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Category: Science

RuiNation (Plastinate Diorama)

Filed under: History, Philosophy, Science — 74 Comments

September 24, 2012

Jeff Ball (c) 2010 – Used with permission

dissection commences upon these
orphans of ideology
birthed of greed and invention
razor wire twined minds
inoculated against thought
suffering attachment disorders
imprecations rain when drawn near
our distended bellies emetic fed

military industrial complex choke-chain
asphyxiates a discernible truth,
speak for us we moan
as our mouths are sewn shut –
who threaded this needle?

the omniscient coroner sings:
humanity is a crooked timber
from which no straight thing
can be built (or imagined)

twisted images spin the picture
like crime scene photos
of abundance and stability
politicians and CEOs mistake
words of confidence for reality,
monuments of ego for power

missiles of tyranny
parading as democracy
mere echoes of Pericles’ stones
immuring liberty
flags dyed in blood from
renewable resources
(the marginalized and foreign)
nourishing the warmongers

in the ethical wasteland
these post-apocalyptic landscapes
leveled playing (killing) fields
are littered with mutilated animals
and fetid dead tossed in mass graves
waiting to be tallied by infallible machines

selected from the masses
the coroner’s team prepares to plastinate
stages of fixation, dehydration
forced impregnation, and hardening begin

pumping formalin through our arteries
removing skin, our fatty and connective tissue
a baptism in acetone
precedes vacuum impregnation
silicone rubber penetrates each cell

we are now posed, death grimaces
cured with gas, light, and heat
to a preserved splendor
harnessed for display

coroner proclaims science
has become more beautiful than art
our diorama, a stripped Arc,
impoverished ecology frozen in time
a testament to its endeavor –
technological mutations
of philosophy’s thunder

this towering foundation of Platonic ideals
denatures with rot, denies human striving
an exit wound embedded with fragments of skull
terrors devour and obliterate rationality
massive impersonal forces rumble
demarcating the territory where
vacuous monsters spew acid
dissolving thin barriers of freedom
as the great experiments fail

Notes: This is a significantly expanded rewrite of my poem Dystopia, previously posted in April 2012. If you’d like to better understand plastination you can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastination. Also, thank you to Jeff Ball, my best friend, for the use of his photograph from the exhibition I had the honor of naming, RuiNation. More of his stunning photography can be viewed here: http://jeffballphotography.com/.

Tags: poetry

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Gilda’s Demon Core

Filed under: History, Humor, Science — 57 Comments

July 9, 2012

Crossroads Able Target Ship Map

23 nuclear tests to end all wars, you see,
There’s never been a woman like Gilda,
The first plutonium-cored, pin-up girl,
1946 femme fatal bombshell (she’s already killed twice!)
Stars in B-29 Superfortress, Dave’s (Wet) Dream

Her aim point Nevada, that focal point of sin
Painted whorific red, sex-toy fun for the bombardier,
Amidst 3 obsolete U.S. battleships (well hung),
2 aircraft carriers (top guns), 2 cruisers (playboys),
11 destroyers (bad boys), 8 submarines (spooks),
And 3 German and Japanese ships (losers)

She laps up the Able Target Array carnage
Gives atmospheric nuclear fallout head,
Spewing an ocean of emotional wounds
Special Delivery propaganda porno flick:
‘Air power is peace power!’ hard on baby
Film noir fireball glory for a superheated Cold War

Operations Crossroads testing at Bikini Atoll
Depravity reaches the Atomic Ark tasting her full fury
Naval uniforms specially made, the animals dress the parts
She blasts goat #113 after tethering him to a gun turret
While swimmy little piggy #311 comes home sterile
167 native islander witnesses, however, cannot
Her encore will be performed by stunt double Bravo,
Another 15 megaton super dirty girl

‘Men fall in love with Gilda but wake up with me.’
Rita Hayworth, on her five failed marriages

Operation Crossroads Able

Posted to Open Link Night hosted by rock star Tash http://dversepoets.com/2012/07/10/openlinknight-week-52/ celebrating a year of community this week!

Tags: poetry

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Transmarginal Inhibition (Elegy of Solitude)

Filed under: Art, Personal, Philosophy, Postmodern, Science — 60 Comments

June 23, 2012

Thermik by David Schnell

‘To be nobody but yourself in a world
which is doing its best night and day
to make you everybody but yourself –
means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight –
and never stop fighting’*

Syncretistic perceptions, an undifferentiated overlay, defies analysis
charcoal line smudges of general schemas obscure impressions
rich encounters snap floodlights of jutting rebar arousals

Hypersensitive virtualization creates painted landscapes
interior silhouette projects an invasion of organic forms
brushed upon the tethered denigration of industrial life

Here in the interstices my song floods the synapses
sanctuary of full intellection and emotive grace
perpetual motion unaware of constraints

Rigorous self-actualization, joy in overcoming
physical and mental obstacles, planes of perspective
in a carmine sky, layered with personal/political history

Equivalent Phase

Universal current skips along a straight colored line
zaps as the artist’s tinted horizons chase imaginative space
indeterminate semantic memory emanates
parkourist streaming cobalt sparklers in an art of human reclamation

Paradoxical Phase

Ratcheting optimal levels of arousal to overstimulation
reality wends an anfractuous path towards the essentially absurd
interior integrity crumbles under the tonnage
crushing architecture of exterior inhumanity

Ultra-paradoxical

Extreme choreography of pure constructs, pandemonium of agonies,
dissuades association, enforcing a gaze of self-negation
trace elements lose gravity, reversal’s insidious influence reigns
as intensely private volition deconstructs

(initiating post traumatic dissociation in my supratemporality field)

*E.E. Cummings

Notes:
Transmarginal inhibition is a psychological term denoting an organism’s response to overwhelming stimuli. Ivan Pavlov through his research found “that the most basic inherited difference among people was how soon they reached this shutdown point and that (those with) the quick-to-shut-down (response) have a fundamentally different type of nervous system.” Patients who have reached this shutdown point often become socially dysfunctional. Patients who dissociate during and after the experience, will more easily dissociate or shut down during stressful or painful experiences, and may experience post traumatic stress disorder.

There are three stages passed through for state of transmarginal inhibition to be reached.

1. equivalent phase: response matches the stimuli, which is considered normal, baseline behavior.
2. paradoxical phase: associated with quantity reversal, occurs when small stimuli receive major response and a major stimuli elicit small responses.
3. ultra-paradoxical: the final stage, associated with quality reversal in which negative stimulation results in positive responses and vice versa.

An organism can progress through these stages by increased stimulation, random negative stimulation, reversing positive and negative stimulation, or physically debilitating the organism. – from Wikipedia (with modifications)

Parkour (also called Le Parkour, PK, or free running) is an activity in which participants attempt to clear all obstacles in their path in the most fluent manner possible. A traceur, parkourist or free runner is a participant of parkour. The term free runner has been commonly used by the media.

The ultimate goal in parkour is to ‘flow’ along one’s path, for the entire journey to be as one fluent movement with no pauses or breaks. A principal rule of parkour is to never go backwards. Free runners believe that there is path to every obstacle which is achieved through forward movement.

The magnitude and technicality of a move in parkour are secondary to the flow and beauty of it. Explains Jerôme Ben Aoues, one of the traceurs featured in in the acclaimed Channel 4 documentary Jump London, “The most important thing really is the harmony between you and the obstacle; the movement has to be elegant, that’s what will make it prettier. Length and distance only add to the beauty of the move, if you manage to pass over the fence elegantly that’s beautiful, rather than saying ‘I jumped the lot.’ What’s the point in that?”

To many, parkour is an extreme sport, to others a discipline more comparable to martial arts, to others an art form akin to dance, a way to encapsulate human movement in its most beautiful form. Parkour also inspires freedom; being free in an urban environment designed to trap, not restricted by railings, staircases, even buildings. It is for many people a way of life. – from wordiQ
More of David Schnell’s paintings can be viewed in this German language video

Tags: experimental poetry, poetry

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Constructs in the Fourth Dimension

Filed under: Art, Mathematics, Music, Philosophy, Postmodern, Science — 49 Comments

May 15, 2012

Henry Moore Two Forms

Curved space departs Euclidean geometry
threshold frequency erects the base
a foundry of hollow spaces
where precept and concept unify

Biomorphic casts of pre-rational,
ethnographically inspired models
pre-cultural, non-mimetic abstracts
concave intoning: existence precedes essence

Sublime convex aural manifestations
quarried from a lost-wax echoic art
direct carving: interplay of vision and thought
purify significant appearance

Resonant mysteries of integral multiples
harmonic interstices amplify
isolating substance from contaminates
molding an armature of pure form

This poem is for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub http://dversepoets.com/2012/05/15/3186/.

Tags: poetry

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