(written from memory) this poem is a reminder to myself
to look and see
and look again until i see again
and look again and again, and again and again (again)
and again and again and again,
and again and again and again and again,
and again (again) and again and again (again, again) and again again,
and again (again, again) and again again (again),
and again and again (again, again) (again)
and (again) again and again and again and again,
until i see.

this poem is a reminder to myself to look and see and look again until i see again and look again and again, and again and again (again), and again and again and again, and again (again) and again and again (again, again) and again again, and again and again and again and again, and again again (again), and again and again (again, again) (again), and (again) again and again and again and again, until i see.

"i live in a city and in a city skyscrapers
 clouds and traffic
 water and people
 and you and i
 and pigeons and pigeons
 and peers and peers
 and cement
 and streets
 and smoke
 and steam."

"but if we look without seeing
 what we see
 what will we see?
 what will will we see?"

a poor reminder to myself that waste is as inevitable as the four hundred longing fish in the sea. the fish will die, the signal fades, what we kill we kill. waste, waste, waste.

p113 of The Impossible Reversal describes a certain perspective by Georges Bataille in which an ever-present "plenitude" always leads to the inevitability of waste, and that the only outcome for such plenitude is that it will "[be] squandered in useless pursuits of art and ritual, [or] build into the destructive force of murder and war". cast in this light, waste -- art -- is the only way to stave off the devastation of unavoidable plenty.

"i cannot shake a wasting
 feeling all our secrets meaning
 when we come to kill, and find
 a wasting feeling signal reeling
 in our dreams four hundred longing
 fish when all is said and done
 and wasted, by the sea."

this poem walks the line between two worlds and asks me to do the same.

"its large black feathers and low caw
 on the parapet above

 there at the golden field
 in my left hand coin and roses
 in the right bunnies royalty wild

 wanting both and having thought
 i could not and letting go of all that
 and just having and wanting
 
 what i want at the golden field."

this poem is a reminder to myself to make weapons. not weapons like knives and implements of violence, but knives like kill gameplay, transformative implements, weapons with no point. to remember to wield them and enact change in my world. the tradition of language would demand that i call these tools but i have a knife for that too and i'll do what i want, thank you.

"to cut the universe of your world take shape
 though it naturally rounds and slides still
 make weapons every day and second
 by second dreaming of knives turns
 to dreaming of each round and slide
 rounding and sliding right through
 uncaring of perpetuity
 cosmic or existential cutting
 like knives without knives."

"which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

"in programming, state can be explicit or implicit
 that's a too-simple way of putting it but
 it will work for the purposes of our game.

 when state changes, does the code actually
 keep track of the new state, storing it some-
 where? or does it merely announce change
 and immediately forget?

 as a person, you contain directions. thoughts.
 states.

 do you store your states
 implicitly or explicitly?"

game 8
 
"when processes change, ask yourself
 this one question:

 am i storing this state change internally
 or announcing it and then forgetting?"

game 7

(i can't make a simpler game 7.)

"it is simple
 to make the meaning plain
 but it hurts
 revealing my own plainness."

"it is easy to eschew
 seeming oversimplification
 in favour of learned complexity.

 it is easy to break words in-
 to parts in-comprehensible masking
 meaning beneath the shade of end-
 less device."

"simple
 things are not easy and not hard
 like making ideas simple
 or telling the truth and not lying
 or not using the threat of losing to make people pay attention."