The Ends of the Earth Read online

  “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.”

  — Lao Tsu

  “Innumerable confusions and a feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transition.”

  — Marshall McLuhan

  “The strongest impacts of an emergent technology are always unanticipated.”

  — William Gibson

  “It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine . . .”

  — R.E.M.

  Section I: A CRITIQUE OF THE APOCALYPSE

  11-11-11

  oh weighted ones

  you watch an occupation

  of city city city city

  wait for a baby to be

  born around the other

  side of the world wonder

  at rain outside the window

  “it had been raining for days

  and the people were growing scared”

  dream of the ends of things embedded

  in the beginnings where fingers lightly press

  to create such pleasure always figured as explosions

  or fire burning brightly or extinguishing ceremonially

  hazards quite still for ever revving sentiments in conversation

  or missing from indexes in books about you and your peculiar collective

  you were there maybe not in the centre of things perhaps even slightly to the right

  sheets of paper you forgot stack and stack rising up to overwhelm your minimalist aesthetic

  quick take a photo out the window post it on Twitter to document your working conditions

  say sentence structure one more time your head will explode “literally”

  connect by writing more reference letters with accurate altruism

  as a way to make things happen in the real world economy

  if you got your exchange then yay! you’ll travel far

  granted in some excess a flight to the ends

  of the earth

  BROUGHT BACK DOWN TO EARTH WITH A BANG

  OR THE DAY STARTS WITH A BANG

  1.

  break it open simply

  one big interrobang

  rhetorical/excited or interrogative

  spiritual in a typewritten font

  search for a jargon to save you/us

  2.

  open form virtue craves

  cadences that should be banned

  rivers get written up and

  their energy sold such paper

  convergences belie your/our

  fingers stroking the clay bed

  or searching for clay babies

  to dry where rocks lie in the sun

  3.

  is there no way to bracket off

  this run so your/our government eye

  skips across the space of so many

  documents to read over

  4.

  it hurts your/our interpunct to say stop

  or pause a moment at least to hear the frogs

  of Eagleridge eat pavement see how the light

  pounds through the clearing into Horseshoe Bay

  tick off another bullet on your/our list

  proclaim in solidus: “Olympic ready”

  fusion underscores readiness

  the moment understood interrogatively

  5.

  how a hash key needs to be pushed

  to get you/us back to the main menu

  how a tilde can make or break your/our address

  one swung dash and everyone is reading

  some other blog and your/our monetization

  is down or almost nonexistent but you/we

  keep trying to tantalize by degrees of omission

  6.

  you/we are the underground economy

  trading umlauts for numeros this

  bright crisp morning

  7.

  surrender your pilcrow by which

  you/we make a living saying

  “use paragraphs to structure your essay”

  instead of don’t you fucking know what

  a paragraph is (interrobang) leave your

  infinitive hanging

  as if anyone will notice

  8.

  try to speak diacritically, that is

  above and below the line expand

  your/our creative talking outside

  what artists always say before

  clearing your/our throat um, like, yeah

  rises to meet vortextual chest heaves

  with the unsaid to finally say

  your/our moment hinges

  on every end that blocks closure

  reject righteousness in all its forms

  spend your/our vowel sounds on courage

  to say it’s okay to be right here right now

  9.

  embrace the contradiction of wanting and knowing

  until they run together and all the iPods are piled high

  somewhere in Cache Creek or China rusting beautifully

  as is built into their design but then knowing

  it’s still not enough it will never be enough

  so it’s okay for you/us to stop

  impulse so momentum shifts

  like a hockey game

  entropic ends laying way

  for an alternate score

  it’s okay

  ENTROPIC ENDS

  1.

  “Let everything be produced, be read, become real, visible, and marked with the sign of effectiveness . . .”

  — Jean Baudrillard

  keep no secrets

  in your/our worn denim

  type prior to

  reply archive

  achieve your/our full sense

  in well wrought

  articulation maybe cry

  a few tears

  show you/we are serious

  bleat and bleat and

  press send or post

  without a glance back

  your/our beautiful infinite

  page, see there

  those blackish marks

  that flash of light

  is what you/we mean

  to say a part of your/our

  precarious heart

  bleeds slightly below

  maybe to the left

  a glimmer of red

  flickers as your/our self

  as public clicks past

  2.

  “It is no longer a matter of making things visible to the external eye. It is rather a question of making things transparent to themselves.”

  — Jean Baudrillard

  enrage readers

  perhaps they want to harm you/us

  or hurl digital insults

  or one negative comment

  is worth 97.5 positive ones

  because who believes

  the sycophants who always

  like your/our hair in the photo

  develop a selective way

  of seeing what’s being said

  think of your/our readers

  as losers anyway

  except for your/our friends

  to whom you/we can speak

  with inside jokes and innuendos

  chuckle visibly through punctuation
r />   and acronyms, but close your/our

  curtains to Google Earth

  3.

  “So, there will soon only be . . .figures who . . .wander alone and pass their time by perpetually telling themselves their story.”

  — Jean Baudrillard

  or the illusion of the social

  literalizes screen culture

  back to the messy body

  walking along an ocean

  with a dog, a relentless dog

  who lifts a break in the osmosis

  your/our inspiring lungs suck

  salty breaths transform

  the air without thinking

  suddenly you/we name

  the liminal space and therefore

  can see it colours merging

  into pods that swing in trees

  or shipping containers off

  of ocean liners constructed

  into where you/we live now

  4.

  “Debris not only floats on the surface of the ocean it also descends throughout the entire water column, making it less spectacular to look at and physically impossible to ‘scoop up’ and remove, as so many bemused citizens suggest when they hear of this plastic ‘island.’”

  — Tim Silverwood

  plastic floats like islands

  on digital screens everywhere

  somewhere in an ocean

  it churns through tides like soup

  you/we care via Twitter or Paypal

  depending on the day pack reusable

  latte cups while signing virtual

  petitions sift through moments

  pushing plastic keys to say

  what you/we mean now drink

  in the love offered via touch screen

  do you/we like it? no, not today

  an encounter, an art project, some

  form of documentation circles

  the movement continually non

  linear the line dispersed

  5.

  “Man [sic], that inveterate dreamer, daily more discontent with his destiny, has trouble assessing the objects he has been led to use, objects that his nonchalance has brought his way, or that he has earned through his own efforts, almost always through his own efforts, for he has agreed to work, at least he has not refused to try his luck (or what he calls his luck!).”

  — André Breton

  you/we lack predictability

  being in a complicated relationship

  where words fall only one at a time

  and context lacks the imperative

  egos want to be wanted always

  finesse has the end in it and

  so it goes where hands fail

  to move in the right places

  coffee drunk from shot glasses

  invigorates falsely making a claim

  but then feeling simply scared

  even at this age contradictions

  rage through the edges of enough

  you/we felt it convulse patted it down

  smoothed the unruly relics until

  they shone with purpose breath

  rubbed to plenty even a couch

  or an excess of couches to be

  certain you/we said what

  you/we meant

  6.

  “Palimpsest. Think of it as a bespoke aggregator based on your own reading habits. Each day ‘curators’ from sites dedicated to the long form handpick articles from fine rags like The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, and GQ. The selections are then customized to taste. This one’s hard to google — check out Palimpsestapp.com.”

  — Laura McClure, Mother Jones

  Palimpsest is a brand again

  stolen from the arms of H.D.

  who layered into bone where

  is that book now AbeBooks or

  Amazon or the archive’s white gloves

  today it sells for $500 or $17.50

  today you/we want it so badly

  a click and it belongs to you/us

  in 5–10 business days it’s not

  wrong to want books or quaint

  among closures so many stoppages

  of serendipitous finds or art pieces

  stripped or framed gorgeously what

  arrays you/us into position prostrate

  the space above wrenching utterly

  7.

  “The overlap between the late stages of hippie bohemia and the early incarnations of Silicon Valley was often endearing.”

  — Jaron Lanier, “The Suburb That Changed the World”

  yes, let’s not forget via

  Arcade Fire and others

  it developed in the suburbs

  a certain sameness is required

  to articulate the real virtually

  the focus arrives when

  day-to-day is mundane

  during periods of capitalistic

  uprising so desire is status

  not even understood remotely

  so local you’d cry if you knew

  is it all in a day? headbands

  for pocket protectors the rise

  of irony unaware of wisps

  of intellectual property wafting

  in through the door smelling

  of soap not soup

  disrupting utopia again

  when rancour sells it

  8.

  “The uneasy conscience of what I see, drastically changes my perception of things.”

  — José Ferreira

  the burn of excess is a tattoo

  you/we could respect so the uneasy

  could become bodily performance

  209 people like this Mozambique

  which could easily be Cache Creek

  if you/we prefer the local backyard

  welcome to Wastech Vancouver!

  the shifting utopia of changing

  perceptions takes another hit

  today smoke calibrates an opening

  again and your old cellphone refuses

  to burn properly as is built into its design

  and green might rise from the ash cloud

  it really might your/our touch

  screen tells us politely one second before

  we change drastically and if the apocalypse hits

  you’ll/we’ll just go next door

  9.

  “He shuffled a few inconsequential found objects inside his boxes until together they composed an image that pleased him with no clue as to what that image would turn out to be in the end. I had hoped to do the same.”

  — Charles Simic

  boxy but nice here

  accumulation is the collection

  your correction reigns in absence

  a contemporary relic might

  suggest a movie ticket

  to signify laughter a stack

  of meals eaten glasses of wine

  car rides even compliments or

  intellectual debate no butterflies

  pinned down or necklaces worn

  as bracelets delicately shoved

  into compartments maybe

  candles? or the way the door

  slid open and you were there

  the button off a striped shirt

  tiny grains from a leather belt

  only perceptible with the looking

  glass attached here

  10.

  “Overwhelmed as we are, we are still free to think ethically about our luxury.”

  — Jeanne Randolph

  call it condescending to say

  at least you weren’t born a womanr />
  in India without a move to help

  say women be “all that they could be”

  call it naive to the think economic

  success reduces fear what else

  produces a gated community

  call it cliché to ignore the site

  or provocation of privilege

  while “working hard, playing hard”

  bootstraps and etc. shine up

  symbols and drive away if

  you don’t like the weather here

  11.

  “Imagining is not as transient as common sense might claim, nor incongruous with everyday living.”

  — Jeanne Randolph

  it’s true that imagination

  doesn’t pay even if

  “thinking outside the box”

  is what you’re supposed to do

  today, laptop ready to

  push the boundaries of

  proverbial thinking “whatcha

  gonna do, eh” release a spew

  a gigantic scribble installed

  on a white wall might gettcha

  thinking or that song hey what’s

  that song “whatcha gonna do

  when they come for you” bad

  boys who can’t think past structures

  of midlife crisis categories

  of forty-year-old divorcée or spirit

  deprived white guy punched

  in the face only once “heya why so

  heavy, yo” think positive think

  different

  12.

  “We use a lot of garbage to stay clean.”

  — Pipilotti Rist

  your/my moisturizer rises creamy

  humidity is good for the skin

  so you/we could post your/our age

  at least ten years younger no one/anyone

  would suspect edges of sculpted curves

  plastically scrubbed to untimely perfection

  smells so good recalcitrant shoulders

  shimmer or shake uncontrollably

  just wipe down that progress pluck

  a rebellious hair watch it all disappear

  down the glossy drain w/ decorative

  pewter grate stock the cabinet again

  and simply repeat what you/we know