moaning and slobbering and
bellowing slowly with each expiration
with the trees buzzing, the glass
broke, the drooping flower, the candles gone away
because we are all poisoned,
beating the dry pulse of the decaying house where the fungi creeps as our own
because et ego in arcadia but a
perverse mockery, found not death but the dead void and I am inarticulate
he can’t tell what you saying, he
deef and dumb
but I can hear us all, only to moan
meaningless and sustained, hopeless and prolonged
just sound but all time and
injustice and sorrow made vocal
he can’t tell what you saying
but I can smell the sickness in
this stalemate of dust and desire, this dark cool breeze smelling of ammonia as
she is scrubbing, scrubbing what’s soaked clean through to murmuring bones, what’s
the smell of trees now matted with vines and briers dark
he can’t tell. hush up. can’t you
hush up. close your eyes.
but I can see and it was full of
stars, smooth bright shapes, moving oblivious to the sound of their own dry
pulse, desiccating peacefully in this too warm emptiness without peace, ticking
without any hands at all.
Moving parallel courses like
planets, fighting in the mirror, all pupil or all iris and dying aint all
there’s this.
I sees hit! I sees hit! I sees hit!
the long diminishing parade I am part of
but the voice that breathed, ain’t
you shamed of yourself, making all this racket, this moaning and slobbering and
bellowing? muscle-bound and inarticulate, too innocent to protect, but all time
and injustice and sorrow made vocal if I could say
get in. hush up. stay on you side.
I opened my mouth, inarticulate
voiceless misery
and I began to
cry.
