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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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Arthur C. Clarke Writes ‘2001’
Arthur C. Clarke sits at his desk in the Hotel Chelsea he’s wearing a crimson paisley sarong and a pair of beaten up thongs his fingers jackhammer the keys of a portable typewriter each thrust and parry of his and Stanley’s conversations are focused into movement on paper. The story is being written. He can…
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Memories of ’89
There was a moment, in those dark days when we dreamed of putting our stars there together – one gold, fifty white. On the Red planet, on the god of war so we wouldn’t have to meet him on the battlefield. We schoolboys ducking under our desks the quaking of Southern California ground not as…
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We Are All Amalgamates
We are all amalgamates of taste and sound; once we heard, once we smelled something was integrated into our person chopped onions on a grill the small tinkle clunks of bamboo windchimes the breeze light the sun strong and its 1998 the grand opening of the aquarium downtown the dog had just died so we…
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The Greatest Show on Earth?
Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey is closing down its circus after 146 years. They claim its a changing climate, that children no longer have the attention span to sit through a multi-hour show, not when video games and cellphones beckon. For years they have been harangued for how they treat animals in their shows,…
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Joni Mitchell Cries
She cried when they walked on the moon she was inconsolable hyperkinetic. She will never be that young again never so full of life as that summer of 1969 when two men scrabbled over rocks and dust and looked back at the planet they came from, a small blue oval graffitied by white hanging in…
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Tower of Babel
Such sumptuous beauty of the hidden soul made manifest in the arches and the rocks and stone blended into concrete massed into shape heart beating heavy as marble covers rough patches added grace and monumental powers push down into the earth shouldering burdens as always, man-made here the piers, hear them vibrating in groaning exaltation…
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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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War to End War
They’re all dead and have become legend the chewing of the mice in the mud and the groaning of the brothers trapped on barbed wires as the bullets screamed into their heads who could believe it happened? Who could believe that the gas volumetrically flowed over white and tired faces their gasmasks loose as…
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Herculaneum (morning)
Tufa, its all tufa underfoot and of course Mount Vesuvius stands beyond – mist obscuring the upper slopes. Cold rain, so unusual falls and fills the pool in the courtyard porphyry tiles, marble tiles amplified and magnified under the water, the amplitude of drops creating overlapping wave fronts obscuring designs of little brown clams and…
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We Return to the Sea
They returned to the sea (the sea we all crossed, some in chains) the Atlantic cold in wintertime (but they’re too far south for icebergs) off the coast under blue sky and turbulent clouds and the rays of the sun 93 million miles away, which penetrate the calmly churning ocean, scintillate in verdigris slanting through…
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Warehouse
“Goddamnit’s hot!” reverberated through the alleyway. It was hot, over 90 degrees – if the thermometer he toted around in his old Woodman’s Market shopping cart could be trusted. He trusted so little these days. The red brick buildings stood around him, silent and sturdy. Unlike most of the city, they would last for decades…
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Some (Really Old) Drawings
I found a cache of old drawings, actually prints of old drawings, that I uploaded here to share. I can see how my style has evolved over the years, but my love of architecture hasn’t diminished. …
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Frozen Waltz
Those long marching columns of Slavic men, moving feet to rhythms immoral, unpluralistic uniforms flashy enameled buttons and badges shinning well-timed clouds of breath issuing on each exhale in Red Square. The television, garish color and static of NTSC, those tanks roll and those feet go solid and secure they sing: Sing to…
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Evening Walk
Under that stifling proto-summer heat the evergreens sag and the past-dusk sky holds burning red Mars air clear and turbulence low he’s reflecting the missing sun. Two men stand under a street lamp smoking a joint they pass back and forth conversing in Spanglish and I am hearing in memory Beethoven’s Romance for Violin and…
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26 April 1986
I don’t know what I am doing but that’s just how it goes from this control room I can see a march of lights bright red and gold like May Day in Moscow missles rolling away on diesel trucks the crowds in awe at apparatchiks in uniform vibrations underfoot like the stamping feet of endless…
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Tuesday on San Juan Island
My wife and I recently visited beautiful San Juan Island. We have visited Friday Harbor several times, so this time we decided to take our car so we could explore the entire island. We were stunned by the beauty and diversity of landscapes on the island. From driftwood covered beaches to solid rock outcroppings covered…
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Alpha Centauri
I will be in my sixties when the first signals from probes to Alpha Centauri cross the emptiness and those once hidden there become known family. Three stars three sisters of Sol would be near enough to our machines to be distinct added to the photo album of one time visitations. Before they…
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The Third Expedition
Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Martian Chronicles‘ is one of my favorite books. Composed by taking several of his short stories and interweaving them together to create a long-view version of humanity’s contact with and subsequent colonization of Mars. Of the various stories, one of my favorites is the chapter titled ‘The Third Expedition,’ which was originally…
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The Numinous Cosmos 