Flesh Alive

Rise up, carcass—march!

Naught is new beneath the jaundiced sun:

last of the last of Louis' gold,

light is sliced through clean

beneath flecks and films of time.

The heart's lock cracks

a silk thread

a trip-wire

ribbon of blood.

 

Once waves crash silence ashore,

signs of love in horsehair black—

heavens smoother than your eyes,

neck atwitch with pride.

My life in hallways

from which watch sway the harvests of death,

all avid hands mold balls of smoke

as heavy as pillars of the universe—

heads empty

hearts nude

hands perfumed.

 

Monkeys' tentacles snatch at clouds:

in the wrinkles of those grimaces,

a straight length tightens

a nerve winces

the sea stuffed.

 

Love—

the sour ire of the bitter smile of death.

= = = = =

A Dark Quiet House in Le Mans

 

The sisters in the bed they share,

alert beneath the blanket thin with warmth,

awake to hear the silent house:

 

the sounds must soon arrive downstairs—

someone must enter downstairs, making sounds,

then can that silence be replacet.

 

Their breathing could not now be heard:

they'd washt and talkt before they got to bed,

they only waited now to hear.

 

Shuddering door, voices, clumsy steps—

'most every silence soon would be replacet—

shrieking squealing stairs three floors below:

 

the Lancelin ladies, murdered, then would greet

those entering the dark and quiet house.