A Corner for Socks

[brickslight]

though fallen through the sky
still blinding
screaming though broken between
words still spoken
somewhere through slit pictures

dust still cheated
of its palace still
growing
not here smoking still
frequently stirring
but tried tight what strings
delight in being tightened

again and again
run off again
and still our tongues
not often
necessary no
yet silly still
buying into silence
that never was
so dizzy
as far from deaf

for sale: this body
without organs
priceless
our dead skin

 

[Captain.Heroin]

this was a...well, a rather interesting read...were you on drugs when you wrote this?

 

[brickslight]

I'm prescribed benzos, so it was more that I wasn't on drugs. I wanted to fragment the language, to affect the flow in such a way that the mania I'm trying to express can be felt (at least slightly) by the reader. The dust of a palace requires that its home be abandoned, so we as a species of dust motes, having experienced the empty throne of radical perception, now feel cheated of our palace. And in reading all the masterworks and incredible, heavenly innovations brought about by genius writers of the past, we run off again; we still our tongues rarely, but still buy into the theories of silence (the cynical philosophers and artists who claim that nothing we say can actually do or mean anything, under the false premise of pragmatism and other quiet foundations of muck). And yet, I argue, an element in this poem, that these theories are not so much dizzying as far from deaf (too loud, the overwhelming cacophony of cynical, convoluted theoretical non-solutions).

And now I post this poem. My body without organs is for sale, this moving object that is neither organic nor mechanical is brought to bear. But my dead skin, the bits of me that I can stare at without trying or even being able to control them, these are priceless (whether that is meant to betray some obnoxious self-parodying narcissism or to convey the worthlessness of anything produces by my brain and body, that is left up to the reader).