THEORY BEYOND THE CODES

the blue rental

Barbara Mor

the blue door and blue windows radiate the mind of the house
like a small timid brain sitting in a dark room radiates its
obsession with a terrible distance
or (sunk in earth a thin fish learns to walk the ocean floor
climbs blue walls and angular canyons restless up into us the
same spine you think) the emptiness of the house once a
thought as desert once a sea house a planet neighborhood of
suburban stars occupy the same distance
      it is a desert abode with cactus in the yard bugs or a lizard
      seeking moisture no shade yet it is all watery and blue the
      psychic color a wavelength all creatures see in our original
      dream this radiation  
the original dream a television in the corner of a deep room
always on like insomnia the ancestors squat half submerged
in this uterine earth pictures go in and out of human eyes and
they cannot sleep
they cannot sleep     along the night street as along the hull of
a sunken ship portholes glow with bloated faces or a submarine
occupied by phosphorescence radiates a blue music from its
inward silence (it smokes a blue cigarette with long blue lips)
as time has sunk here wedged between backyards and tall
antennae of loneliness with many eyes and ears wired to a
skulls curved dish sad rooftops waiting lonely dials turned
endlessly     the static of blue light emits this silence and
they do not sleep as the sea recedes
      in the desert a dark luminous thing a foliage and dust
      of awful presence it remembers the sea it began in a black
      ocean with thoughts before stars entered an eye or a
      small door     and i do not remember the crime it saw
a crime always occurring in blue insomnia  like the sea     

1.
it was alone
it was a mushroom (perhaps) a blue nagual  who always lived
here  its little adobe on the desert surrounded by more desert
etc etc and nothing
it was an experiment
it was not an experiment but a need  or a poem  or a fatality
(from the inventor of fate  a joke)
the invention of fiction  of friction  of evil (resultant)
altho so beautiful and night illuminant with stars
i did not invent

i did not invent
it was alone with some idea  
i think of primeval things       veins of moth wings spinal
auras long magnetic shudders a blue volcanic breathing and
eruptions of thick earth as fire  continents swell and recede
shift under them  episodes pulse into them on blue wires
strange night animals traverse a blue horizon as herds and
constellations of some imagination become their skins  and
eyes reflect and copy this enormous theater   huge centuries
of mind and hunger begun with pale telluric flickers
i do not remember trajectories of humans or their dream
except the eyes empty screen when their story ends  a brain
reads remote transmission of grave shapes emptying slowly  
of blood while blue light pours in or one world swallows
another or great histories implode  the disembodied voices  
of absolute blue space and a blue radiation of the dead who  
are still awake  
                  a mural of genitals  blue orgasms of horses  a
blue photograph of night with many spines exposed  houses
where the crime occurred corpses emitting spliced cries a wall
of switches lamps mirrors and other sad fixtures of eyes
      how blue thought meets dark night as a screen of dots
      bizarrely weeping or gesturing spasmodically to the eyes
      center which is death      of walls exploded as flowers
bullets of fish swimming beautiful creatures dancing among
veins of blue fluorescence ganglia of mind transformed
from sleep into an empty room (this is when the crime who
dwells no one lives now sits in a dark room only)   
      
to live vicariously(a mud body)and then forget   i dwelt
among circulating particles polyps coral rays amorphous living
jellies (inhale and exhale a blue smoke as if breathing time
before it begins) ominous reptiles insects persons thickly
swum or crushed into air like fetal planets   a list of  
existences  i forget
                                       how blue light pours from eyes
ears mouths as a terrible stream of distances a blue absence
hemorrhaging as far as galaxies       the crime inhabits
it gazes alone into this hallucinated blue thing     it is
    
2.
there was a sidewalk alley asphalt cement and minerals a
yard of dust and rusted metal where the stars become hard
perhaps someone slept on a bare bedspring or hung clothes
on a single line or in and out of my little clay house with
a clay pot holding dry earth and no flowers
            a world (being) of dying animals  thirst or species
of local thought   rented cheap as a root sucks up moisture
enough for one day  it could be a hotel a corpse or a planet
transient in time  a blue water occurred and then siphoned
by a sun (as i imagine) the memory of squid and salt moon
residue of scorpion and rock circling my neighborhood the
horses were here great nebula and premonitions of heroic
drama their black manes on fire                 and cities are
beyond in some chemistry of the mind but not yet
o yes    Orion   

chronically to look up gaze upward into codes 1.5million
years their time humans and Orion who was the first hunter
he strides forward eastward westward one blue foot one red
shoulder exploding a club raised or an arrow shot to theBull
who does not seem to die      or stands brightly his belt 3
absolute stars and a sword a dagger a penis hung down M42
a nebulous groin from which other suns erupt and spin out  
this giant gaseous cloud(or Firedrill orFriggerock Osiris one
hemisphere or another)     the most distant constellation it
remains constant longest unchanged as they evolve under it
name it shift and shape themselves as if inhabitants also of
this zodiac   the blue Picts ran around with starry animals
tattooed on their bodies  theMayan Hearth 3 stones DayZero
13.0.0.0.0 the gods descend to set it up a mirror of Orion  
or that is what they saw or said they saw imprinted on the
night   before all other transmissions the first transmission
burned into night  they branded cattle and their own flesh
or written on a poetry high calligraphy of their blood as   
eloquence of some kind   seared on a brain   who was the
original predator or dreamer gazing so far   their eye or the
stellar pictures  real meat or patterns of white dots   
                       some say a hunter a man with his dogs a dark
horse(andSirius andMonoceros)  but i recall deserts or ash or
hot vents of the sea also blind grope on the sea floor  open    
and close mouth gullet breathing water food or otherwise
existent as mud  i am clay under stars (clay as flesh as lodo
barro distinct from spirit they say but nothing exists but this
Mind euphoriant) i see code a message a language  zodiakos
kyklos  killed by a Scorpion they say   i am required to look
upward translate the black sky flickery images where the
story begins
          recalling sea floor Trilobite and worm 520 million bce
Cambrian explosion scavenger tracks consumes a blind worm
the brain grows by seeing seizing consuming armored as a tank  
a shaggy thing liceshape with fly eyes it has eyes crawls swims
moves like a machine 1/8 inch to over 2 feet (28") grows by
watching into watching sees the jelly the starfish the sponge a
blind worm  as it will conquer sea land air  imagination over
all  Trilobitomorpha first predator first thing with eyes and the
eyeless prey  they gaze at each other worm and hunter one
thing with eyes one thing desired
                                                               i did not invent
the distance between this long immersion   and the stars

3.
when they brought the horses i knew them   a crack in the
universe a fissure in mind  look up  the Milky Way divides the
sky into 2 hemispheres  a brain  100,000,000,000 stars in
this brain  a mythos in the sky  with a brain as mirrors  slow
transit of codes in the particulars of their eyes  they will say
they are not entertained by such discourse  a memory where
they do not live or think they live  but the horse burst from rock
crevice in a sidewalk  all from Time returned little eohippus
dawn horse Dawn of mammals 53 million years  Eocene in the
West  as their hands on cave walls opened mineral flesh and
it was there(30,000bce Aurignacian)evolutions later  and
all the beasts emergent from a stony hole or cavernous mind
dark and shining like night      
                                           no doubt they told stories  the
passage of time  40,000 years 3 million years  a long time as
busy with rock fire water umbilical ropes  they climb in and
out of bodies make animal noises   what goes in and out of
bodies a fascination of their minds  they look for something
hidden  sex eclipse death  scenarios ofTime a great book or
mystery the stars are writing  or inside skulls ominous viscera
and arts of bone  hunters gleaners watchers song and dance
as the animals move over and over their eyes  they tell retell
this story as if a script or a dream   in this dream they carry
spears knives needles calendars  a wheel a toy  transistor
radios and laundromat hands engines in their tongues and 10
fingers  how to count how seeds grow powers of wounds and
replications  fire speech and murder as original inventions
    they begin to believe they are not animals but masters of
something  the zoo and the mirror appear together 4500bce
for who they are  faces beautiful things collected in search
of what is hidden  soft clay like another flesh impressed again
and again with hard numbers  how to rule how to plunder how
to conquer  who they are  animals upright and glorious on
horse machines  when they wrote as hands fisted with Signs
granaries measures maps ofThought very agile with chariots
pyramids empires suddenly very smart  hands on legal pages
scripting History(asImmortality) as the universe moves over
and over their eyes  blur and forget  the human gaze derives
from pain night eating death  and killing what is beautiful
this is not hidden
                          the horses belong here  rampant  extinct
12,000 years  hunted down by ancestors eaten  returned 1493
their drivers as giant Trilobites out of the sea out of air  who
cannot believe they are glorious  piles of corpses raised and
streaming blood up to their knees  this machinery moves
like the sky relentless and sexual over earthly bodies their
favorite story  when they were not weeping or mopping up or
reproducing it as spectacle as automatons flash their metals and
electric eyes  indeed i watch it  as they watched themselves
for they suffered inside what is hidden  going in and out of
their animal Time  asMinds and stars move over and over their
repeated patterns  the thing hidden they have not found
and clearly i do not care

4.
extremophiles in deep vents of the sea  sulfuric and blind
do they suffer     the weight of oceans and total dark  248F
they boil but do not boil  shrimp bacteria tubeworms 10'
long  chemistry eats them and vice versa or cannibalize each
other  they survive  do we suffer     volcanic BlackSmokers
colonies in frail papery tubes  Pompeii worm 5' long  pale
gray  red gills on heads like feathers  most extreme gradient
temperatures  protrude from tubes heads cool 79F  at other
end their tails at 176F centuries and centuries  as Vesuvius
erupts 79ce  a Roman city also Pompeii   did not survive
or ice  12' deep solid -4F Atacama desert of ice  little bits of
dirt embedded provide chemical nutrients  as permafrost
or goldmines Africa 6 miles deep  microbes eat cracks eat
rock  or fungi algae acidbathed eat red water thickly iron like
blood    tubeworms 8' long 250 years old or 4-5 centuries
old  Gulf of Mexico  older than conquistadores  eating oil
no oxygen no dreams  what do they know
            Piezophiles  PsychroCryophiles  Lithoautotrophs
Metalotolerants  a black well cesspool pozo negro pitch lake
liquid asphalt (La Brea 38,000 years oldest material wood
or bone)  wolves bison horse groundsloth turtles snails fish
millipede lion tiger mammoth  dead bones  the animals
struggled here  no way out no air  microbes bacteria
archae    the ancestors live here
                     it was a story  existence  4.54 billion years
microscopic particles ofNothing become something on their
dark sides  required to make Worlds  methane ammonia
hydrogen + electric spark  and watched itself walk into such
proliferation   the phenomenon called life   it multiplied
itself  carbonic acids water nitrogenous compounds   it
could be Extreme  to manifest imagination from Itself  as
slimemold moves over and over dung or rot to make a film
grotesque minuscules selfreplicate as if 2 lovers out ofOne
as plants or Echiniscus may reproduce themselves  lizards
Daphnia fungus worm  our ancestors the precursors in their
dying varieties
                    and what evolved into them not a crime but
fascination with their crime  

            Homo faber  hands on cave walls red black ocher
charcoal  fixed with animal fat   where water trickles from
rock  a painted wound  earth makes beautiful things   (no
the first mirror before Egypt Ur a still pool the gaze of water
where they met the Other  the shiningHunter   the first zoo
was here  dark gallery of primal beasts desired by the eye
they too looked back at other beasts  blind luminal beasts
mining ore from their flanks and udders  we watch we want
what they killed they loved with attention   iron manganese
lightning ash the chemistry of thought and their metalurged
hands amazing hands brains as pistons grinding everything
down into final dust  as if heroic waste lavish waste as if
endlessly prolific   as the starry letters  or genetic code
                     hold up a mirror to Nature  they said  and
can be extreme  a luxury of pain   their incriminant bodies
shoved down on spikes or pikes pushed up anus thru mouth
or burn alive or crush with religious stones  ancestors die
with teeth clenched on grass their green mouths try to eat
grass like cattle  or some breathe terminal gas or choked
in soil mephitic environs of their history  or biscuits of lard
salt and dirt they eat dirt as nutrient  as do all things   and
walk into themselves a blue screen  generations of mirrors
a story  as dark sides shadows emerge from light excreting
darkness even death erotic
            a poetry of sweat of their bodies and perfume and
on the screen it shines luxuriously   Alkaliphiles  Mypoliths
Radioresistants  Zerophiles  Polyextremophiles
do they suffer     or  kill in some trance of surrender
or what says too much pain (they said) it must
stop now          (an intention not a result)

their cold eyes derive from eating ice lust fear and loving
Night who fills up emptiness with constellations  their crime
derives from Time orNight who fills up thought with signs
it was a story up there Orion  his horse and dogs the Hunter
who walks out of black light into intelligent eyes his black
mind shines luxuriously inside a constant skull       they
walk in anywhere and switch on the light begin to Think
watch read gaze want something beyond the wall hidden in
a wall turn off the light and stare at the wall until they can
walk thru it   what exists   the other side inextremisMind
it is a talent gift a compulsion why do we love as
bleeding animals they have erased us
Bison  Mammoth  Aurochs  GreatAuk  Ursus spelaeus

Mousterian Magdalenian pressured into stone human hands
marks runes hieroglyphs phonemes alphabets codex of fire
if in Ebla they wrote it down if Tulum Punt Aptera they
construct it   utopia Atlantis NewWorld  'symbolic mastery'   
which is a cosmic impulse or irony    culminating Life
who loved everything they killed truly for the huge beauty    
of it power of forms exploding rock wall thought in and out
of eyes lucid and gone  the fixity ofMind who can inhabit
all this  yet still Hidden                  it was a story
new Atlantis(to end suffering) in eyes a mirror cosmic dust
and screen on which to watch it   Epic suffering
NewAtlantis MAGNALIA NATURAE(Natural Magic1627)
                the list begins with 'the prolongation of life'
                & ends with 'Artificial minerals and cement'
there is no pity required the great story(it is said)  proceeds

water bears Tardigrades slow walkers  some parthenogenic
alive in Himalayas deep seas polar caps equator  on mosses
lichens liverworts  temps close to absolute zero ?460F hot as
303F  survive 1000 X more radiation than other animals  or
a decade 200 years without water  10 days in vacuum space
or subsurface ocean water Jupiters moon  hydrothermal vents
on sea floor  a distant Moon  something will dwell  and copy
this  sidewalks made of seashells  where egRomans invented
Concrete   sand clay paste of ancient calcium
   
the Horseshoe crab (cf Trilobite larval stage spiders scorpions
also related)  over 300 million years Cambrian  xiphosurid
onto a beach  a sidereal sidewalk
     
nothing is so vast as things that are empty  

5.
blue womb or rental room of empty houses inside a vast night
blue abodes along a street are radiant with such light  strangely
occupied as museum or uterus blue immense of a universe
looped and rerun perpetual for the stars insomnia   who never
sleep   it cant get born out of in which it always dwells  
                                       or who lives in the other rooms
who knows why they continue to love it watching static when
the show is over  or now stare at a blue screen   a hypnotic
stare injects blue into everything 1 light year is 6trillion miles
so they do not sleep or dream  trance is a slower brain as
gods watch  an indifferent spectacle    
  Devonian 395-345million yearsbce  swamps forests ferns
  something crawls from sea to wet green then fish may walk
  4limbed vertebral land dwellers 360millionyearsbce  repeat
  250million dinosaurs 65million mammals 8million hominids
  humans 200,000 years          from explosions of Cambrian
  multicells Great Ordovician biodiversification   methane
  ammonia hydrogen+lightning spark=amino acids 3.5billion
  years    a universe they say  13.75 billion years   began       
that eyes stare at such distance    or the crime it means            
         what is a chronic absence to do with enormous pain   
to create an Other to end the Solitude of Everything that IS  
it gropes blind first invention of feelers  eyes  beauty  words
i look up at starry mirrors and desire translation into words
and becomes what it has become     i am therefore i am
i am not obscure                    i do not remember the crime

as pyramids record days years huge stone blocks of Time
fractures of earth below great cities or deserts once jungles
of submerged night  
i am positioned here to read stars  one lightyear 5.88 trillion
miles the closest star 8000 times more distant than farthest
planet whatever it may be relatively changeless constellations
but they do slowly drift              ram fish wolf unicorn whale
worm and crab  the Vulva and some poets singing head  a
black cavernous wound into residues of bodies of worlds
galaxies so condensed they are reborn into seeds eggs sperm
i watch them go over   mustang bull jaguar  slow motion
over a horizon as over a cliff into some chasm but reappear
each night season year  zodiakos kyklos  once horizon of
heroes and beasts  in amnesias of desert air  the ancestors
watch them become extinct  in solemn entertainment  we
gaze into each disappearance            await our turn     
   
most distant from earth(1500 lightyears)Orion thus remains
recognizable  longest observable constellation  parallel to the    
rise of  human species and civilizations so far and so slow to
change the Hunter but relentless as all things   Orion shifts
into a giant vague X   the ancestors watch it happen

to escape or reconsider  a universe recedes  horses vault or
gallop backwards into sidewalk fissures  oceans of dust or ice
return to cities intricate architecture then melt disperse  words
come from human mouths hang as frost voices in blue air
then they burst with invisible rays from their bold eyes
exploding a violent universe  desires of fluorescence radiant
desires 8000 times as far as most distant planet florescent open
in the night  but my eye is lonely for something else
                                                                          perhaps
i sing with long blue lips  incantations of the next thing  or
whisper what dinosaur blood human blood other lost excretions
transform into what chemical or mineral compression of
65 million years        in mirrors of permafrost sand or glass
the view of exotic lights  cacti radiant with uranium  mercury
flown thru war rubble and wriggling worms thru dirt   bluish
hallucinations of oceanic and extreme lifeforms urban future
submarine mansions or 100 foot tall fungi on stilts or stairways
climb from seafloor to a Moon everyone knows it can be done
dogs are born with many eyes(Kerberos) or no eyes the eyes
are elsewhere  tomatoes swimming upstream and frogs with 13
eyes in their throats  and their throats are seeing and eyes are
singing                 and o it does not stop
some blueprint in the mud  my mind such as it is recorded
amnesias of solitude(exaltation)among my planets biostructure
my little house in space the blue adobe of a flesh that is all
radiant and cold unsleeping furnace of stars a blue agitation
without memory but how to reset forget all this and begin
again
o how vast

Materials Quoted
-------------------

cement & minerals

Francis Bacon, New Atlantis (1627) MagnaliaNaturae list, 488-9

piles of corpses i raised

Royal Archives of Ebla (a repeated phrase)

Ebla -- an ancient city of SW Asia near the site of Aleppo, Syria. The cuneiform Ebla Tablets (discovered 1974-5) describe a thriving 3rd millennium bce civilization centered around the city. A Semitic language & people.

the phenomenon called life

Aldous Huxley, Literature & Science (1963)

there is no pity required the great story

"Let all pity be alien to those who watch
a crime, not only by the hunter who cunningly fulfills
what time allows.
Killing is a form of our wandering sorrow.
Whatever happens to us will in time
be right, for spirit is serene, pure & still."
Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus XI, trans. Willis Barnstone (2004), 177

nothing so vast as things that are empty

'But it is the empty things that are vast, things solid are most contracted.' Francis Bacon, last paragraph of Preface to The Great Instauration (1620)
"Nothing is so vast as things that are empty"

Paul Virilio paraphrase, City of Panic, trans Julie Rose (2005), 133

a hypnotic stare injects blue into everything

Malcolm de Chazal, Sens-Plastique (1947) 2008 trans. Irving Weiss; Barry Schwabsky review BookForum Feb/March 2009, 28

it gropes  blind  feelers eyes words

'Natural selection indeed "gropes" -- blindly sends out feelers...' -- Richard Wright, Non-Zero (2000), 314

----------------

Barbara Mor, native of southwest American coast & desert (SoCal, AZ, NM). Work in Orpheus Grid, Sulfur, BullHead, Mesechabe, Ms., Trivia (US); Ecorche, Intimacy, Spectacular Diseases (UK). Onliine: Dissident Voice (6/14/04), (10/13/08); TriviaVoices #1 (2/05), #5 (2/07), & #7-8 Double Issue (9/08); CTheory (8/4/05), (12/25/05), /12/06), (4/3/08), & (12-3-08). Author of pagan ecofeminist The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth Harper SF 1987, 1991). A dumb title: my ms title, The First God, was over-ruled.

(c) CTheory. All rights reserved.