Inorganic
Heart
Experimental
History:
Modernity Exposed
Edward L Wyman (1943-) &
John Colman (1578-1621)
The Chronicles of Waste (John Colman)
I am as game
as you
to live in time
without the charts
of variable fates,
assigned as leaves, they,
the excrement of death
are specie for journey
and we, kept as faces
for their stains,
fester in the lines
of time's corrupt
& bilious weeds.
Across
Deleted Space the 17th Century Fades:
John Colman Stirs 21st Century Heart that Swannegans
had bled to Stone Again for the Blind Harpies of Death
2. Chronicles of
Waste: Edward (1981)
I have memory of you
more perfect than glass walls
schemed through conception and birth:
blind to death again
beyond the repetitions forsaken
when we meet the mask cut
from stone to heart
to soul from whence
we were incisively struck
and rebirth does not strip
the gold from isotopes
to measure more than old.
3.
Chronicles of Waste:
John Colman (1981)
Newspaper
Report: August 1991
North River Sewage Plant
Closed
Operation of the billion dollar
North River sewage treatment plant, located in northern
Manhattan on the Hudson River, has been suspended by the EPA pending
an investigation of malodors
(hydrogen disulfide and methane gas) reported by local residents.
After almost a decade of construction,
cost over runs, the controversial facility had in 1990 come fully
online. The plant provides primary and secondary sewage treatment
for one-half of Manhattan's residents allowing an end to the dumping
of raw sewage in the Hudson River.
The Hudson River
Plants' sludge settlement tanks, constructed with reinforced concrete
and steel, visible in 1982 during construction of the plant's central
core, resembled a series of "inorganic hearts."
4.
Chronicles of Waste: Edward
"Simply, devastation"
First Pause to
Gaze
Imagine a billion,
billion horses
galloping alone
until only two graze
out of breath
The murder of the earth
is frequent sport
schoolboy pranks
restore the globe
with human skin
stolen in the night.
We love each river
until will is torn,
distended plates.
A million come
in trauma unison
the cells are stung
and held as bridge
My fingers
were clouds, blood
strangled in eerie,
terrified eyes
satisfied in
the half dark
by orgasms mingled
into lime and basalt
tongues and pubic pears.
5.
Chronicles of Waste (John Colman 1981)
History of the North River
Estuary
Journals of John Colman (1578-1621)
Wandering minds
ride North River
Septic Flue to Cathay
Arguments between
the sins of children
witness slap of heard
A waterfall opens
spouts as fire boats
in charmed arc shifted
fumbled spray for
muddled speech;
we do not know
may answer recited
waste, a litany of loss
and then within one
peculiar dream,
in ordinary colors,
the earth revised past:
Here's one map, my palm,
that object let down from light
to day to another dialectic
opposed only by skin
and the songs of anomie
where fury is my strike:
I did not poison waters
Within stretched scars
I left North River
at its darkest, coldest turns,
murdered by the self of self
I feel from abstract coils
the cross of Cain and
swung free picked up
by native ketch
to linger in the caps
of waves and never
pray for salt and tack again;
Anon, I came back
home just spirit
and moved my anchor
and unmoved gate
for welcome my absent name
I am her man as I was
crowned at first with wife
and child fair, my wife
struck down my life
and I was born again
in that child unsettled
fair in cloth unknown
for ordinary 17th
century looms
where my eyes
tarnished bled colors
of bank and ash and fate
with the texture of the
oak planks tarred
assembled like the cement
heart of another age,
all bound in wiry precision
together in their
pains at edges of piers
where sailors found famous
death and infamy
with the loon of unknown gobs
to serenade their fertilized graves.
At one end, one sacrament
as mast alone dear sky,
fury, I struck remembered dung
strung down my horses legs
above the middling flags drawn up
at once my dream arisen
again from the anchor
that modernity strips from quartz
without notice or restraint
the age of sand and river waste
is plummeted from the wind
and modernity rises in disgrace
which is where John Colman sang
upon the cathedral at the nave
where the echo of his names
struck into the stone various
famous tunes preserved by will
to know the course of time
without blank cause nor wit
Or by the staff, the notes, the interval
I taught myself my Edward name again
and resumed my other fates.
Nothing uncontrolled
in clouds,
no pestilence,
no ache when women are far at land
I watch the heart built from
dross
outside my realm without marker
to fix its longitude and plumb
I want the street to move
so perfectly it calms
other melody swarming
out of spite. There is
nothing uncontrolled in weather
forecast by sleuths struck down
from heaven for black magic flies
cross the aft of deck and fore of mind
and creeps into space a woman sighs
when entered from above the line of song
And she said, as if the river
were dry and no witness
in the magic of return;
If I am want more pleasure
than earth, I understand
repugnance and I forbear
There is nothing uncontrolled
in pain
concrete bunker is a jealous tomb;
the tanks fade and allow living to
resume as if the story that brought
relief could be stopped.
In it, how ordinary our refrains.
Physical space collapses
under terrible weight;
at first, nothing rests.
Here is the face;
the darkening life
is whole and clean.
Nothing struck at will;
the motion began in
the file of human streams
beyond terminator to Main.
There is nothing
uncontrolled in river,
all facets stirred sleep
as fates presume
their punctuation
and editorial forks.
There is no matrix
nothing uncontrolled
in map and cone;
no physics known
will warp the suns
We are trapped on rivers
not timed and badly colored
from fake to hue as blue white
and then returned darker
the false shout about
the god mask trying
on as swung and gust.
We do not know our way without
one last course revised
before the lights flickered stop
There is nothing uncontrolled
in space
of space and act of acts, and pure pain is that which rolls as gas
from out to within the normal barometric coils to home and berth
and home and birth and home and death again.
There is nothing uncontrolled
by fate
a sediment of waste and crimes all grain
layered peat between the heaven and
the harm in final tombs where treasures rest
while secret ancient maps of stars
never seen turn black to sight;
I am not blind to good;
anon, my mind appeased in waste
I welcome the grim return
of flood and human fades.
8. Chronicles
of Waste
Speech is often
signs of passage
between crystals
more flesh than sand
or dirty pebbles
9. Chronicles
of Waste:
One
Formal Apparition
Allows one more game
to open claws. I am cut;
blind in each crevice
no hour is dream
Without the matrix of cell:
counting backward
alone on weekend beach
Do you listen to the waves
speaking
gas to gas; hear the fulminating wars
How land and junk displaced space
make the sewer dream last innocent drift
of heart to hand and then repent.
Live time, the final
days
out of specie, sweet duties
re dreamt one second
pulse is gray faster;
The nth division
of the nth parentheses
nested functions
Silver bird's
upswept
by penitents
with charm
stolen from
the dead they
had framed
again.
In tune, a gamble,
let 2 become irony;
without one there is never two
so two alone sacrificed until
willing sleep reached over there
to count another no, you said,
(Said again 2 x more).
11. Chronicles
of Waste
In shame, we don't
eat slime like smallest fish
peck at fins
grooming other breast
to lock into air,
a mist of too old fog
blown down
the Palisades
driven home
again the shortest course
from tune to ground
in modern rivers
always harmed
or drowned.
There is no memory left
no signs and marks have
started where the part fled
I wish thy river let down
hair
my followers in a simpler curls
of crust from Palisades
between muscles
and the rift line
near the cliff, trees
breaks limbs where
leverage turned before
the fall, and the stones
laughed too long in response,
and all the ancient trees
were petrified, witness for
Royal Progress stretched
from fear to stricken steps
named after his bequest
to die more pauper than Lord.
I want more and more
each day
more than my permanent signs
fixed on North River in swarm
of eddy, out of tune, let down
to earth from partial gas--
Made to speak as a first gasp.
We love the cave:
distended plates
give birth again
Go out tired to the shed
and rename magic,
a slight rearrangement of hand to speak
the armatures of motors in default.
Far from
North River Plain,
John is lost, I fall from
Palisades, rest at
the nightline storms.
Like many saints or less
I was not too proud to walk
in columns abreast behind
arguments for false sun
that sinking river
burned out as sine
heavenly ghost
renamed spirit
flowing floods
too tame for flight
I have no
memory
of primal gas;
watch the path,
my fingers hurt more,
rock from life
in crystal strummed
of silken boughs
where magic slept
when we deny
inorganic heart.
