Galaxy in a Teacup (Continued)...

Galaxy in a Teacup (Continued)... 01-25-12

Let me start with a small video of my oil drop experiment- now the rings have become planets. I will add here my XIII, XIV, and XV poems of the series, most likely now complete, called The Learning Machine. I am not sure how good these are or what they communicate well or not- they are science related.

I apologize for anything that seems to offend anyone- but it is like for me at home in the balance of free verse and the occasional but not forbidden accidental rhyme- these sort of parallels in our mind that seem to reinforce some perception as does music- have to break out of the margins and make connections over new vistas of our sense and being in time. I am far from the alliteration at beginnings that come more natural to me- but aren't we all with our words and hope before the entropy? Still I miss the lost poems and heart for them of all my Spencerian sonnets of which although natural to English it is said that no sonnet can be perfect.


The Learning Machine (XII) L. Edgar Otto January 25, 2012

In Port LaCrosse over the Urantia sky
all that was not Little Earth was inside
Where the doomsayers, prophets, & fortune tellers
fell off into infinity as no two, their trails & worlds collide

We set up the heliport, hovering in hope, that the
star rovers slide up the the firepole sky falling alarms
Though thin the charm imbibing double visions from
the mustard seeds in the alchemist's retort
Some few who stumbled, their voodoo coyote street wise
to play hide & seek with prying eyes & bobbies and
Sadistic now-I-gotcha-you-SOB, how they enjoy their hobbies
as I escaped into a black hole full of gutter stink
Explored new worlds along the way beyond the source & sink
Cheeseheads in the sacrifice of Lambeau Field
Between jambone earth flatners & ice hockey sticks go 'round
the roller bladers & ballerinas toe picks for their toes
To vanish in their world all stalkers, sidewalk cracks &
itching nose I come back out smelling like a rose.

As David Rose sat on a tack & David rose, infrared his
skeleton under the "V's" of geese and herons taught
By artificial wings to find wetlands & home again
how mundane & real inverted roses ultra violet
Somewhere where the He-man cartoon is the real, not television
as kids there watch no violent Saturday morning TV show
Far from all auras & their plastic minds tremoring in the flickering
afterglow, begging their parents for action figures of the
Cup of coffee panhandlers & baristas in the coffee shop college cafe
between the ads for Bizzaro bobby socks, all drawn to fads &
Twinkie filled shot-from-guns grain Cheerios thrown 'way
they know its better in their world to eat the box...

* * *


The Learning Machine (XIII) L. Edgar Otto January 25, 2012

A solar flare of creativity clears the space junk from
the Clark Belt & while the music plays the
Electrons migrate back and forth between the poles
Van Allen's doughnut cloud electric as real as
Saturn's rings of dust & ice & his own flesh of satellites
then falls in glowing curtains, that, the best part
Of the play, no false dawns or the changing lengths of day.

It burns under water, in disasters points the way,
or in battle grounds where the One Eyed Jack is
King berings all ghosts & shadows to the light of day,
until the campfire joy of light, on its so brief, clinging
Falls in fireworks grand finality back to safety of the night
third time pays for all, third time sinking deep,
Third time pass the match delayed triangulations seek,

I do not know if in losing a day distracted by creativity
some absence of mind unnoticed as if while in lover creating time
Coming back aware of the gain & that my hours now match the clock
or if through the distance the star spit flesh above us
Beyond he bowl of sky coats my soul, another layer of coal forming
sediments or I just want it to make more sense in our four way
Juggling, a poem, fossils mislabeled, filed & sleeping, Darwin's, museums

The scientist in me cries superstition save in the last
digit, a zero, numbers multiplied by ten, that I hesitate
In the hotel of infinite rooms to label floors thirteen or
in false defiance become liquid through the cracks to let there.
Then again, I sometimes ask some spectre to move on & leave,
my roommate so sensitive, so taught in terms of Christian testing
Demons. His a fitful sleep - but it works though I do not tell him
he finds rest again...

* * *



The Learning Machine (XIV) L. Edgar Otto January 25, 2012

The greater part of violence is unseen as it even walks
among us in the world, invisible its efficient cause
It peeks & boos through the sweet but empty words of
those with freedom to make & break & change the laws
Or by firey madmen, cloaked in the robes of Hod
preparing redress, making wildfire holy, civilized &
Building armies, bring work in weapons, raise a soldier class
for some millenium for the first born, debts for weaving gold
On the mob in crystal breaking flurries, those stepping stones to be culled

The fertile ladies grow short & round, not tall & square
jaw hairy, their Adam's apple serves as well the Chapel,
Commands the stirrups & the scapulae while crack
Espri d'corps makes hives hum, worker bees to serve the Queen
As big breasted voluptuous save for those thin & tall
only skin & bones fashion deep, air brushed on the runway
Desire the diffuse fun of many drones to tease.

Who can want the canine roadkill bloating in the summer sun
all full of gas, Thanksgiving balloon tethered, paraded, no feet to bind
Who wants to be one pulling in their bellies unless its dark?
only in old movies do men bare their Buddha breasts,
Airbags of aging in cartoons the balloons as if to press a hundred pounds
weight lifters in pretense until some pin prick,

Who will abide with the wrinkled, wigged, breaking teeth, in incontinence,
infirm or professors living on their youthful laurels
Long in lifespan but far beyond their scars & errors
with tenure among the primates, theirs the superior sperm?

Yet still we dosado, regret the curse gone with Aunt Flo
as if the city smug and smog does not kill us - not knowing
Our own flesh, just passing time, just bait and jail bait minnows
with Rodin's Thinker made modular, too long to carve whole
Passing their prime till its too late, most students Dobie Gillis.


* * *


The Learning Machine (XV) L. Edgar Otto January 25, 2012

In this age of silicon heaven, startup ventures, upstarts
creating hard & soft jobs, booms and balloons in the aether
Layers upon layers & many windows & gates, clouds,
sauropods & isopods, super-cities or universes in one's hand
Prophets & explores, often work their lovers, Dante
dream of hope & levels reached, visit the sky scraper floors of hell as well.

In the clouds the data steam never sleeps in churning cream
the harp music pirated, its strings & scales doubling &
Somewhere, sold as is, fingers on the keyboard, on the screen
of passed by passers-by in coffee shops & in the streets, viruses.

No operating system, no tech support, nothing but a memory of
Piedmont Jr. High obsolete, turned into a community college
The lost persistent dream of Utopia comes too late for my schooling
in the mouth of the President, State of the Union, my childhood
Playing games with pocket knives and rockets, marbles on the playground
saber rattled & black listed long past burning draft cards
Another layer of warriors that can't come home & even they
replaced by robots, hacker nerds turned state spies command by video games

The old black & white TV, my eldest boy would not let me
take it to the dumpster when it burned out beyond repair thinking it alive
It already from Korea, none made here since our Zenith
too many wires for veined souls forbidden even in Arlington & landfills

Long before then, the age of business machines gone wild on steroids,
the promise like radio a tool for teaching becomes downloading oh du-wahs
She-boppa bubba lou far from the interest of tinkerers, wasteland whys,
nor how to, texting across the room, distrusting dialog, dial 911,
Stalking & stark naked, barroom lies, sober behind some myth of screens

I stumble down the wrong hallway, my clearance less than the room where I find
a large monitor, advanced dials, bells & whistles. I sit before it knowing
I should leave but cannot resist my need to know. My elbow by chance turns it on
I startled start to rise muttering the thought- then it speaks to me and I
Swear I'm caught, a person or radio inside - "No one is around & I will let you know if anyone comes near.
A game of four "D" chess perhaps?"

I say, the buttons look like English but it may as well be Greek or from the men from Mars."

It replies, "Press 6AU6 & start your clock, all these things I will teach you."


* * * *



* * * * *