A frustrating mathematical impossibility to
A figure-eight on its side.
Things fall apart
and even the newspapers are reporting the news
on the front pages.
Shock treatment
shocks the old redundancies.
Dig out digital iterations of ancient texts:
Manchester Guardian, Washington Post, Cairo Times.
Les choses s'écrouler
Belief is rare.
Drink in thirty years of history and sweat change.
People are learning
that sniffing vinegar helps you get through teargas.
People are learning that
people are learning: that.
تسقط الأشياء
Lock up your doors.
Shut down your stock markets.
No/w, spread your wings more east
(look at him, the daft Romantic/romantic)
it is Berlin in Tunis and in Suez
and it is 1989 in 2010.
"Untitled"
Quoting nothing, or
as close to nothing as possible.
Getting as close as possible
it's not black/red/pink here,
hardly a colour at all.
A low, humming absence#######################
###b###lack######not#######b##lack###########
#############################################
Th##is. It isn't it, is it?
A gust of wind exhales over the page
making tides and making waves.
Their grass is a different colour, I'm sure of that.
Prove it.
How do you expect me to cross this stream? There is no bridge.
There was no bridge
but you are taller than me
but I am made of paint.
/a
Even standing back and taking a breath/break.
it is not black/red/pink/orange/brown/down here
Quoting nothing, and
therefore, covering everything
in##############################################
Polaris
There's one single cloud in the sky
And it's obscuring the northern star.
And although it is four-thousand-three-hundred-trillion kilometeres
Away,
Its absence dulls us.
The other stars flicker like lightbulbs in a damp house,
Fizzing like sherbert,
Although obviously no one metaphor will suffice.
Circus bears are uniting,
Throwing of their chains
And dancing in the street.
Commuters are stuck on the Circle Line
But do not care, just stare forward
And start talking.
Cats are orbiting their scratching post,
And all the ships are lost at sea.
New Year's waltz
Fireworks smash into the Danube,
as blue as One two three
One two three.
All free beings count down
to
one spastic waltz.
A Larkinian 'they' heart-attack dance
while a postmodern unplaced 'I' hides
behind glasses and glasses and words like 'Larkinian'.
One two three
Oom pah pah
Professors of music cannot count.
Professor of Chemistry, Apothecary and
manufactuerer of Wines, Liquors, Cordials
&tc, &tc, &tc.
"The ambrosial essence of the lemon
must be extracted by rubbing.
Which breaks the delicate little vessels."
Hock two three
Hock two three
Hock two three
While fluvial time meanders
ticking and dripping
One two three.
The tame Thames
meekly flows
run softly till I end my song.
Blitz spirits sing
flow
ring
Sing! sing!
Correctional facility.
Ford Open Prison is closed.
Dawn breaks, yawning.
The years metastasize into one
and there are no openings nor beginnings.
Trauma (or; on ripping up an yellowing sci-fi novel and putting it back
together again)
And after that
Unrelated to the antidote
The size of a football field
'What's that?'
'The twelve-hour mark.'
'All right.'
His pipe went out.
There was a single, brief a wave of heat
Dazzling burst
Leavitt, the clinical microbiologist
isolation identification
To a corridor, consisting of
The corridor, he past beneath
The corridor.
He recieved it at home certain kind of horror.
'That is correct, sir.'
'When?'
'Twenty minutes before the crash.'
'At what altitude?'
'Jesus,' he said.
And then the room lights the town the plane
Came down east to west
Afterburners glowing
Heavy, pregnant
Beneath the wind
Long and black
But said nothing.
'Stop the film,' knee-length
The flares are already
was frozen
Operation Scrub Soviet Russia
NASA UCLA JPL CBW RTM MCN TV
Washington Washing-
erness, or the very real concern
for the problem.
'I keep wondering,' Hall said
with Jackson reminded me of it
that town went insane--or at
--during the evening.
'Mucous membranes, anything.'
Big Head, Utah.
Very odd. And now there was a crash.
It required o.o3 its answer He walked it typed box itself
'And clotting is initiated at the lungs?'
rebuilding the crash
'Trauma,' he suggested. 'A blow to the a nerve gas possible.'
Hundreds of birds flapped their wings spastically.
a kind of abstract, intellectual game then,
it all seemed wonderful.
Anxiety
He was influenced by statues with no first names,
They were monumental and smelt of dust
Because no one would dare to clean them.
His full name influences like Jupiter
(the planet, if we get started on Classics
we'll never get out of this room)
Influences its smitten moons.
Io no, Io no, Io no.
Still. Remaining and unmoving,
Trees are left to stand forever.
Ever is only a concept, of course, like
Vision, and deftness, and genius
Evoked by falible humans,
No higher than the bronze statue
Soon to fall. Relatively.
Let's play honorifics, you can start.
No, no, please. No. I insist.
I insist we stop
Glorifying childhood homes.
A great man once wet himself
Right in that corner -
There was a cot there then, of course.
Through this door is where our glorious poet
Insulted those who cared about him the most,
He didn't, of course --
See the curtain-rails! See the window-sills!
This is the canonical bathroom,
Can you see the watermark?