348. Cosine Alone

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SIGN: HYPOTENUSE

we stretch the sign
the word the notice

we make the sign
the word the symbol

we say the sign
the sloping meaning

we build the sign
for fall and rising

Tenuous Hippolyta on the great and muscular Amazon
stanchioned thigh full deep in the pirahna’d water
comes girdled to the max, the hourglass of her body counting
the time until she cannot bear children anymore or even
their screaming out to Theseus and the younger Aneus
to come not to take the promised girdle, for the waters that would
spill from her body in cascades of white white flesh, dear cold alabaster,
would wrench the people from their heathen heaven and heave them
into drenched perdition, and so it was that Theseus did clutch
dear square-toothed Hyppolyta to his chest, place his mouth against
her willing mouth, open his belt and rise, hard, into her until
the unseen arc of his manhood spilled in as he made a second entrance
into her body with a knife tearing her open and her life out
of her so quick that she immediately fell dead and bleeding
to the ground, her blood spilling as his white seed spilled on her,
and he twisted the sacred girdle, chalice-maker of her living form,
from her corpse, and that he did for the ninth labor of his trials.

these signs are
recommended by
the maker of signs

these signs are
understood by
the keeper of signs

these signs are
broken by
the interpreter of signs


CONSIGN: ADJACENT

we add the image
the scene the seen

we paint the image
the scene the sight

we see the image
the flattened vision

we build the image
from what we have seen

Add Jason to the scene, shoeless on one foot from the river’s taking away,
anxious to be the king he always was, saved from a birthed death
by the simple action of being called stillborn, yet he took to the quest,
along with everyone argonautical, to find the fleece of the golden sheep,
first to Lemnos to make the Minyae and leave the pungent women behind,
to the realm of good king Cyzicus only to return at night and, in confusion,
to kill their friend, and to Colchis to perform three tasks for the fleece,
to plow the earth with fire-breathing oxen, his body covered in a protective
glaze, to seed that earth with dragon’s teeth and vanquish the warriors
who rose from those seeds, and then to snatch the fleece from a sleepless
dragon given to sleep when strewn with a potion, returning home
only to abandon his love for another, to be damned by the gods, to be
crushed by that ship that bore him across the seas and die lonely and alone.

this image is
peddled by
the painter of pictures

this image is
muddled by
the archivist of pictures

this image is
twisted by
the translator of images


TARGET: OPPOSITE

we engage the math
the measure the gauge

we figure the math
the slope the angle

we make the math
the straightened slope

we bridge the math
from ways of seeing signs

Imposing Odysseus, King of Ithaca, and traveler across the wastes of time,
left with twelve ships from the war on the way back to his kingdom and
to Penelope, and first all his ships but one were destroyed, and that ship
wrecked and all the men but Odysseus die, and he became a man who must
return to stop those wooing his wife, being himself returned at night
and asleep to a world where his wife is surrounded by suitors he must kill
as he must kill anyone who came to replace him, as if a number in
a sequence, as if a pattern in a plaid, as if a set of three things come together.

this math is
vended by
the writer of figures

this math is
performed by
the magician of figures

this math is
torqued by
the geometrician of figures


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