ossuary I

I lived and loved, some might say,
in momentous times,
looking back, my dreams were full of prisons

in our narcotic drifting slumbers,
so many dreams of course were full of prisons,
mine were without relief

in our induced days and our wingless days,
my every waking was incarcerated,
each square metre of air so toxic with violence

the atmospheres were breathless there,
the bronchial trees were ligatured
with carbons

some damage I had expected, but no one
expects the violence of glances, of offices,
of walkways and train stations, of bathroom mirrors

especially, the vicious telephones, the coarseness of
daylight, the brusque decisions of air,
the casual homicides of dresses

what brutal hours, what brutal days,
do not say, oh find the good in it, do not say,
there was virtue; there was no virtue, not even in me

let us begin from there, restraining metals
covered my heart, rivulets
of some unknown substance transfused my veins

at night, especially at night, it is always at night,
a wall of concrete enclosed me,
it was impossible to open my eyes

I lived like this as I said without care,
tanks rolled into my life, grenades took root
in my uterus, I was sickly each morning, so dearly

what to say,
life went on around me,
I laughed, I had drinks, I gathered with friends

we grinned our aluminum teeth,
we exhaled our venomous breaths,
we tried to be calm in the invisible architecture

we incubated, like cluster bombs,
whole lives waiting, whole stellar regions,
discoveries of nebulae, and compassion

from the cities the electric rains pierced us,
the ceaseless bitter days folded like good linen,
the phosphorous streets gave off their harmful lights

we bit our fingernails to blue buttons,
we staggered at the high approach of doorways,
plunged repeatedly to our deaths only to be revived

by zoos, parades, experiments, exhibits, television sets,
oh we wanted to leave, we wanted to leave
the aspirated syllables and villages, the skeletal

dance floors, the vacant, vacant moons that tortured us,
when the jailers went home and the spectators drifted
away and the scientists finished their work

like a bad dog chained to an empty gas station,
for blue blue nights,
I got worse and worse, so troubling

I would fall dead like a specimen,
at the anthropometric spectacles
on the Champ de Mars, the Jardin d’Acclimatation

the mobile addresses of the autopsy fields,
though I could see no roads,
I was paid for losing everything, even eyesight

I lived in the eternal villages, I lived like a doll,
a shaggy doll with a beak, a bell, a red mouth,
I thought, this was the way people lived, I lived

I had nights of insentient adjectives,
shale nights, pebbled nights, stone nights,
igneous nights, of these nights, the speechlessness

I recall, the right ribs of the lit moon,
the left hip of the lit moon,
what is your name they asked, I said nothing

I heard the conspiratorial water,
I heard the only stone, I ate her shoulder,
I could not hear myself, you are mistaken I said to no one

the chain-link fences glittered like jewellery,
expensive jewellery, portable jewellery,
I lost verbs, whole, like the hull of almonds

after consideration you will discover, as I,
that verbs are a tragedy, a bleeding cliffside, explosions,
I’m better off without, with vermillion, candles

this bedding, this mercy,
this stretcher, this solitary perfectable strangeness,
and edge, such cloth this compass

of mine, of earth, of mourners of these
reasons, of which fairgrounds, of which theories
of plurals, of specimens of least and most, and most

of expeditions,
then travels and wonders then journeys,
then photographs and photographs of course

the multiplications of which, the enormity of this,
and drill-bits and hammers and again handcuffs,
and again rope, coarse business but there

some investigations, then again the calculations,
such hours, such expansions, the mind dizzy
with leaps, such handles, of wood, of thought

and then science, all science, all murder,
melancholic skulls, pliant to each fingertip,
these chromatic scales, these calipers the needle

in the tongue, the eyes’ eye, so
whole diameters, circumferences, locutions,
an orgy of measurements, a festival of inches

gardens and paraphernalia of measurements,
unificatory data, curious data,
beautiful and sensuous data, oh yes beautiful

now, of attractions and spectacles of other sheer forces,
and types in the universe, the necessary
exotic measurements, rarest, rarest measuring tapes

a sudden unificatory nakedness, bificatory nakedness,
of numbers, of violent fantasms
at exhibitions again, of walks, of promenades

at fairs with products, new widgets, human widgets,
with music, oh wonders,
the implications

then early in this life, like mountains,
already pictures and pictures, before pictures,
after pictures and cameras

their sickness, eye sickness, eye murder,
murder sickness, hunger sickness,
this serendipity of calculators, of footprints

with fossils, their wingspan of all time,
at crepuscules’ rare peace time, if only,
like water, in daytime, no solace, so, so different

from solitude, all solitude, all madness,
so furious, so numerous, the head, the markets,
the soles of the feet, so burnt, so thin

and the taste, so meagre, so light-headed,
the cloud flashes, the lightning geometry,
the core of reflectivity so vastly, vastly vast

the wait now, lumens of aches, such aches,
the horizontal and the vertical aches of lightning,
its acoustics, loud pianos, percussive yet

strings and quartets, multicellular runnels yet and yet,
the altitude of the passageway, its precipitation
and grand arithmetic, the segments

the latitudes of where, where and here,
its contours, its eccentric curvatures,
so presently, angular and nautical, all presently

just fine my lungs, just fine,
hypothesis absolutely, but just fine,
why lungs, strange theory

oh yes and the magnitude of jaundice, trenches,
like war, continuous areas and registers, logarithms
so unexplainable, rapid scales, high notes

besides, anyway so thermal, atmospheric,
wondrous aggressions, approximately here,
elaborate like radiation and seismic, yes all over

the bodies’ symptoms of algebraic floods,
tiredness for one, weariness actually,
weary with magnetic embryos

petals, yes petals of sick balm please, now yes,
for my esophagus, analgesics of indigo,
of wires, of electric shocks, why eucalyptus leaves

of course lemon grass, labernum, please, lion’s claw,
remedies of cloves, bitter bark,
still birdless though, worldless

asthma with blueness, then music,
gardens truthfully, truthfully nauseous with
tonsured numbers, volumes of fibres, embroidery

and hair nets of violence, blue,
like machine guns, of course knives, extensions
of blueness, all right then wherever

same radiations, lines in the forehead,
tapers, electrodes, invisible to the eyes,
official hammers and corkscrews, official grass

official cities now for appearances after all this,
all these appearances, generous, for certain
scraggly, wan, and robust appearances

assignments and hidden schedules of attendance,
a promise of blindness, a lover’s clasp of
violent syntax and the beginning syllabi of verblessness