The Buttoned Wings of the Asymmetrical Man

The Asymmetrical Man is a burst barrel. He plays piano keys of splintered laths.

My unguarded heart

70 years ago, at dawn ...

Death as a Word

Robert Desnos has often tried out death as a word

                                                              – Louis Aragon

For I will sleep

With my eyes openblind

To the swirling columns of dust

My mouth will not open

To the song’s breath moan

The electric ringing

That calls across the carpet

For I will sleep

Between each heartbeat

Soft under the nails

A step louder than my step

In the soft dirt

Into my ears

Drip the murmured cries

Of animals under the myrtle leaves

Snorting their desires

The sky is bleached into sand

Behind my eyes of ash

And the creeping vines

Are dry against my tongue

I am the weight of a sleeping thought

I speak the silent words of a dream

And they catch in the twisted locks

And fences of my garden

As they whistle away

On a flight of powdered air

I fade into one lost word

The shadow of a sun long set

Burned into my closing eye

That is always open

The wires ring with bells

Behind the dark eyes of my dreams

And the mouth still open

Awaiting a word

All I remember

Catches like wool tufts

On the barbs that hold us back

And I will sleep

In a gown

Knitted from the burrs of our past

For I will sleep

While caravans cross the horizon

Of my hollow eyes

And I will see their journeys

And I will be known

By the elephant train

I will be known

By the wide arms of my open-eyed sleep

That will not end

The Dissected Man Transforms

The autorevelation of torrefaction

The Self-Consuming Library

A black cape sweeps out

The lights of the horizon,

Leaving behind books

That explode with their own outrage.

They burn from within

Text blisters into flame

Before the covers even move.

A chiffon swish

A rustle of curtains

Across the leather of the reading rooms.

A figure slipped away

Moments before the shelves erupted,

His only gift

The scabrous and destructive catalogue.

This is no rescue.

This is transfiguration.

 (for DH-M)

With the spring came a premonitory bellow calling the crows to the carrion-to-be

On falling down the stitched leather rabbit-hole

The Tale of the Dissected Man