nouspique.com

1.
I tried to invent a machine
that would help me to feel.
For materials, all I had
were solid sheets of steel
and bits of wire and string.

2.
I would still write this even if
I were the last person alive:
projection of the self
to create the other.
But there must be
a real someone there.
You must be real.
Otherwise.
Yes, other, wise.

3.
If you are born a woman
then (automatically)
you have a cause.
You can own a Lear jet
and still
you are marginalized.

I used to think all it took
was a well-turned phrase.
The written word was an
act of technical prowess,
like an erection
or a hook shot,
but I had no cause
and it showed.
Which (by the by)
may well explain
why the unmoved mover
(causa causans)
fled the void and
into our world, and
(in a raging flourish)
confirmed his impotence.

4.
The darkness swallows me up and
I am swept along inside the belly.
Leviathan dives. When it emerges
from the deep, it sprays me
onto the platform like cetal vomitus.
There I gather for a time then
step onto the ascending escalator:
every day, the mythic journey to
the centre of everyday where
I fall sacrifice to the ordinary,
blood atonement for the commonplace.

There is a violence at the heart
of a rote life that watches
over and, like the moon,
calm and gibbous, tears out
the eyes to push away boredom.
Once there was a peace in the still
hours of the night but, suckled so long
at a teat that delivers beyond
need, I am reduced to a
pathetic response: conditioned
to want without limit.

A supernova could light the night
in reds and golds and proclaim the
death of stars or the birth of gods, yet
I would still sense the guiling call to
rip at my flesh simply to feel.
Into the boundless sky, it would fade,
like wonder into the dank chambers
of my heart, or I would stuff it
down into the dark, into the belly
of Leviathan, and ride home for supper.

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