I

First things first. One time a friend of mine came in for a few empty crates from a Mazda import agency. With a couple of rolls of felt he transformed his poky yard into a well-appointed loft where he kept fantails first and pouters, then tumblers, and finally some serious racing birds. At that juncture the fancy breeds had to go because their freaks disturbed the steady fliers. But he never banded his soft birds for racing, or bothered with the mandatory clock, just released them when he rose and let them settle back at evening to roost reassuringly secure. In the end though he got thoroughly sick of their ceaseless moaning, so he kicked out the lot of them, refitted the wire grilles with glass, sanded, sealed and papered down the primitive walls, screeded the floor, and later on moved in himself, the family, and all their traps. For a good week after in these novel quarters he picked over an odd volume of Pliny's Natural History, shaken intermittently by the indignant refugees beating like story rain against the panes, and on the flat felt roof. This is a true story.

II

. . . do not look upon me on the dung-heap
      nor go and leave me cast out
      and you will find me in the kingdoms.
And do not look upon me when I am cast out among those who
      are disgraced and in the least places,
      nor laugh at me.
And do not cast me out among those who are slain in violence.
But I, I am compassionate and I am cruel.
                                Thunder Perfect Mind

When the shattering
key turns clockwise
the golden tumblers fall

through courts
where suits
are duly packed and paid

the ward turns
from the crooked talon
lofty strut and pinion

down their powers
and dominations
to the striking jack

III

And now these carriers
wheel painfully aloft
ringed round with tokens

protocols addresses
codes conventions empty forms
and the streams freeze in their shadow

remorselessly they brood
on every post
spill milk

and thick saltpetre
as they flap
from the twisted pair

to coax
all the news
comes down

so tell me
how would you put down
a lingering infestation

of goddamned angels?
set snares of blood
raise ghosts

and memories
for decoys
bait deadfalls

with true sleep?
or keep by the fire
a niptic cat

to stalk high winds
and pounce
on fallen stars?

they just don't get
the message yet!
suggestions please

so I can get
forever shut
of their close breath

fat with clay
stone floods
the midnight crashing

of their verminous wings

Notes to Tohu-Bohu

Thunder Perfect Mind is one of the volumes comprising the Gnostic library found under the sands at Nag Hammadi.

The final section incorporates a number of technical terms used in computer networking.

A niptic cat would share the watchful qualities exemplified by the Niptic Fathers of Philokalia, a collection of texts written during the fourth to fifteenth centuries by spiritual masters of the Orthodox Christian tradition. [TJ]