Kosmoautikon: Chill Collected Zoologies (Book Four)

Copyright © 2014 by Mark Chandos.

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-4931-5449-4

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Edited by Mike Porras

Rev. date: 04/24/2014

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CONTENTS

KOSMOAUTIKON:

CHILL COLLECTED ZOOLOGIES

LIST OF CHARACTERS

Argument of the Epic Poem Kosmoautikon

CANTO ONE

Chill Collected Zoologies

Théâtre de l’Absurde

CANTO TWO

Final Statement. Accused, Suspended from Ceiling

CANTO THREE

Apocrypha

What He Saw Inside the Dome at Callisto

A Man Tells a Story for His Life

CANTO FOUR

How Do You See My Face?

CANTO FIVE

A Girl Tells the Signs of Man

CANTO SIX

Covert Hexagons

Because You Have a Sign!

Stanic. til. derive!

Escape from Sapiens

CANTO SEVEN

A Mnemonic Reading

So This Is Prophecy?

Secret Genealogies of Texts

CANTO EIGHT

Walking in the Mind of God

First Seal: You Ran Up That Hill

CANTO NINE

A People of the Long War

CANTO TEN

Kosmoautikon

Epilogue

PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAY:

A NEW THEORY OF POETRY (PART TWO)

PREFACE

The Permanent Sting of Poetry

CHAPTER ONE

Modernism as Rogue Civilization

CHAPTER TWO

Should We Continue to Believe?

CHAPTER THREE

Who Needs the Strong Poet?

CHAPTER FOUR

The Contest for Supremacy

CHAPTER FIVE

Opportunity for the Strong Poet

CHAPTER SIX

No Archeology of Hebrews—Only Poems

CHAPTER SEVEN

Forbidden Good. Forbidden Beautiful.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Civilization and the Rogue Male

CHAPTER NINE

Eternal Adolescence

CHAPTER TEN

Is Matter Solid—or Empty?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Three Great Discoveries of the Century

CHAPTER TWELVE

What Do We Really Want to Know?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

How Does New Information Affect a Theory of Poetry?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Totalitarianism of the Modern State

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

What Is the Correct Interrogative of Life?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

What Is Wrong With Science and Math?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Snakes, Serpents, Dragons—Hercules?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Anabasis

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Language Requires a Deus Ex Machina

ANNEX

Summary of Philosophic Theses

KOSMOAUTIKON

Chill Collected Zoologies

Book Four

For a long time after an epic poet like Milton, or a dramatic poet like Shakespeare, nothing can be done. Yet the effort must be repeatedly made; for we can never know in advance when the moment is approaching at which a new epic, or a new drama, will be possible; and when the moment does draw near it may be that the genius of an individual poet will perform the last mutation of idiom and versification which will bring that new poetry into being.

Eliot

Compared to the strong lineaments of verses such as these, most of the poetry written in English today shows precious little inevitability in its phrasing. Some of the factors that contributed to the drastic decline of the art of bringing phrases to closure are clear enough. They include the wholesale de-formalization of poetry in our time and the consequent premium placed on enjambment; our dogmatic insistence on open-endedness and the bland tones of everyday language; our predilection for understatement and uneasiness about rhetorical display; our aversion to affirmation and our cult of the whisper.

Robert Pogue Harrison, NYRB, 2012

1) A thing which has in itself the necessity of existence cannot have for its existence any cause whatsoever… 2) Prophecy consists in the most perfect development of the imagination… 3) Some of our sages clearly stated that Job never existed, and that he is a poetic fiction… revealing the most important truths.

Maimon ben Joseph (1135-1204)

These are yet as moderate things. For nothing more remains than Earth’s remotest realms; nay in their daring they will track out Night, the farthest Night of all.

Trismegisties

We shall waste our reproaches if we complain that the themes of these plays are as monotonous as those of Greek sculpture, architecture, and pottery; we must remind ourselves that the Greeks judged a work not by the story it told—which is a child’s criterion—but by the manner of its telling.

Will Durant on Menander

Virgil copied it in form, sometimes in substance, sometimes line for line, in the Aeneid.

Will Durant on Apollonius of Rhodes (The Argonautica)

In all public places and in private parties, there are men who know where the armies should be placed in Macedonia, what strategic positions ought to be occupied… They not only lay down what should be done, but when anything is decided contrary to their judgment they arraign the consul as though he were being impeached…[If anyone] feels confident that he can give me good advice, let him go with me to Macedonia… If he thinks this is too much trouble, let him not try to act as a pilot while he is on land.

Lucius Aemilius Paulus, 169 B.C.

I believe that that ancient Greeks achieved intellectual greatness because they mastered the art of making statements by unexpected and novel means… It is the use of unfamiliar ways of expressing the familiar that stimulates the imagination and causes us to grow mentally… But it should be obvious that the other chief method of stimulating us in this fashion is poetry. For the essence of poetry is the juxtaposition of astonishing and unexpected images.

Robert Temple

LIST OF CHARACTERS

Argument of the Epic Poem Kosmoautikon

Book one: Exodus from Sapiens

Aaron is the last living member of a ruthless political dynasty, responsible for the extinction of many Non-Western nations on a dying Earth. His intent is to create a race of men able to live without a carbon and oxygen base. Aaron feels he has no choice since the Earth atmosphere has been made toxic by the release of radiation and the carbon dioxide of an over-industrialized planet. Earth was already finished before Aaron was forced to reduce the populations of enemy countries. This war was the result of a coalition of nations against the Anglo-Saxon West.

Aaron’s companion in this voyage to Jupiter is Talon, the greatest scientific mind of his age. Talon suffers from a rare bone disease and lives in a wheel chair. Talon has already secretly set in motion his plans to translate his own broken body into a new powerful life form based on methane and ammonia. Aaron and Talon have channeled their learning and science into the minds of their new race of men. Aaron has encoded the gene for the art of poetry into his creatures. Aaron’s creatures think and communicate exclusively in poetry—as their first language. It is Aaron’s passionate belief that man’s singularity is poetry - not prose or science.

They begin their lives at Jupiter’s big moon Callisto by building giant factories that funnel up the minerals from the broken moon below. With these minerals Talon’s factories produce an artificial RingWorld around the small moon.

But things don’t go as planned. The crews of the thirty space ships become desperate after three years, and the men are unable to support the pressures of space flight that never ends and never offers the hope of returning to Earth. The Earth is finally destroyed by Aaron’s last military commander, Vargus. The conditions of life at Jupiter contain a new astrology and manifestation of life. The strangeness of new life is explored as Aaron faces the strangeness of his own being and the horrible acts he has committed on Earth. Facing this new condition of man at the edge of the solar system, Aaron creates a space for new language and new poetry.

* * *

Book two: I Hear Strange Cries at Jupiter

Voices appear to Aaron and his crews. He finally executes judgment on the killer, Stendahl—a sentence he has long delayed for unknown reasons.

The men are growing restless and losing faith in their mission so far from Earth. There is a crisis of faith that the crews will all survive to see another future of men. The crew begins to repeat rumors of Aaron’s strange birth.

The Commander Vargus arrives with 13 Russian ships containing the last pilgrims from dying Earth. He has with him 300 Slavic women from Eastern Europe. This changes the military structure of RingWorld, since for the first time there is a large population of Civilians under his command. The strains on Aaron are almost to the limit of his competence. He retreats inwardly into his plans for a future galaxy of strange new Beings.

He makes Vargus his second in command and sends him with a mission to Europa. At Europa, Vargus is to extract a new supply of water and to place the tiny moon, Metis, on a course of collision with Europa. The same plan is made for the moon Thebe. Aaron’s plan is to create the conditions of future human life on Europa by burning off some of the water and creating a stronger atmosphere on that planet.

Tan-Dem, the first Homo sapiens creature, Aaron’s alien son, is now called by his people Cheda, meaning he talks to God.

Aaron is challenged by the appearance of two strange females, one young girl from Earth and one female demon from Callisto that arrives in the company of Cheda. He never expected a challenge from this quarter. Despite his faith in poetry, Aaron relies on his rational mind to hold together his practical command essentially a military enterprise. Does this imbalance summon the arrival of the Great Goddess to destroy him?

* * *

Book three: In My Atom Is Ark

Aaron nears completion of the Galactic moon-ship. Vargus has returned from his mission to manipulate the smaller moons of Metis and Thebes to impact into Jupiter’s moon Europa. The first collision with Metis burned off half of Europa’s immense salt ocean. Metis, also guided into Europa, broke the crust of Europa and exposed the hot interior of the frozen planet.

Thebes’s collision into Europa reforms the planet. The effect, as planned, is a further reduction of the salt oceans and an increase of temperature at the core of Europa. Subsequent volcanism spews mineral and gas into a nascent atmosphere. The heat of volcanic activity, combined with a heavy cloud cover, slowly raises the temperature of the planet to liquefy the remaining ocean ice. Talon’s scientists have made a virus-driven compost that will exponentially reproduce basic biological fauna in the space of 10 years—on over a third of the planet. Europa is now raised in its elliptic further from Jupiter’s rays and appears as a twin moon with Callisto.

Antebbe, an alien from the Sirius star system, assists Aaron in his experiments with the human skeleton—to make a higher advancement in the human body and mind. She also demands Aaron’s life.

The 300 girls from several orphanages in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Ukraine slowly begin to mix two by two with the crews. All insurgency is curbed—since Aaron has promised to release these women to the ship’s population of desperate human men. The young girls are creatures that have been reformed by Aaron’s intensive reeducation.

This changes everything in RingWorld. The human issue of these unions forever changes the nature of Homo sapiens. They have a lighter skeleton, larger eyes and brains—and exhibit a powerful spiritual perception of second sight. Homo faustus is born. The scene opens as Aaron conducts his eccentric medical operations. A new language is used to address the newly created genus—Homo faustus.

* * *

Book four: Chill Collected Zoologies

Aaron is dead—under mysterious circumstances. There were only three witnesses. Terry (his son) is now sought as a fugitive implicated in his murder and a writer of a text that makes an alternate narrative of his death. The new creatures (Homo faustus) have quarantined themselves on Callisto moon. They were given access to all the nuclear Megaclites and have mined the skies above Callisto to keep out all humans. After Aaron’s death, Talon gave them these nuclear weapons for a yet undisclosed reason. They have built giant monuments of sturdy geometrical shapes to protect their new habitations. How did they get the technology to move, carve and emplace such large megaliths?

The humans capture Terry. A court is convened to try him for his crimes, but he discovers they are only human Replicants. He is promised his life if he can infiltrate the megalithic fortifications at Callisto and kill or bring back Cheda—the leader of the Homo Faustus species. Instead, the spaceship that delivers Terry to Callisto crashes. Terry escapes the broken ship with all the materials he needs to survive until he can reach Cheda’s city. He is delayed. While attempting to hide, he follows a light emitting from an immense valley of caves. It is in these caves he understands why he is fated to be a prophet. He meets with his nation’s ancient nemesis of slavery and wars.

In the first cave he learns that the human mind has been mistaken in dimension. The human mind, he is told, is not only an astral organ, but that human life, itself, does not originate from Earth. The original source of DNA originated from a dragon-like creature able to move microscopically across dimensions. They have taken sanctuary in our blood stream, in our DNA. In this way they cannot be eradicated. All the knowledge of their civilization is contained in the DNA spiral. They are able to appear and be summoned by the manipulation of consciousness—since matter is a phenomenon of consciousness. We merely do not observe this phenomenon since we are limited to four dimensions. This explains to Terry why so many early cultures have always said the gods originated from dragons, lizards, and serpents.

Terry is the first to understand the origins of human life. He tells to Cheda a story that contains prophecy. In this dimension, consciousness is at war. The human strain is eternally engaged in warfare. Warfare for what?

* * *

CANTO ONE

Chill Collected Zoologies

1

i

If any grasping night remains a trace

when I was hammer once and rose,

my rage of blood excelled the race

to pierce the belly of your double fold.

The fragrant cut saved up my breath,

that I, as other men,

made mythic contest to divide

your legs soft as saplings from their bed.

But where were you the thousand years we swore

to faith, and where the billowing solar winds

enough to charge our galleon’s golden sail

that pulled along the kindness of our craft?

We passed magnetic storms and solar leas.

We heard Europa’s news. Atom-burnt aeronauts

returned with hearts of empty nets,

with eyes of wine dark seas.

What is the truth? Cold Europa held no breath.

Ships manned with canvas-covered corpses.

Night’s blood-red dawns where madness crept

on scrambling mice. I know. I know. I know.

Landfall found certain tundra and altered wish.

No human there survived from echoing cries

and diminished cells. Speak. I see you there.

What creature are you? Say your name!

The conflagration of moons touched fire;

burnt-out hollows, cavities where dragon blood

found root. There was a form of life.

But they were not men.

They refused to speak. They backed away.

They entered again beneath the ground.

ii

There, by the sister light of moons,

we saw glacier continents upturned,

red oxide-dusted shards collapsed,

chaotic crusted frost silhouettes,

north-jutting skyscrapers lit

by crystal ceilings diamond-black.

I saw chill collected zoologies,

blunt-fingered arms, albino-frosted eyes,

white-orange spines outcropping

certain alien amphibian life, now fixed

as frozen fossils exposed to outer ice.

We saw human eyes, red with panic,

peering down at freeze-encrusted taxidermy

to ancient soft melted oceans

sentient with life.

Captains shouting from their ships told all:

"We hit shards of razor thin feldspar,

blue ice craters, green copper, and split agate.

We came too soon. Volcanic ash as fire. Water as ice."

"We left men unconscious upon that sea.

Still twenty eons lashed embraced as fixed,

froze eyes gazing up from sky view tombs,

arms and mouths agape the outer circus."

"Canopies of blinding ammonia gas,

building beneath swollen fissures,

broke, searing our ships,

engulfed our throats with acrid steam."

And there, where you left me adrift on ice,

I placed a beacon set to probe the stars,

once an hour my spear detects a ghostly face,

once an hour

my heart the searching beam.

Théâtre de l’Absurde

2 (Warden of Court reads.)

Warden of Court. Prisoner… rise and come forward.

State your name, rank, and genome registration.

Terry. I have no rank, no fame… and no employment.

I was an honorary cook… once… in a ship of state…

W. Court record lists prior profession as… as Organist.

T. Honorables, that is a prior renown…

I have since lost a testicular function.

W. You are not an organist, then… not a musician?

T. One of us—that lives by sausages—picks cankers.

He makes the rest of us chop and clam with a stitch.

I no longer poke meat with chief regard to my sausage.

I have out-grown my reproductive oracles.

W. Meat? Sausage? Chop? . . . Poke? Clam?

That is your current profession, then… butcher?

I list your profession… as butcher . . . then?

T. Butcher? Man’a’sliced—a’picked—a’buttered?

No. Let it remain org-i-ast. You are clearly all Replicants.

W. State date of genomic registration.

T. Is this relevant? I was issued my government-issued

disease at the age of five. Modernism’s highest innovation.

W. State disease registered by the state—and degree.

T. 1st degree? Pant-cret-at-us.

2nd degree? Pros-trate-us.

3rd degree? Rage-i-at-us.

(Others.) Oh, he has got a good one. (Sounds of awe and respect.)

He will get all the best berthing places. . . . and his own toilet!

1st Judge. (Impatient.) Warden of the court! . . . Just state the charge!

W. (Reading.) "Prisoner has posted subversive political

conspiracy texts. Article 4.3.2. Federal felony. Title:

Anti-Demographic Conspiracy. Title: Kosmoautikon. Title…"

T. That’s a slur! I have a pin to prove I voted!

The winning black-smith placed us all under surveillance.

(Others.) That is forbidden speech! Why… what did he say?

1J. Silence! Are you the character described in said document?

T. Certain. One of us has a tattooed tongue.

Another is a cook, a poet, and black man.

What are your requirements for character, Sir/Ma’am?

The last… ensures I will be respected.

1J. Are you the character described in this text?

T. I am arranged for being a felon? . . . Or poet?

1J. Poet? Not at all. What is the use of poetry—for anything?

You are arraigned for expressing… forbidden speech.

T. Because I attempted an honest conversation?

About… the ethnic division that roils our nation?

Is that your reference….? Book Five? This is our

nation’s only drama. How can it be avoided?

1J. Such a conversation is limited only to non-whites.

This is forbidden speech… by any person able to…

able to take advantage of a previous superiority… or privilege.

T. We are all whites now? Look around. Or not?

(Others.) He did it again! Forbidden speech!

1J. Anyone is free to speak. So long as it is not someone…

someone that looks like you. Any arrogance on your part…

T. So you are color blind? And you promote justice, free speech?

1J. Yes. No previous minority race will ever be discussed

in an exact way—not with exact words. No burden can be traced

to ethnic roots. And your speech cannot directly be explicit.

Any reference to an actual situation… ergo… forbidden.

Certain words… thus, forbidden.

(Others.) And we know what they are!

T. Barring this… let truth shine brightly… or not?

So I made a little book? It ran over a few pages.

How can I dare to oppose you? Why even try?

What’s the use? Of course I will burn book five!

1J. This is not your concern.

We have already burned your books.

3 (1st Judge leafs through offending books.)

1J. You are named in the text… a Zodiac, no… a Black Terry?

T. I left a man behind like that… on an ice shard.

I introduce a new man. A strange, un-scalable man.

He descends from snakes and dragons. Item.

2J. A new scale of man? No one escapes the approved

genetic profile. We have ensured justice and equality by…

T. . . . By ensuring mediocrity?

2J. Silence! We will judge any new innovations!

(Aside.) Note his statement. He is not satisfied with his genome.

T. Yet I confess, it’s…

4th Prosecutor. Silence! He confesses!

T. It’s greatly faulted—my text I mean—still adolescence.

Can final judgment not wait until the work is complete?

2J. Work? This propaganda? This… this defamation of the

democratic choice? We are the new men—not your tribe! (Applause.)

Your book has nothing new in it… we can’t decide anything in it.

Except that you have used forbidden speech. You are not

qualified to speak of human futurity. You are, at most, an observer

of the genomic protocol—not a modifier of the genome. (Applause.)

T. Yet… ‘Onorables… it contains a new linguistic thesis.

I out-run a gnawing jealously of my codex.

If Your ‘Onorables are lazy, you can just pick out the good lines.

1J. Codex? Good lines? We have heard enough of this.

What is your plea? Do you admit you threaten our…

our forever, onetime president? Or his indigenous vision?

(Applause.) We got him now.

(Others.) We dare him to say a single word!

T. Yes… By my tongue is the power of life or death.

1J. (Confused.) Is this your statement? What does he say?

T. No part of me has arrived before me.

None have caught sight at this codex.

Prosecutor. Objection, your honor, the prisoner hopes to escape

adverse judgment by means of linguistic insanity.

Record shows he has a multiple personality disorder . . .

T. Objection! Two of us are certified sane… One is tattooed!

I made seventeen mistakes in the text. Two lines ended

in to, of, as, or for. Then I saw they fit a pattern!

I saw the mistake previous poets attempted, in fear and worship,

to replicate the city of Oxford. 700 years in poetic wilderness.

2J. What wilderness does he speak of?

T. No man can be free in another man’s shadow.

I reject all equalities that bind me… .

Above all else, ‘Onorables, I did not seek equality of gift.

I had to start again. I stained the first draft.

I crossed out a thousand lines. No, ten.

1J. This is new evidence? The city of Oxford?

A riddle? What is the logic? A multiple confession?

What is his plea? Tell us the thesis of this text.

T. My plea? Multiple. My thesis? Multiple.

There was a flaw in the human narrative.

Every myth of our genetic material… was misread.

I was not content with the human form.

Bad genome… is my plea!

1J. Bad genome? You object to the sapiens genome?

Let the record show… accused rejects the sapiens genome.

T. My father taught me the flaws of the sapiens element.

I accuse myself first! (You… really… are . . . Replicants!)

Let the record state: Where are the humans?

Dead? In a box a’gagged? Set’na hook?

Why continue, then, to seek Replicant justice?

There are no wheels on that train. Justice

is specifically . . . a human train of speech!

1J. Trains? Who has stolen the wheels of the human train?

Is there a confession here?

T. Replicants. Item.

4

2nd Judge. Article 12.9.9 allows Replicants to administer

justice in absence of humans summoned.

T. Sure… it’s just like rubbing sticks…

1J. Not all are Replicants. Only the twelve jurors.

T. My peers? Then where are my peers, my peers? . . . No!

You also are a Replicant. You opposite construe!

1J. That is not the prisoner’s concern.

Humans were summoned—failed to appear.

T. Apes refused to appear? Large ears—fat lips? Pickled or salted?

(Others.) He defames our leader! "We