Issue 31: Kyle Booten

Poem with Wikipedia Allusions

a small city,

then it snows there.

a small city OF SCIONE1,

where men were.

a good snowfall makes

any small double

AS PSCHENT2,

twice, once, and all

whipped to gray

LIKE ATTIC POLIOS,

DORIC PELEIOS3,

mud dove paint

AS VAN AKEN

PAINTED DRAPERY4

with gyri and sulci

and hidden vales

OF TEMPE5,

snake runners trip,

Muses yawn in shade

and Polo

1. wikipedia.org/wiki/Isocrates

2. wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_and_Lower_Egypt

3. wikipedia.org/wiki/Peleiades

4. wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Van_Aken

5. wikipedia.org/wiki/Homolium

Poem with Wikipedia Allusions

I chose to disregard my argument OF THE LUTHERAN JOHANN

MARBACH, OF STRASBOURG1, having grown suspicious of him

within me, of our urge to reform Spirit through spittled logic.

Let Spirit be beshaped by matter. Reform matter instead,

with one big hammer or many tiny brass SECOND ESTATE2 swords.

But, grief: there is still a cup of Marbach in me for each three quarts

of other liquid. A roiling soup, an indigestion broth drunk from

the inside: and, LIKE WATER DRUNK FROM SUCH CUPS, AS WELL AS

IMPORTED POWDERS AND EXTRACTS FROM LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM3,

it does, if I may flatter myself, furnish a useless light, blueish and dim

AS FREDERICK ERDMANN'S PROSPECTS OF INHERITING

OR RULING JOINTLY OVER KÖTHEN4. But rule he did, through

some luck of disease. Who would have been a great painter

OF MUSCOVITE RUSSIA, WHO INFLUENCED THE 15TH-CENTURY

PAINTING STYLE OF THE NOVGOROD SCHOOL

AND THE SUBSEQUENT MOSCOW SCHOOL5 did not become so,

instead lingered in Byzantium to juggle breasts, instead was inixed

and later interred in the woods of Kharkiv. Or somewhere near.

Trinitarianly, the fool the victim the laureate make three sides

of the same cloud. The same NONGLUM6, that egg that never

quite rains but one day will show us what it can do.

1. wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Erastus

2. wikipedia.org/wiki/Ségur_Ordinance

3. wikipedia.org/wiki/Lignum_nephriticum

4. wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Erdmann,_Prince_of_Anhalt-Pless

5. wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophanes_the_Greek

6. wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoroinai

Poem with Wikipedia Allusions

i.

curve AS HUYGENS'S

TAUTOCHRONE CURVE1:

lost Spirit-Points ascend

faster than fast found men.

ii.

dispersed THROUGHOUT XUN

PREFECTURE (循州, IN MODERN HUIZHOU)2,

we'll be bandits for the Zhang-king soon

again, though we hate him now.

iii.

rest AS JOHN'S REED

RESTS AGAINST A WALL

IN THE BACKGROUND3. small

John doesn't see the need.

1. wikipedia.org/wiki/Brachistochrone_curve

2. wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Yuxian

3. wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_of_the_Cat_(Barocci)

 Poem with Wikipedia Allusions

All the talk back east,

was about the recent invention

OF SIMILAR BUT UNRELATED

NOTATION JEONGGANBO1.

(I knew this system and

its maker, had met Bak Yeon

long before he sat the gwageo

and went on to grammatize

a kingdom.  If you see him,

say I said hello.)

My system was similar

in that it made heavy use

of grids. THE ANGELIC

TABLE, A GRID OF 25X27

SQUARES,2 and all its letter

elements, would not exist

without my prior art

descrybing the acrostic

bridge that slants between

ciel fixe y infer stochastic.

Everyone ignored me,

just because of my principles

OF VASTU SHASTRA3

by which numbers

accrete like fructa,

sometimes bulbed together

at orbital diagonals,

sometimes vining up the latticed

fenestre, or splayed creatively

like children astra.

This made my scheme---

which I call Spirit-Point-Vector---

of little interest to the engineers

OF THE ORDER OF ST. JOHN4

whom I also knew from youth,

and knew went on and on

about the need for crisp selectors'

touch to make their five-tonne slabs

float like feather-engine’d maps

of  #malta{} and of #aragon{}.

(Why do I call it that? It's just

a tri-tone placeholder, three

vaguely nearby hills of optima

hidden just AS ST. URBAN HID

FROM HIS PERSECUTORS

IN A VINEYARD5 :

by leaves---by precisely

a trefoil of miraculous words,

and not yielded up to evil

by goatswain or by wineherd.)

So now I ask for your support,

your investment in my design

of a clock, A LOTUS CLEPSYDRA6

of sorts. I've almost got

the porcelain rhododendra

to fill and fall as minutes often do

but will need some years of research

yet, and fleeting earth besides,

to make them grow as time grows,

behind our backs, like a hydra.

1. wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_unit_box_system

2. wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchtower_(magic)

3. wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtyard_house

4. wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamo_Cassar

5. wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_of_Langres

6. wikipedia.org/wiki/Guo_Shoujing