22. THE GREAT DISSIPATION

i.

Briefest moss scatters a trance
of ripest aromas freely
from the wind of my fame love’s lash,

clashes like belated blown kites,

like winter’s chisel reappearing

in the star of your eyes’ light.

I spin    I spin    spin in that
centrifuge & let go of a world
I once knew with pincers unclasped.

As I head towards 33-½ 

I hang like Christ,
frozen like a glacier

but slowly melting (dialysis drip),
my spirit still flapping
like a lawless honey of voices 

along the earline of a parallel time-band,
& because words make or break
my esophagus swells & I hold up a mirror

to you & see all that I’ve yet to say
like a Red-Bellied Woodpecker’s
retracted tongue wrapped around its skull.



ii.

If the glorious Present sought to exhume the Past

I’d rapidly have to play possum with Myself

so as not to remember my own face in a mirror

so that the light that travels to the visual source

is interrupted                                       to vanish

before being gazed upon.