lovesick

POEM - a lyric deriving from a cut-up text

Franz von Stuck “The Kiss of the Sphinx”

Beneath Hounds' Cave 
we test angelic days,
above these many peaks
summon the demon nights 

Skin's command as it were I obey:
the urgent sex which scrambles
dark luxuriances of the head,
bayings a dog would yowl at moons

Apparatus of analysis: 
words puff swirls of dust in rooms,
quotes chunk in the sweat of thighs

Research into this flesh, 
                                            which merely

these my desires all disturb:
bump-bump arteries, intrepid heart

In the harsh menagerie of my bed
fingers become new emotions

and muscles a catastrophe...

These infested havoc lips of yours
in all the lustrous hours offer
a nothing, a sweet void murder, 

an accumulation among limbs

My eyes they were not jungled then?
I infuse into these sickened sockets
whole futures, a wildness shrivelled dry

Sinews stretch, twirl and tangle
the jump and form of me and you
in the closed room, in the close air,
in dust that settles among words  

we speak in short exhalations, 
whorled syllables on windowsills

Feel my almost pearly being  
chewed. 
                 Creeping teeth consume

what no thief could ever snatch,
crushed like a miser's flower,
and I in nothing limbs am beautiful

Our feet step on the insubstantial, 

kick a way through colourless rainbows 
stretched across the sky's null clouds.

no compassion now and no release 
    /                                                 /
full compassion now and full release

---

Deriving from a cut-up of some intense texts from Elizabeth Smart’s 1945 book, her autofiction novel, or prose poem, or whatever you’d call something so intense, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.

Note blurb from Angela Carter which played a big part in my buying the book back in the 80s.

Thanks to Deer Girl for chats, though the resulting mess is entirely my own work and she can’t be blamed for any of that.

Still, here’s to poetic experimentation and such…