Flow

A solitary man; a switch.

…electricity behind walls…
…eyes blessed with vision…

A switch; a chain reaction.

…let there be light…
…all the burning energies…
…our metallic gods…

Here, a modern man
And his good wife, a modern woman,
Take the mystery of switches for granted.

In unseen wires, unseen electrons flow;
Like a sub-atomic tide, charged particles one way,
Deficiency of charge the other.

…ours the power and ours the glory…

A chain reaction; men and women;
Unconsidered secrets.

Behind decoration’s thin disguise,
Goings-on among dust and plaster,
Pipes and wires, stud-work, scuffling vermin,
Petty creatures beneath wooden boards,
All a wad of paper-covered gypsum away,
Banished to the looming dreams of night.

Men and women languish in desirable homes;
Men and women hang in motionless space;
The world moves around them.
Change sweeps the streets
Outside their box-shaped rooms…

…tired wallpaper repeats its patterns…
…gaudy geegaws upon geegaw shelves…

Over the horizon and out of sight,
In someone else’s distance,
Storm and trouble grumble
While millions put misbegotten trust
In barriers of brick and mortar.

Humdrum work-a-day lives drift on:
Safe in illusory havens,
Jagged energies diverted,
Elemental chaos ignored,
Left to flood and flow beneath idle feet,
Or rattle above addled heads.

So the world is rendered down
To harmlessness, in a standstill place,
Contained and regulated,
Utterly, and for now, defused.

Through darkened window panes
In stifled rooms like these
Strife and contention reach vanishing point,
Lines of perspective meet and cancel.
The voltages of danger drift away
And, in return, a kind of vacuum builds
To suck the will and the vision in.

We are, by our own devices, postponed,
Paused like the sea between tides;
But still (and we secretly expect it)
Change must come.

Ebb and flow:
What runs, runs back.
Whatever we control,
Exerts power in return.

Each one of us, encountering darkness,
Turns to the light; with so slight a gesture,
The merest wave, we bring it, shining.
And so we flick our switches, day by day,
Some from need, some in fear,
Some fingered like worry beads
In a ritual or fretful fetish;
And some we leave resolutely alone.

The surging world flies away in turmoil,
Utterly beyond, as it ever was.

© BH 2015

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I was originally thinking about electron flow in conductors (Really!) fascinated by how the traditional view of positive to negative flow is the opposite of electron flow which runs negative to positive. We live and understand our technologies by analogy.

As I wrestled with this arcane concept (I mean, who cares what goes on in wires, for God’s sake), I found myself harking back to earlier ideas I had about technology and our relationship with it. How content we all are to remain in blissful ignorance so long as we can maintain our illusions of safety and certainty. 

That was the 20th Century disease, I thought, having lived through half of it. Now, in the 21st, I find the same myopia (or is it maya?) prevails. The less secure or certain we make our world, the more we crave security and certainty. Meanwhile, the elements are rising up around us. We loosed their fury, of course. 

Still, we deny it.