Triplet

Subject

Calligraphic remains of a Roman fort:
white staccato stones sink into grass
watching over the three-valley meet,
heft a legionnaires shield,
a red-jacket square and gatlings jammed
bloody bayonets fixed straight
straight contention-less narrow
as toes grip to razor wire.
May you be that square peg touted dove-tailed
interlocked braces? A magnificent
18th Century Dresser of an Information Act.
Slide yr toes further out
ignore temptations either side
boxed in, punchy, out-boxed
a door leading to an inner sanctum
heavy bouncers at each door ticking lists.
You could always say you knew Pandora
       intimately
ask to reach in and take out a white-rabbit
or a dove or an airliner with square windows,
or a rack, or two power grids colliding -
just make sure you've got your lower torso
when you leave. Now that the white -haired
old man has come out from behind the curtain
Dorothy would like to go home, please.

Suspect

Loopy-loo likes the triangle
the most unloved of the orchestra
       a single note
ting         ting         ting
Dangling her feet over the pyramid
she sharpens her toes.
We, like surveyors - say, Mason-Dixon,
Flanders, Burton - triangulate and
pin down the smallest error,
        a way to the stars
        srat eht ot yaw a
re-arranging points to make sense of circles
headless horsemen canter by on misty nights
an illicit couple check text messages
slide rules automagically glide into place
quill pens scratch positions of guidance
summing up yr position in the Great Matrix
what hiding place for rabbits when hawks know everything?
Chivy the slightest cocked hat, my fine young

puritan, greater accuracy within the framework,
whips to the bar, carved from chaos
Loopy Loo likes her frameworks handmade
self-hewn. She walks these mean streets
with 3 blind mice for guidance
and they're going to have a word
with the fine young puritan.
They have some pink triangles stapled
in their scrapbooks, three beats to the camp quartet.
As shadowed red, some Watneys, the 5th Division
moves over the start-line,
Kirk all flash and phasers set to to stun
reveals 12 beats to the brain
at the heart of Cheyenne mountain
spocks thoughts thump heady as mosfet gates trip, reset.
Kirk comes with
        Tough Love
        A Nice Cold Shower
get some new rules, invent yr own. The planet
is harsh on the surface but you'll survive:
knowledge is a skinned rabbit not a bad sonnet.
To everyone's surprise, the exterior
angles add up to more than 180°.
A wooden pony rocks loopy loo
to sleep, razors cannot cut the rope.
A sharp wind shakes her feet.

Citizen

A hyperbole of a bandstand rotating cornetts and tenor horns, raising their throats snuggle deep into the logs and flywheels my apple-cheeked child. But, wait, what's this, our clean-cut hero has reached the inner sanctum (to no one's surprise, he knew the matre'dee, went to school with the restauranteur, Pandora was his second love after Miss Peabody) and now carries Orak's mind, the Mechanised Integral, son of a difference engine laid bare, the priest hood undone, codes broken, seals cracked, safes unpicked. Glimpsing into the static, Po, his heart beating fast, opens his belly to a harsh wetlands winter, shining disks of water framed by reeds. From beneath the refracting surface, brooches swirl, grey eyes point skywards. Come Dance With Me on the infinite case - point two three arc, connect horizon, three-four and slide to vanishing - this is the loop  of the long now, choices, red, pickle hard, hard against the pendulum;s edge. Danegeld salt to no one. Hie to the long swing and away.