POETRY + ESSAYS + MUSIC + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART
Kelly is one of the few notable writers/artists/poets who understands and pra ctices the use of the NET as that Information Highway all writers/artists/poets heard about a decade or so ago and have longed for ever since then where not only the scientific community, but the art/literary community can freely exhibit, publish, exchange ideas, view works, outside the conventionalizing restraints of the marketplace.
The following poems originate, for me, with KK. However, they come from ideas generated by multitudes of brilliant minds and technologies which KK has compiled into OUT OF CONTROL. Perhaps the pinpoint of inspiration, re the poems, was this half sentence: "...strings of digits that randomly flipped a digit, just as books in the Borgian Library altered by one letter at a time." p. 334
All titles and quotes, as marked by an * are from Kevin Kelly's OUT OF CONTROL
The only way to describe a seed's potential
is to grow it.
Plant it
in dirt, water it, nurture it,
pray a bit that the rabbit
doesn't
nip it
or the dog kick it,
that the sun doesn't scorch it,
nor
the rain swamp
it.
Once it rises to a certain height.
one can
name it,
claim it,
sigh with certainty
that it might blossom into
its
genetic equal, will
likely
produce a seed
in its own
image,
propagate, procreate,
like
the crystal, snap into
unity.
Go on
with as much potential as before it was
buried.
Life began whole, integrated, like a crystal,
not a half, nor
a
half-materializing ghost, nor
less than the perfection of
crystal
and glass.
Saltationism,
quantum jumps, gaps in the fossil
record, strides in,
spurts
in continuity, leaps, dances,
saltarellos
in time,
at times, with time, space,
at times, a
factor, at times, not.
A catalytic closure,
an egg,
one
producing
another, a seed,
crystalline closure,
a
loop,
circular causality, self -- an
auto-
conspired form,
Uroborus, tail eating mouth --
welcome!
Maximal nimbleness is the middle mark
between stasis
and
complexity's catastrophed grid-
lock. Indra's Net's limits are
set:
total nodes
minus one. For use,
use only a low ceiling
of
connectedness.
Tune
out before satiety. Quiet,
indirect,
phase
transits
slowing down before
ecstasy teeters on the edge
of chaotic behavior.
Smell, seek
danger, court it,
tantalize chaos,
swerve from rigidity,
live.
And keep
gently in mind, tongue tip poised,
to ask
wisely, winsomely, why
ask the questions that
we do?
A dot appears and evolves, another dot,
another dot,
evolution dot
by dot, like leprosy
round the sphere, equidistant,
lichen and
me,
bacterium and
you, inevitably, insanely
equal,
evolving.
The skylark sings, the cell swallows, quite
gently, its
mate.
In or
out equality
remains, blossoming, blooming,
pink
cherried feathers, white feathered
cherries,
dancing the
dance,
clapping rhythmically,
covering the sphere,
layer
on
layer, each as old as its neighbor.
Honor
evolution,
democracy, one dot,
one vote.
without progress creeps from the sand deserts of
Takla Makan,
grain
by grain, changing the slow, swirled pattern of
turbulence, climbing
up
the ridges of
chaos, poised, static,
then tumbling down in
change, more change of
endless furor,
ceaseless flight, swarming
through the hives of
delight, dread of
the dread
of humans
gently
creeping on civilizations
of Twin Towers collapsing,
plumed into smoke
of appalling stench.
Humans burning humans
of
bacterium, dots on the small sphere
of life.
A rising
flow? Illusion? Directionless?
Death and....
Self preservation looks for purpose. What else
in the soup of
evolution could whet its appetite, fix
its agenda, erase its
longing for a
simpler past? Who are
we to discern its
direction, note
its odd urges
one by one, discern complexity,
diversity,
growing
number of members.
It never goes back.
Reversing
is not a choice. It mutates,
specializes,
speeds
evolution,
grows interdependent,
rockets to the moon, and down
into
nanotech.
Memory forgets, but no one forgets mem-
ory.
Urgency, desire replicating at each
opportunity,
choosing,
spilling, climbing, fornicating, love,
they say, and creation
make
the world go
round, topsy turvy,
and organized elegantly to
ravish again
into decline and spiral,
surprise,
tautology,
rise up,
fill the universe
with
strangeness, chocolate, strawberry
and vanilla, push against
the
walls and voids.
My life is brighter
than stars. Everything being
equal, enemies being attentive,
it takes almost 700,000 hours to
kill a
human.
and out of control, as one climbs the peaks up
from one's bed of
nails,
trying to think what can't be thought, do what can't
be
done, go where no one even
wanted to go
before. To balance
precisely, without a pole, on edge,
tiptoeing along chaos's sharp
toothed, chromium
border
is a natural,
pink-toed,
lamb's-wool-eased, once-upon-
a-time thing. Dance on, dance on.
The heart expands
the breast with terror,
eyes itch. Use
language. Use
it, though little enough can be said.
Write it down
in script comprehended by just
one use.
It's a space/time pattern maker. It makes love
or extrudes itself
or replicates to make new its. It stores its
identity -- a gene
warehouse.
It, to keep the
pattern persistent,
metabolizes. It
interacts,
it does stuff. It can die. It can, when
perturbed,
resta-
bilize.
It evolves. Such is
the verb of life, says
physicist
Farmer. Its action is more
real than its
constituent
matter.
Its artificial part, the blood, the
bone and the flesh,
Shiva the dance and not the
linga.
Evolution takes the long way, discarding
nothing, manifests
ugly
solutions, using everything, builds
in a muddle and a maze, tries
everything. Nothing
is untry-able.
Something works. There are
no erasers
for the pencils. Human are the ones
who stamp their
feet,
imposed beauty
(mostly in theory),
(or not), insist on an
Elegant
Universe. Nature chortles
as she builds
higgly-piggly,
straight or
crooked, with or without toes, taproots,
teapots, askew, inelegant, enduring.
code that works. That's enough. Peace be with you. And
with you. The
simple
is a human convenience. Complication
is treacherous,
blind,
irritating,. Turn
your back on the solution, work on
something else. Let the computer spin,
out of
control,
evoke
the parallel
gods, the ruts for grinding
spirals.
Take up odd devices, let
everyone
unscrew the problem,
build
base pairs, forego logic, develop
trust, let what happens there make solutions here.
Even before I start, I may never get
out of here. Why would
I want
to depart a woods with Borges and
Kelly for guides? Or
non-guides
-- however,
you choose to see it. Already, I
see a pattern
emerging. Control
it? Defy it?
Wander other dark
hexagonal
aisles for islands
of incomprehension,
for encryption?
For love?
Distraction?
Everything exists, but nothing's there.
Sit on the floor, study when the moon comes out.
Thinking comes from non-thinking brain bits. There is
nobody
home,
nothing there, nobody cracking the whip or
channeling chaos.
Disorganized and
competitive, simultaneous
possibilities
jiggling about,
smart things coming
only from stupid
things,
differing goals, loyalties,
structures hidden from the brain
bits
themselves. Make
do with the probabilistic, no
thought comes twice. There being no I, we invent it.
Look for the poem already written, the thought
already thought,
like the energy in the finger tips from
an apple already
digested. Find it.
Know that every poem ever found by
any method
will last the length of
time it takes to
compose it. Visit
it
for the first and last time. Then
write the next poem
already
waiting, written.
Breathe in the passing wind, exhale the blue sky.
Darwin was wrong. Individuals do not
differ significantly, and life in
not
infinitely malleable.
More than cultivars
in populations,
matter. Species
persist or die. Only rarely or
uncertainly,
mysteriously
does one thing transmute to
something
else. Type stasis is normal,
species life-spans
typically persist one to ten million years.
Unthought forms dance particularly at dawn,
coding for daylight,
coding for dark they morph
either way, slide, multiply,
divide,
make love with
mirage, dream, vision, spire, truth, become
cerulean, cerise, ecru, green,
puce, pale gamboge,
marmorize,
spit
light, smell the colors of the rose,
taste beauty's
inconstant form
in the ripe cheese of doom, the dark of the sun.
We got here once, but cannot get here again.
Every moment lives in the
wind, smoke dissolves.
Stability
is the illusion, unthinkable,
trivial, undesirable, stone.
But even the
stones move, mutate,
evolve. Let the flesh go putrid,
grab onto the whiplash of
change. What is now, won't be later, nor again.
Up from the blood and the mess and the screaming,
confined inside the
brain and the microchip,
swarming in hives,
images and inventions,
unheard
sounds and unexpressed desires cling
to the odd
body
invented by
science, mathematics, the quantum
jump, chaos, magical magnitudes -- the light.
"Living means surprises." Serendipity
is active today. Today I look, I
mean, look!
at the Table
of Contents and what do I see?
Twenty-four chapters. How did my closed system
happen? Chance. I
wrote
until I had no more to say.
Today, what page falls open? One thirty-three.
Earthquake, snowstorm, big volcano's exploding,
frantic people in war
and destruction, jump
into the fray.
Save us from too much
peacefulness.
So "god" designed the world, shake 'em up!
Tragedy,
comedy, disturb
their sleep! Chaos's cutting edge always wins.
Honing in, honing in, peaceful enough to
die. Think of the
weightlessness of space, play with
it. Do it. Let the tummy
churn.
Let the body glow with hatred,
energy, sex. Jump through
stasis
into the body of love -- lose it, find it.
Flittering butterflies evolving through
time, broadcasting information
to children,
spouses, you, everyone, everything
that will listen
or not, that evolves
or not, given time enough and free wiggling...
Life's computer eliminates the old, the
screwed-up, the
non-reproducers. Reproductive-
code-borrowing small parasites
thrive.
Necessary death, impartial, smiles.
Indra's Net, a 5,000 year old image,
wakes, reflects, prepares itself
for a second
seeding -- each node mirroring the whole.
Jan Haag February 11, 2002