Matthew Platakos


                                             ecologies of darkness

                              (1)
end-times require
write or flight response—
               50% of poems are birds
               50% of birds are poems

                              (2)
final flock takes final form—
v-formation carves segments of sun
in a shadow tango over the crater 
formerly known as sydney harbour

                              (3)
human pollutants broke the ecliptic 
human obliquity liquified nature
now we’re disintegrating drachmas
on the floor of a chemical sea

                              (4)
at the moment of helios-apocalyptica 
earth the hades-hole whirlpooled into itself
               european bucolic became
               deoxyribonucleic—
               acid rain licks spiral’s lips

                              (5)
final transmission from near the mariana trench—
we will fight cataclysm w/ our poems 
until our fleshy vessels are torpedoed
we will submerge as solar radiation 
terminates skyscrapers & plasticity
& when skies are clear of human remnants
               all poems will be birds once again
 


                                             poetics of architecture | architectonics of verse

Axiom of stone | axiom of language—
ancient ground broken into new geometries
 
ancient verse, ancient words
broken into new lines | constructing
 
life in stanza-rooms | disrupting
entropy with epics & edifices
 
concreted stasis ad infinitum
after humanity’s last bated breath.

To dream this dream takes the tongue of fire
of a liquid prisoner in the realm of glass
 
simultaneity of poetry & space
lyrical chemistry | towers of Babel
 
on every city block | reaching stars
in the age of nucleosynthesis.
 
Inner rhythms & myriad tongues
ingenuity of stone | eyes for colours & light

ferro-concrete imagination | material realisation
revolution of human touch | rush for progress

rush for lush lives in art & dwelling in a tomorrow
while reading all yesterday’s lines in polytope rooms

caesurae partition rhymes | walls partition lives
word-bricks are laid | cemented in infinite rhythm.

Matthew Platakos is a student and poet living on Gadigal and Wangal land (Sydney).

 
 

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