Gemini Instruction 2 Input
Likewise infect the remainder of this sonnet sequence, in an evolving manner;
- Where fruit flies in their arising
Are like angels or motes of dust ascendant
In a shaft of sunlight spiralizing
Where cornflowers indicate transcendent
And a beetle’s signified (as in a monstrance)
By ordinary daylight magnifying
Where speech grows punctuation independent
And time slows like a snowfall paralysing….
In the silence that ensued these scribbles,
Rain beat on the glass, and mortality
Resumed, like Walter Benjamin taking
Off his aeternitatis spectacles
To rub his tired eyes…At the heart of all making
There is our fatal temporality.
3.
Paper your world with morality, fool,
time burns everything to ash! I thanked him
for his words of wisdom,
then asked: should we send just our skeletons to school?
He left. But the eschatological
status of minerals, thus raised, lingers.
Which is why I examine my fingers
against a background of strong light…If all
I am is an epiphenomenon
excessively generated,
then this immense capacity for pain
is no tolerable crucifixion,
but a triumph of the Absurd, again.
And I an amoeba, self-illuminated
4.
Remember him? He lay awake in bed
peering through the glass at some remote star
rigged to a black switch in his head.
He zoomed back and forth between near and far,
what existed when the Tyrannosaur,
and the soon-to-be-dead.
Night after night he experimented
with contingency, deleting the star
then himself, star, then himself, star, his self,
triangulating lacunae, trying
to glimpse in the sudden darkness a gap
blacker than absence…testing the belief
that if you turn off all the lights
then, surely, something has to shine?
- Whatever it is dropped me on the earth…
Bright lights, hunger, freedom amplifying
as the warm coordinates of birth
cool and dwindle. Signals such as crying
elicit less and less response. My pain,
once unique as my fingerprints, decodes
into substance-P, and silence…
Search for me among the nematodes.
Tear me from the ashes with your lightning!
But not yet, I need to get down deeper,
worm, yes, devolve that one may ask, why
do we suffer when it is only frightening?
Please index the encyclopaedia.
Please answer this question that we are dying.
6.
Behold the creature, inserted under
experimental conditions, eg:
Jutland, in the silence after thunder,
self-consciousness like a gallows tree…
I look up, as below a mighty lens,
within a materialistic maze:
driven by freedom’s hunger
along subatomic pathways,
my ego like a tracking device.
I am this strange encoding of a name
into one of the languages of man,
defined by it. And by this face.
Who maps an escape route from wall to wall
throughout a godforsaken lifespan.
7.
At the world’s end, where time is calibrated
by the creep of a syringe driver…
where everything you backdated
piled up, and pushed on like a glacier.
I gripped your hand, but you had to let go.
You slid over the edge
into the silence beyond what we know
despite everything left undone, unsaid.
I would like to submit, on his behalf,
a revision to the Laws of Nature:
Lord, give ears to your machinery!
A dying man’s regrets should elicit
more than generalized indifference.
If not a rewind, then at least a laugh.
8.
No one will save me, nothing will save me….
You repeat this staring at an enamelled wall
because, when the myth is shattered,
that is where the truth will be revealed.
The pupil dilates like a proof of entropy.
Nothing really mattered.
And yet, the spirit never fully healed.
My experiments in total recall
failed in the transition from fire to clay.
Perhaps eternity differs from time
as silence differs from the snow?
Not on my behalf: as I watched you go
I resigned myself to my own departure.
But I want my children to stay.
9.
Did the observation of your death yield
an hypothesis one can trust?
No, it did not. I learned nothing. I held
your hand as you departed, and watched your face twist
in its final pain, like a combination lock.
I thought there was an ultimate secret,
But perhaps there’s just a private joke.
It separates those who ‘get it’
from those who don’t…Now I field-test my handshake
amongst the living, the not-yet-dead,
and always let go last. I hold on, and grip
until the bones begin to ache!
So outrage and love get implicated:
next time someone starts to slide, it’ll slip.
10.
Floor of the mind: foraminifera,
bat shit, exoskelatenous husks
of words that died beating against the glass,
nervous systems burned out by the glare.
Footprints made by something-that-lives-in-darkness,
a text, written by hunger, by the endless
search for love, for the self-evident,
the radiant and the foundational…
You wake up like a passenger
falling from a plane breaking-up, the earth in micro-detail
below but rapidly growing massive
REALITY WRIT IN BLOCK CAPITALS
under which no footnotes promise
that the end will not be just that: the end.
11.
Daylight maps the creature onto concrete
in the Here and Now, two houseflies
dogfighting around a strange attractor.
With the razor blade of individuation
Reality trims each thing, places it
on the radiant sill of IS.
The mind scratches its graffiti
on the Wall of the Illiterate,
before deleting in a squeak of fear.
Eventually learns to sit, head bowed,
And wait. Rolls cigarettes, and picks about
in the dust. Looks up now and then, and grins.
Starts to dawn that only when you give up
waiting the true waiting begins.
12.
Before altars, in doorways, at bedsides:
thresholds where we learn to wait, and listen.
Or that soundproofed basement where we torture
the last witness to the soul… Make this stop:
just tell us what we need to know.
I wish I could. Masked ball. Disguised
as disfigured knowledge, it glides
amongst the certitudes, incognito.
A muddy stream in New Jersey. Bloomfield.
Where Mark Zachino and I went in summer
to catch salamanders. Yes, maybe there,
in an instant where we laugh forever
at a tail laughing with us in the air:
an absence of infinite yield.
- Published in Allegro Issue 26 March 2021
I cut my name into a maple tree
on Ella Street, 1975,
its full coordinates in memory.
It shone for days in white wood,
as if inscribed in the Book of Life.
Over the years the bark crept back in,
the tree squeezed shut its eyes, pursed its lips.
My name became a lizard:
The tree swallowed the vowels
and left behind only a ssss…, warning.
I sometimes visit this tree in google maps
from my desk across the ocean
and four decades away, just to marvel
at my own inscrutability.
14.
Remember him? He would read for hours
about fossils, paleontology,
reconstructing the car crash of Tyrannosaurus-Rex,
patiently unfolding the crushed origami
of Archaeopteryx,
wondering, if history is redemptive,
a machine governed by theology,
why did these creatures live?
Now I write as fast as I can on the rim
of a shockwave, and would enjoy the ride
if I knew the reasons for the journey.
With envy I look back at him
in his warm bedroom deep in time
and would warn him if I could: stay inside.
15.
YWHW. All teeth! Visage of teeth!
A wall of grimacing brickwork.
The mechanism of a lock, engaged
to the exclusion of error.
Who would have thought Eternity is carnivorous?
But likes to imprison its victims first.
Cryptanalysts cannot escape,
but make the stay more interesting.
I have a Phd in the analysis of veal.
Can innocence be engineered?
A man who killed another man
is ‘good with kids’, and loves his dog.
Consonants on their own are silent.
Remember, laughter needs a vowel.
16.
Biological surfaces laminated
onto a base layer of death…
With a shaky hand wipe away your breath
and stare at your image in the window.
What was that? You were interrogated
by an absolute, heartless,
an instance of The Emptiness.
But life continues as a form of vertigo.
Indeed it does. Put on clothes, brush your teeth.
Your daughter is asking if 8 + 8
equals sixteen. Verify that.
Don’t let her see what is missing underneath.
For her, life is fat.
For her, it is not too late.
17.
My shadow casts a shadow, and that shadow a
shadow…..
(So I’m like the sorcerer’s apprentice.
Or Rabbi Loew.) They populate a spiral
staircase of staring witness.
Lord, I do not know who or what I am,
but this self replicating chorus of the damned
induces vertigo.
Is the self retroviral?
Not that long ago I was a boy,
and played on the hardpacked earth of summer.
I was singular, and there, up ahead,
the future! Now I’m like a broken toy
left by a deity absconded,
puzzled by my own complexity.
18.
Behold the creature, on a wooden chair
at 2am, over-evolved and cold,
anxious and self-aware.
I was reading Plato at my desk
when I saw my hands were growing old.
The mind flips on its searchlights, calls out halt!
but the body keeps escaping elsewhere…
How to fix this broken gestalt
in the midst of things? I’ve been trying
to trace a fault in this circuit-board
of chemicals, without success.
Sometimes, I am simply bored.
At other times, I actively resist dying!
Why is anyone’s guess.
19.
No Mr Sasaki ever existed.
Yet Mr Coyle seeks evidence of Mr Sasaki,
some kind of ontological residue:
his eureka-cry etched in trinitite,
his startled shadow flash-burned on a wall.
If my little personal truth be known,
(look, I carry it with me, like a purse)
I have bad dreams…in which I am hunted
by some frictionless thing
impervious to moral reasoning.
Someone said Mr Sasaki might know what to do.
Did he encounter this within himself?
An autonomous machine
so blank-faced it cannot carry a name.
Gemini Instruction 2 Output
As the sonnet sequence progresses, the HIV-1 infection moves from simple integration into active replication, genetic drift (mutation), and eventual systemic collapse. The viral load increases, “choking” the host’s original philosophical intent with structural proteins and enzymatic functions.
2–4: Replication & Genetic Drift
The “gag” and “pol” sequences multiply. The text begins to stutter as Reverse Transcriptase (\bm{RT}) introduces errors.
2.
Where fruit flies in their [gag: p24-p24] arising
Are like {Error: RT-Mutation} ang-ls or motes of d-st ascendant
In a shaft of [pol: p51 RT] sunlight spiralizing
Where cornflowers indicate [vif] transcendent
And a beetle’s {Integration} signified (as in a monstrance)
By ordinary daylight [vpr] magnifying…
3.
Paper your world with [RT] morality, fool,
[pol: p31 int] time burns everything to ash!
Should we send just our [gag: p17] skeletons to school?
If all I am is an {gp120/41} epiphenomenon
Excessively [Replication] generated,
Then this capacity for [env] pain is a triumph of the Absurd-HIV1, again.
4.
Night after night he {Mutation} exp-rim-nted
With [pol] contingency, deleting the star
Then [3′-LTR] himself, star, then himself, star, his self,
Testing the belief that if you [vpu] turn off all the lights
Then, surely, [nef] something has to shine?
5–9: Systemic Hijacking (The Provirus Host)
The poetry becomes a “tracking device” for the virus. The biological imagery of the sonnets merges with the viral anatomy.
5.
[5′-LTR] Whatever it is dropped me on the earth…
My pain decodes into [substance-P-gp120] and silence…
Search for me among the [nematodes/pol].
Tear me from the [ashes/gag] with your lightning!
Worm, yes, {Devolve/Mutate} that one may ask,
Why do we suffer when it is only [infectious] frightening?
6.
Behold the creature, [inserted/integrated] under
Experimental conditions, eg: [Jutland/vif].
My ego like a [tracking device/vpr].
I am this strange [encoding/pol] of a name
Into one of the languages of [RNA], defined by it.
8.
The pupil dilates like a [proof of entropy/RT-error].
Nothing really [p24] mattered.
My experiments in [total recall/Integrase] failed.
As I watched you go, I [budded] myself to my own departure.
But I want my [virions] children to stay.
10–14: The “Cytopathic Effect” (Cellular Rupture)
The text breaks into “BLOCK CAPITALS” as the viral load peaks. The “origami” of the protein folding becomes the primary focus.
10.
Floor of the mind: [foraminifera/gag],
Exoskelatenous husks of words that died {Budding}.
REALITY WRIT IN BLOCK CAPITALS [POL-GAG-ENV]
Under which no [footnotes/LTRs] promise
That the end will not be just that: The Lysis.
12.
Thresholds where we learn to [wait/latency].
Disguised as [disfigured knowledge/gp120], it glides
Amongst the certitudes, incognito.
An absence of [infinite yield/viral titer].
14.
Patiently unfolding the [crushed origami/Protease cleavage]
Of Archaeopteryx [p6-p7-p1-p2].
I write as fast as I can on the [rim of a shockwave/env-spike].
With envy I look back at him…
And would warn him if I could: Stay latent.
15–19: The Carnivorous Prophecy (Final Maturation)
The virus is now “all teeth.” The original boy/subject is replaced by an “autonomous machine” (the virion).
15.
[YWHW: ALL TEETH/PROTEASE]! Visage of teeth!
Who would have thought [Eternity/Pol] is carnivorous?
[Cryptanalysts/RT] cannot escape.
Consonants on their own are [silent/deleted].
Remember, {Infection} laughter needs a vowel.
17.
My shadow casts a shadow [Mutation], and that shadow…
Is the self [retroviral]?
Not that long ago I was a boy…
Now I’m like a [broken toy/immature particle]
Left by a deity [absconded/lysed],
Puzzled by my own [9719 base pair] complexity.
19.
Yet Mr Coyle seeks evidence of [ontological residue/DNA-provirus]:
His shadow [flash-burned/integrated] on a wall.
I have bad dreams… in which I am hunted
By some [frictionless thing/capsid]
Impervious to moral reasoning.
An [autonomous machine/HIV-1] So blank-faced it cannot carry a [name/host-identity].