PERSON

 

 

Ruins on ruins. Nothing is sanded away. A thing coiled to strike.

Whose walls bore intricate figures, once. We stand overlooking the

Noise and an absolute stillness. Person telling the world.

Cold in the ditch. On which others will write.

 

 

Person returns

To the window. Immerses

Herself in the world, a mirror

Is a mirror is a streetlamp. Under the streetlamp, what solace

Universe cursed. Who sees the event

And goes on seeing in spades. A light burns. A lamp.

In the Faustian darkness

Sorrowful, jealous, bereft. Absurd. Alone

Alone

Delirious. Even diseased. Abandoned here, by the road.

The world

Regrets that it cannot attend. Person is

 

Person regrets.

 

 

In the series of rooms. The glistening rail. The things polished. And her

And her and her and her

In which objects repeat. A mirror is a mirror is a

Nullified view. Beneath which the stuff,

Possessed. Now stands at a rail and observes.

The queen gives a head. Its parts. One enters

The scene bearing Person. Repeat.

 

 

It is Person retelling the world. She sings

To Be Person Against a Blue Sky. What it means

To be used. A device, an event

Of civilization, curbed. Who harbored a light

In Ur? Who harbored a rigorous

Person, who carves with a stick.

The same intricate figures

Shadow the walls. The same dance. Nothing sanded is

Blown from the sky. A plane, spiraling

 

 

The dead are dead. We descend

To no flicker of light. If you keep moving

Down. If you hold it upright. She arrives

In whose figures are

Chaos and Mess

And then staggering boredom. This place

Stones and echoes. A loss. Someone’s roar.

 

 

Person wielded the instrument. So little

But this. Is green the new

Blood? She learns to remember the things

But what use

Is remorse? Her muscles twitch

As her dreams hover over her,

Fussing. Person resolves to be

Conduit. Mask. As soft as a cat. She wanders the landscape

The permanent curtain. In years, nothing changes

The waxing and waning of fear. She dangles a knife

She forgets. What is over

Keeps moving.

 

 

How far from

The world’s end is how far

From Person’s / vice-versa

 

 

Who sees death in her mirror or

Her mind. What passes

It passes for strength. In a shelter. Its rows

Of canned peas. Yellow corn. What a

Supervolcano. She feels wrecked by the thought of her death and of those

It excludes. She dismisses

Her stuff, her to-dos, her curricular

Feats. Person’s pride

Is the

Salt

 

Of whose mind

 

 

Saw ghosts on the train, saw the doctor drain blood

But the new blood swooped in

Too late. It’s as helpful as ______. When she walked to the house

I have lost my whole life. It lurched. All the tables and chairs, the dear cups

In their cupboards. The lamps. Are we on a kind of ship. Objects

Drained of their meaning. Person

Loath to survive. Person never

To prosper. 

 

 

Like the sinuous ferns. Leaves piled

And rotting. Person, hauled from her

Nurturing space, is now half.

Half

Losing again

And again and

The world insists

Oh the noise of the world