Acid balances

"Dark in hue, the head is still full of life and
more beatiful than the best portraits by the world's
greatest artists, since it is the man himself we see."
- P. V. Glob, The Bog People

The countdown filled your eyes,
convex paraboloids flexing to resolve
the metastatic future. A wall moving forward,
absorbing all sound, light, odour
confidence & form. A porthole leaking shadows
of nudes neuter behind the wavering pane.
To be digging one day for fuel
& come face to face with this distortion
this parody of possibility, this imposter
tactless genitals deaf to the
throbbing of the engines' love-calls
lined up at the liquor store
in a peaty T-shirt at noon this Sunday
Or today, a man gone on spin cycle
into the newly found old sound
of bend & slice exertions
hand missing hand against the green
bodies wandering slaps
the spine rippling against insecticide …
Two in a buggy makes an anthology
wheeling alongside the great divide
we eject into different tempos
though infections are bracketed
the anatomies decay with each copy
cite pollen in his stomach
a species common still
not food exactly, but a totem antigen
to whip in the harvest
with a performance of our own permanence.
But like everything, like white elephants
emerging from the grey
carnivorous anagrammatical desires may reveal
the guilty dreamer's characteristic tooth decay
brought into focus by a probing question
"who designates the nonsense?" you spew
the love that is simple and cool
between this treaty and no treaty
neither stillness nor perfection tails
forgivenesses aping vocable illnesses
losing a voice at the speech of another's
carnivalesque modulations in blood
A gallant friend done up in the style
of the painter at whose funeral
the Kaiser walked behind the coffin.