by that holy flame
cupped in tender hands

your misshapen clay
hard canopic jar

rough fingers slipping
into black soil

unearth this body
pristine, or like new

does

in the bright meadow
playing at being
hurt, reinventing
old new ways to lack

this

strange necessity.
river, only weep
a selfish mouth pouts
awaiting now, her

turn

left at the next light.
slumbering, between
ignorant writhing
she whispers: i want

you

to plunge that dagger:
soft anemic flesh
tender beckons, how
inviting to lie

on

weltschmerz, world-aching
heart, so soft and near
that creeping black cloud
drones in the distance.
third eye of the storm

zugzwang, dilemma:
forced down a path
where all turns are wrong.
it comes from chess (schach),
a popular game.

freikorps, young old men
the bloodhound’s bloodhounds
of sanguine verdun
in deathly life, claw
red and white make red

der zauberberg, or
the magic mountain:
book by thomas mann.
much might be said, yet
we run out of time.

out of excuses
i said that you could
take me, unfeeling
current. lacerate
as you think i want
love, how could you be
careless? no more does
this discarded doll
deserve.

marble youth, limp neck
swallowed by the wide
murderous ocean
whose name she wears: girl
of ghostly shores, or
soft crypt in red bloom.
quiet austerlitz,
name these wounds pretty
things. here does she lie
for your disposal.