I 

What goes on, has been since gone, completely, neat
Now in their absence, one pus, marks the abscess:
Blistered cyst, which no dog licks or keeps receipt,
As clean as tongues, had they occurred in largesse.
The skin churns seasons, so as shadows retreat.
Why don’t they linger more, their bodies of sex?—
You flush the toilet once, and just then, once more
To be sure; of hair, whose music water whores. 

II 

No, not a harp, not wooden, not even dormant.
Music now arrives from a Hellenistic world—
Of bamboo; air whiffs air, you blow incessant
Into culms, its sweetest grass, your drifting world;
Or when, you bite needles to stitch a garment,
Buttons chatter your teeth, as stainless steel twirls
Your thread’s loose ends, nylon between crevices.
You flush the clog, once more, stand clear of faces. 

III 

Not lost to music, yes, the noise of music . . .
And do the trees still spring back, after the storm
Like bees buzzing, as the bulbs burst on? Tungstic
Switches, flicking: At the edge of dreamless forms—
Not at their insignificance, the night ticks
At its great distance from light; how the dark swarms
Disobedient, insistent in your hands— 
Bees, who never even knew, as wave, light bends. 

IV 

For vision’s sake, vision; for light’s sake, the dark:
Energy conserved is energy spent. Bees 
Know well, go on, before beginning to bark
Still, go blind in the dark. Springing back, the trees—
And here you are with the trees again; as sharks
They lurk, sometimes as rain, forecasted with ease
But raptures its own rhyme—which will sustain
As bodies, as the old masters have, of pain.

V 

Memory, you whisper, is the future’s past. 
Never, the ghost of its present. Measuring 
Distance controversially, you conclude first,
The longest distance beyond, then deducing,
‘Tween any two bodies, is time, unsurpassed.
Before claiming the body, as everything, 
You claim to know the body. How it wriggles
Pain, fixating a throat: A satchel of eels—

VI 

Curling, contorting shame, yes, shame, like a noose
When a throat’s done swallowing, almost thrumming
Music—thumps on its body, hypotenuse. 
No machinery, no apparatus sing 
Nonetheless, a glissando of bones seduces 
The dead, and yet, the living go marvelling:
How you claimed to know a body, once, ever.
How blood’s the great clot at the heart, forever. 

VII 

Moving onto light, as opposed to the function
Of light, you see all that’s remaining of light—
Refracted, distilled, having managed to shun
In time’s sheer nick; once time relented despite
Being allowed, for some parts hold more logic than
Their whole: Bread. Rows of sycamore. Hair. Starlight...
You think, does all pollen belong to tassels of corn?
Decamillenium of sex, much like porn. 

VIII 

You studied once, the function of light—as wave,
As image before wave, before particle, 
In every field of vision, it misbehaves. 
Look, how it ricochets irreversible: 
A pair of hands, not knowing where to put, caves
Together,—part; in a photograph, which mulls
Gravity in frame. That photograph of you
Taken by somebody you claimed you once knew.

IX 

This is the old way evidence comes to rest.
As fruition hesitates to find light again— 
Which must graze your body, claiming to address
Parts of your whole, which in turn poses no vain
Claim, none against an insistence of hands, meshed.
You’ve become more generous with grief, campaign
Almost as much as they do. Life, as marriage,
You’ve seen, seldom beholds true, like a mirage. 

X 

Soft, in tandem deliberation, you smile, 
Place one hand over thighs, laugh funny, but wait:
At the root of cadence, structure belies style;
All latticed theories that life approximates—
You, who once perished style, now return to style.
The horse’s mane, indistinguishable from hate,
Sways at the stroke of new dawn. In empty rooms
Only duty dictates, unbeknownst to doom. 

XI 

Others believe it or not, for belief’s sake, 
The same You endorses barter, a system, 
An exchange. You who, remain a pimp of steaks:
Bargain a twig of curry leaves, take wisdom
In the plausible music, openly ache— 
Spending an hour with whores, or more, like viscum
Licks barks on pavonine nights; memories rue
colour-blind to you, blue ceasing to be blue. 

XII 

Yes, for those are the nights stirring stupendous
To resist being spent, being merely another
Night at the end of sleep, its long exodus: 
Corridors green—children still learning to cipher,
Or swim, or dance but bully clean; thus 
These are those nights, not nearly enough, murmur
You, who once dreamt hunger, dreamt fruit, now relent:
Now dreams bird—to an appetite, clairvoyant.

XIII 

Don’t fail, you whisper again, choose your own bird.
Never more sure of your own body, as you pick
Chickens, young almost as youth, you remember
January many years ago—Autistic, 
Grass-fed, in winters sub-zero, you once heard;
How they’re cooked down to bones, how ironic:
Mould like clay, by themselves, a pair of hands sculpt—
Dismantle bodies, limb-by-limb, now get burnt. 

XIV 

Soon, the largest organ of the body, cling 
Films, no, not protection, not membrane; as fat
On plates. And all this skin when renders to sing—
You trick your arms, in belief, before mouths ate,
To screech, as will do limbs, the grease off the sink,
Cartilage then meat; hunger is hunger’s bait:
Arms cleave throats, that you, so eager in business
Tell yourself, there’s no shame in eating like this.