History
My opinions and research on various topics.
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The Death of Aubrey Beardsley
Black and white The light drip of ink That looks at paper like A savior. The ocean of it swallowed up by Blank pages and Oscar Wilde’s handkerchief. Oh LORD how far I have come How these willow-thin fingers stained With sin from my pen Pull away from my mouth red Lysistrata is dead. My…
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National Poetry Month 27 – 64 AD
Down in the sewer, floating along the effluvium You can get a great view of what the city eats. The runoff from the tenement towers Where piss and shit rain down like showers From upper floors where no pipes go, And the ashes of the Christians burned by Nero For the nightlights that show off…
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National Poetry Month 26 – Steamship
It came belching black smoke down the river The sound of grinding gears and splashing paddle-wheels Scared the horses along its banks. Locomotion on the water sans sail or oar, Fulton smiling through a face of soot. “The damned thing works!” What may have been seen as a minor invention Of little practical importance except…
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National Poetry Month – Charlemagne 1-4
I. The King of the Franks standing in the aisle of St. Peter’s Church, he idly inspects the architecture. Constantine’s big basilica crowded with a hundred shrines and tombs and the walls a hundred feet above crowded with mosaics made of glass and above them long and ancient wood beams that seemed to have…
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Buran
The little pirates climb the metal scaffolds and bust open windows with sledgehammers they carry canvas satchels and metric screwdrivers they attack anything that looks like a computer or a digital display and twist and turn and pull until power cords hang like dripping intestines pulled from a slaughtered pig. Circuit boards broken apart for…
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Amelia Earhart Sees (Elegiac visions of the next world in the depths of the Pacific)
The silver skin of her Electra reflects the setting sun. The twin engines hum, steadfast lift is provided by the wings. The strange invisible waves of the radio beacon fly out across the ocean, far faster than the plane itself. Here among the tiny green islands and endless blue waters are beasts that wait in dark places.…
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Justa Grata Honoria Writes to Attila the Hun
“Here is my ring, I will not marry him. Come and take me away Attila, you strong man save me from this run-down world this cesspit of censer incense and lace. Take me away from middle managers and scheming mothers. Away from mosaic gold and lapis. I want to ride your pale horse through the…
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The Plunge of Pryce Lewis
“You ever seen a view like this one?” The cold December air holds up snowflakes and then lets them fall gently upon the dome with its lantern lit for ships far from home. The newspapers printing in the basement cause subtle vibrations in the iron railing that my fingers feel as they squeeze and below…
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The Whales
Barnum brought some beluga whales to his Museum across from City Hall hauled them behind a belching steam engine from up near Canada 700 miles across the land of America he was told they were a male and a female perfect white oblong shapes bathed in a bucket of salt water. Oh dear God, when…
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The Solomon Islands Campaign
The natives have taken to hiding in the dark under the spreading palms to watch us as we march through their muck we can see their eyes shinning there like little white candle flames nothing seems to startle them even the sound of gun fire in the distance. They are…
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National Poetry Month: “Franklin Dies”
He is dead. And bells are rung. Who rings the bell? That upside down bronze cup clanging back and forth. It rings on the hour and for the moments prayers are needed or expected. It rings out in celebration and in sorrow. This thing come free of chains rings freedom for his soul. Mortal once,…
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Juan Romero
The right place, the right time? To hold the frame in perfect synch to bleach the crystals of the camera and hold out your hands, both cup and cradle for the sacrificial wine for the bone-shard disk counting out an infinity of wooden beads between heartbeats where the glistening red pools into a bed for…
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Enola Gay Tibbits
Imagine being Enola Gay waiting there that appointed day when the silver wings your young son brings drop down upon the scene with a button press, a short caress the bright, resultant light cascading atoms fusing (and the rising sun set losing). Now carbon shadows bridge the gaps where school kids once ran laps…
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No Big Decision
Truman sat and stared out of an Oval Office window the rose garden was bare and the old President dead. Here before him was a weapon to cease all war unspeakable destruction, but unspeakable attraction. He was shown the footage a mushroom cloud rising from the desert floor briefly a new sun in the dark…
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Mars 3
The sun sets on the lowest tide Mars had ever seen. Small creatures clung to the basaltic rocks and waved tiny flagella at that distant star, almost as if that plaintive gesture of goodbye would allow for one more perfect day. Now, the ebb and flow of the stinging, salted seas was waning. Their dark…
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the Salk Vaccine
Suspended ruefully in its own shine an object of vast proportion, it heaves forth light in all spectrums gamma, ultraviolet, radio spinning off photons to travel 4 or 5 or 6 million million miles across infinity settling on satellites and gas giants on our own blue-green world. Its hydrogen fusing in a core unseen the…
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IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
Its hot and muggy in this brick oven the gray painted walls tacky from the heat around the various small tables sit sweating men in Southern cotton and Northern wool. They haggle and argue and face off about the injustices that roil all English blood and come to the point, that independence from the Crown…
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Charles-Henri Sanson
(Place de la Révolution, 1793) 3000 people under him float on a sea of blood and sin; of them that went, all are left ahead. In his two fists grappling greasy hair and plunging neck lines crimson, this man Sanson executes the law of the land. In his red uniform designed to hide the…
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Apollo Guidance Computer
This is a pen and ink illustration for my History of Computers book for the chapter on early miniaturization. One of my cats took a swipe at it so I have to do some restoration work:
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Entering the City
“This great city of Tenochtitlán is built on the salt lake, and no matter by what road you travel there are two leagues from the main body of the city to the mainland. There are four artificial causeways leading to it, and each is as wide as two cavalry lances. The city…
The Numinous Cosmos 