Deadly Pollen

Excerpt

Deadly Pollen

ZIONISM: to carry forward the cultural gene - O bright-lit destiny of the chosen! The child's bouncing ball lands in mud on the other side of the wire; footsteps are paradoxical in a minefield. His heart ticks fast as a metal detector, slowly, the yellow ball rolls to a stop. Proposition: to advance onto ancestral territory, or return into gentle, familial lands, a footfall journey backward. His eye shrinks the land to desert.

*

You return to the stupa, yearly, to seek your return. You wish to come back as forest deer but that deer is extinct. The stupa is a rock upon which your dreams founder, yearly, - you return that which you do not have. Meanwhile, in the West, under ragged skies and beneath a hundred spires no longer dreamt of - attendance comes tumbling down; each stone, unturned, in an emptied space within a space caved under.

*

The stones collected. Ground levelled and swept. The first cubicle erected with four windowed-walls, an open doorway. One man on a step looking out to sea. Civilization open for business. Soon, marble was made smooth and square. The Idea locked into permanence. Curiosity stimulated commerce; others came and conquered then went away. That first step never forgotten became a throne - history's seat.

*

"With digital, there is no past," says Jean-Luc Godard. Either way, the button is redundant. Voice-command is thought - the fear deep and futureless as history, desire to appease which remains featureless, not the disorganized weather it truly is, as much a part of the breathing stars as constancy of rock. The 'Mr Whippy Man' weaves Greensleeves in and out of suburbia; a caravan in search of a trade-route - via the village that never existed.

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*

How is it the floating island detaches itself from horizon in dream - its first appearance, otherworldly, but of this world, a wheel loosened from the world's ratchet, out of time, riding above it and inhabited by folk fixated upon a particular theorem-thought; elevated imponderables, whereby you access this island by door set underneath as you sail under? Islands, a dream of round towers! the sudden rush of water under hulls.

*

Mediocre raiders lie in wait. Teeth clack in sleep, dreams fraught with ambush. Orders intercepted, encrypted to the house style. The litterateur tracked back through his ISBN to no man's land - the robotic verb activated, sent in under barbed metaphor strung out where trees once stood as camouflage. The voices from his hill-bunker a wind turbine. Accusations tumbled in the night. For months he heard soft hammering, mimicry; they failed. Could not beat back the weather on his chosen ground.

*

Time passes - that pressure in space again - return of the unoriginals tinkering with the power-box - such fine work - setting traps out for darkness. Time passes - talons curve and hook - how the mouth chokes with ash. Feet drag muffled under dungeons. Time passes - that pressure in space again - a new proclamation from Semiotic City - this custom built dome and aquarium light, pulsing: henceforth, no corners to hide around - no zone permitted for surprise to leap....