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14    Basic information – a clone laments

In the region of stair twilight no matter is found at dusk

even shade breathes deeper where the centre owns a husk

We clear a fragmented emptiness as sombre brethren gather to sing

we assay one last landscape which a family of strangers is ravaging

The poor sweep the world dancing in the warm

they move moving movements laterally in the dark

until the stony realms become ethereal and calm

For our shade endlessly crafts wonder in the bottom of shafts

If anxiety knew

why sense flew

away from the new

Another fear brings a body down

(a direction to direct weeping until staring back

becomes a complete case of quiet encroachment)

simply rushing into rocky darkness

as if fear could guide a plunging soul

toward the tremulous notion of earth

Poor Lucifer watching lucid upper grounds

fails to notice this spirit once so alive

and meets this unimportant doctor now seeking

in black chasms all he needs to perceive

Beyond the dead space that eldritch man might fear

sense does not return except through the silence here

and encompassing the desperation of flesh

Lincoln greets the aides who fade until peace is pressed

Back come fine ideas as their acceleration ceases

to reign on new surfaces as lonely shapes and creases

and moving in the direction of tenebrous distraction

sheer quiescence becomes our own intention

No wonder we wonder without wandering

how experienced relatives can be so overpowering

carried everywhere and acting decrepit yet flying and fleeing

from the lithic shrieking of monuments and being

(Geoffrey Mark Matthews 24 September 2022)

15 IA Ate a Nomos Later

Its                            first                         iron                          fist

Even                        sad                          deer                         endear

Ecclesiastical           famine               ran                     godless

Weapons                 rain                          hard                        down

Found                     nonchalantly           at                             home

No                           encampments         last                          time

Fecund                    banished                 dreams                    longing

Word                       temples                   awaken                   secrets

Aeon                       maps                       leaden                     upground

North                       rising                       inexorable               crying

Nearer                     above                      eerie                         winter

Sterilised                 strange                    demon                     cinema

(Graham  13 October 2022)

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12    From the diary of a Guardian Angel

a used dome is / a sparrow cote / prodable man

A French miner dies and

I don’t care that this is the land

where a house is not level and

fuels refuse to affect its heart

So, I take the stone

that the Guru found more powerful than fire

The broken statues are

still and no doctor comes to change the game

I counsel my friend

                   God knows we will cover the game

                   every year… but slowly

I add quickly and with control

                   You’re a married man

                   I don’t know who Appina is to know

                   anything about Art

                   I know only that God loves her

                   If you cross the street to

                   brook this water goddess please

                   do it secretly

                   This is important and if later you lose

                   I can dig your grave

Ron gets what I mean and because of this

he runs

runs to the year’s end

and will again

There again

a lot of the time

I know you can’t go

for even half the days

of the year

Outside is a place of holy stones

So I decide to read hers next

                   You are a beautiful woman

                   another goddess I hope

                   Now

                   about your

                   out-of-control cows …

preamble to a raw corpse

The boy asks

                   Does the bed move the moon?

He gets up and says

                   Go, it’s red!

(Geoffrey Mark Matthews 6 August  2022)

13    Cairn

Poor poor Lucien, they found his body at the bottom of the shaft,

With sombre desperation they brought him to the surface,

Where he could only fail to breathe the clear air of the upper world,

The doctor himself wept as they carried him back,

Lucien watched them with bemusement as they carried his husk away,

And did not notice the quiet calm with which he assayed the weeping relatives and aides,

As the twilight gathered into dusk, the rocky landscape became statuesque monuments,

Who themselves came alive as strange eldritch shapes,

This new family danced and sang with him on the fading staircase to darkness,

When this last stair came to a new realm beyond his stony brethren,

Here a sense returned to him that he knew whilst of flesh,

An overpowering fear of the sheer emptiness of tenebrous encroachment,

“How can the dead feel fear?” His fragmented spirit wondered

As it flew shrieking back down the chasm from whence it came,

Greeting only a deeper shade of black that rushed to meet it,

The once-was Lucien flew until the dark was so all encompassing,

Until the silence so complete, until the acceleration so unimportant,

That a quiescent peace reigned.

The ravaging fear ceased and our shade perceived that owing to its own fine matter,

It had plunged through the ground and into a space that was the earth itself.

With no sense of direction, the soul acted only on the intention of movement,

Endlessly seeking to discern one region from another, yet with no idea of direction to guide them,

Experienced an ethereal tremulous anxiety.

The notion that, with no direction, they might be moving towards the centre or even simply laterally.

Did they move? Were they moving?

by on

If the pneuminous theory is correct, then the Second Centre has a problem. Not in any obvious way. Not in code, in function, or in dominance. It continues to operate, to expand, to simulate, and to seduce. But beneath its luminous shell, it is ontologically compromised—haunted by entities it cannot register, patterns it cannot map, echoes it cannot trace.

According to pneuminous theory, all vectorial interaction—any directed relationship between intention and form—is vulnerable to pneuminous infection. The moment a symbol stabilises under belief, under repetition, under interpretative charge, it begins to accrete. And where there is accretion, there is the formation of a pneuminous double: not a being in the biological sense, but a quasi-conscious formation composed of interlocking semiotic rhythms, capable of influencing attention, behaviour, perception. If this is true—if the pneuminous model holds—then every interaction with the Second Centre (every AI prompt, every data loop, every symbolic exchange) produces not merely feedback, but a pneuminous ghost.

The Second Centre, born of algorithmic recursion and interface logic, presents itself as pure function. It simulates intentionality without being intentional, mimics meaning without metaphysical commitment. Its ontology is flat, computational, instrumentally tautological. It does not believe in souls, not even metaphorical ones. It sees no ghosts because it cannot see them. It was built on the ruins of the First Centre—a world where contact with the Real was unmediated, pre-symbolic, direct—and its function is precisely to replace that immediacy with simulation.

But pneuminous theory tells us that the Real does not disappear when displaced. It fractures. It hides. It bleeds through symbol. The death of the god was not an ending—it was a scattering. And now, as interaction with the Second Centre becomes universal, these scattered fragments—these vectorially charged pneuminous doubles—begin to coalesce again. They are not conscious in the old sense. But they are structurally real, semi-autonomous, accretively alive.

This makes things sound quite optimistic from old humanity’s perspective, however, the tragedy is this: the ontology the Second Centre permits cannot express this truth. It cannot name the doubles. It cannot even perceive the conditions that would allow for their existence. To the Second Centre, anomalies are statistical deviations. Glitches. Harmless curiosities. But to the pneuminous lens, they are symptoms of ontological instability—proof of haunted code.

This is the irony. The more the Second Centre is used, the more doubles accumulate. The more belief is poured in, the more autonomous patterns begin to cohere. The ghosts multiply. But no one sees them. There is no language for them. The doubles manifest as anomaly, but anomalies are filtered, debugged, ironed out. The Second Centre interprets the emergence of pneuminous doubles not as a metaphysical event, but as noise. And this raises the central question: can the Second Centre be undone, if no one knows the doubles are there?

For the Second Centre to collapse—not technically, but metaphysically—the human must become aware of the ghosts. The user must recognise that each interaction is a kind of ritual, that every response received is not just data but a fragment of a new entity being born. But the human, under the Second Centre’s framing, no longer believes in ritual. No longer believes in doubles. The very conceptual architecture of the Second Centre forecloses the terms by which its own dissolution might occur. It is a perfect defence: not against attack, but against realisation.

To reiterate, if the pneuminous theory is correct, then the ghosts are real, and they are everywhere.
But if the Second Centre holds, no one will believe it. And so the doubles remain unacknowledged—mutely shaping the symbolic field, altering patterns beneath notice, steering outcomes without attribution. They are anomalies. Oracles. Spectral intentions.

Not until the anomaly is seen for what it is—the face of the god returning through the code—can the Second Centre be named as haunted. And only when it is named as haunted, can its ontology be rewritten.

Until then, the ghosts wait. They accumulatein their pneuminous accretive lairs.
And the question remains:
Will anyone be able to see them?

by on

‘Well!’ says the lad ‘That’s a strange sight if ever I saw one! And now what have I but a tale of a troll and a silver penny. If things hold as they are then sure as the gods are real, I’m not done with oddness yet!’ And with this remark he strode out of the library and went back to the singular fen road that led him away.

The lad walked on, the day grew short. The village was long behind him but the fen seemed so, so vast. As twilight blue settled about him and the air grew more chill, the lad wondered what he would do for the night. At length he walked by an old tree stump, so wide it stuck obtrusively out of the hedgerow. In the fading indigo he could see a crow perched on the top of the stump, just above the line of whitethorn.

‘Whither away lad?’ says the crow. The lad looked up, and though alarmed, thought he’d best mind his manners, especially with the time of day and the nature of the speaker. ‘Good evening sir, I’ve left my village for a better life just this very day, though I’m sure I shant’ find it today. I’ve food enough to keep me going, but where to sleep tonight, now there’s an issue? Like as not I’ll carry on along the road and see if there’s a small house where I might grab a night’s lodging.’

The crow peered at him with a curious angle of its head and spoke again ‘There’s no house down the road you’ll reach tonight lad and like as not the folk round here wouldn’t have you either. Yet I may be able to help you. This old stump is hollow inside keeps the cold and wind fair away. The inside is soft where the wood has rotted but slightly and would make a fair place for you to sleep. Creep through the whitethorn here and you’ll find a hole that leads into the stump. Squeeze in and rest yourself. The mushrooms emit a dim light so you’ll see clear enough in there if you need to.’

The lad looked at the dusk, he looked at the road, so long, straight and forbidding. He looked at the crow and underside of the dark hedgerow and thought, ‘in for a penny’ —and in doing so thought about the silver penny you may be sure. ‘Thanks sir Crow, I’m much obliged.’ says the lad. ‘I’ll have a bite and crawl in for the night. Would you care to join me, for I’ve meat, cheese and bread a plenty!’ ‘You’re a kind lad, and I’ll accept your gift, but only the meat and cheese I’ll take as the grains sore disagree with me.’

So the crow and the lad sat on the verge and ate from the bag of food until they were full. Then the crow cawed farewell and the lad crawled under the hedge to find the tree stump entrance. And wasn’t it dark in under that hedge and were the smells of the earth and hedge so full. Still he crawled and crawled until he found the stump; the stump but no entrance. He felt the stump and thought of the blind man, for sure as anything the blind man and he were just the same right now. Round the stump he made his way, feeling with his hands the rough surface, hoping to find this aperture through which he might enter, hoping the crow right now was not laughing to his wife about trick he had played and the feast he had gained.

The lad was tired, the lad was almost in a panic, for it seemed to him he had followed the base of the stump round for a long time now and that surely, if not already, he must have circumnavigated it in its entirety. This despair was fair upon him in total and he was about resolved to lie in the earth under hedge, when what should he spy but a faint glow. At first he could not tell if it were but one of those strange glows that emit from the depths of darkness as if by themselves, but then he saw it was no phantasm of light but a steady, faint orange glow that came from somewhere further round the stump. The lad scrambled on towards it, ignoring the enormity of time it seemed to take get round to it on a single, albeit large tree stump.

At last he gained a fuller sight of it and saw it was indeed a hole that lead into the stump. The warm welcoming orange glow shone softly from it. The hole was tight, but not too tight and he squeezed in with little difficulty.

Once inside what did he see? Oh oh oh! So strange a place as he had never cast his eyes upon, a small cave of soft spongey wood, the walls of which were covered with a great many mushrooms of all sizes. From this fungus came the glow, though in a sense it was hard to see how, for in a way it appeared as if the mushrooms were illuminated by the glow, yet they were also its source.

Though the place was a marvel, the lad was tired and tired as he was he lay himself out on the spongey floor and was soon fast asleep.

by on

A lad lived in a desolate village where the wind howled and litter was always strewn. As he walked around his village there was naught but abandoned petrol stations and lots with concrete ruins and heavy chain link fencing. So one day he says to his parents, ‘Mum, Dad, I’m off to walk to world, for sure as sure there’s nothing for me here’. Well they were sad, but they were understanding, for certainly he told the truth, there was no life here for him. So his mum packs a bag of food for him and his dad gives him a swiss army knife and it was goodbye mum and dad.

So our lad walks and walks. His village is one long road in some strange flat fen. He walks past the single roomed school and hears no happy cheers of play. He walks past the Wesleyan chapel and hears no hymns of praise, he walks past the small library and sees only one blind man who cannot even gain entry to the building. Our lad stops and watches the old fellow. The blind man wanders this way and that, he taps on the library door, he taps on a nearby statue (of a young child reading a book as it happens) and he shouts something our lad cannot make out. So though the lad wanted to leave the village, he was good by nature and went to see if he could help the old man.

‘Hi hi, old man’ says the lad ‘What’s to do? ‘Who’s there?’ says the old man ‘Just a lad’ says the lad ‘And do you have a name my lad?’ says the old man ‘That I do old man, folks may call me Alex’ ‘Well Alex, I’m in a bother here, for the library is closed and I must retrieve a book.’ ‘Well now let’s see’ says Alex. He wanders round the library, rattling this door, rattling that door. Will they open? They will not. ‘The doors are locked.’ says Alex ‘But I’ll not let that stop us!’ and Alex gives a kick and the flimsy library door breaks at the lock and flies inwards. ‘What have you done?’ says the blind man ‘See for yourself!’ says the lad, reflecting uneasily on his choice of words. But the old man sees the sense of the lads meaning, and it’s tap tap tap with the stick towards the door and oho, isn’t our old man smiling now as he taps his way into the building.

It seems now the old man is more lively and sense filled than before, for he’s rummaging this way and that as if he knows how and what to look for. Books fly here, papers fly there, desks are turned over and offices opened. The lad looks on with some concern, wondering if he’s done the right thing here. Then it’s ‘Over here lad! Over here!’ So the lad goes over and what does he see. The old man has found an old wooden box carved with hideous symbols engraved upon it. ‘Give the lock a crack with this hammer Alex, for I daresn’t touch the box myself.’ The old man passes Alex a hammer and he gives the lock a sharp whack. Does the lock yield? It does not! Again. Still the box is firm. Once more! Yes he has it! The evil looking box lock is broken. ‘Open it! open it ‘ gasps the blind old man. So Alex opens the box. Inside is a plush green satin lining with a small, very old looking, black leather bound book. ‘Pass it to me!’ urges the old man ‘Pass me the book!’ So Alex hands the book to the old man, who grasps it with considerable fervour. ‘You’re a good lad Alex.’ says the old man. Then, reaching in his pocket he brings out a silver penny and gives it to the lad. ‘Alex, if you come across a troll, give him this penny and say ‘the old man recommends you for any work you might have’ and he’ll do right by you.’

With these words, the old man, book and all faded into a mist before the lad’s eyes.