CARRIONS OF SHACKLED DESIRE AND HUNGER
1. Do Not Disturb
You are noisy/ even when you are silent, / the world is dripping with/
Do Not Disturb signs in/ languages we don’t even/ recognize as languages. --- From “On Eggshells” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 01-03-12
It is easy enough to hear silence
at the edge of the woods. It is loud.
Your pounding heart is not there
beating sense into your dulled mind.
They just jump out like shadows
on walls, turn their backs, ignore us.
On its own, one whines with longings
struggling to spill out, uncorked,
from unguarded gaols of feelings
that have lain fallow, rotten carrion
of desire tardily unbound, love gone
still, a truant finally nailed dead
on broken beds creaking under cold
sheets that will never find heat again.
The other, a slug of a mind, stays mute,
until it is egged on to scream out a pain
in its pure form: a memory of loss,
a raw betrayal of troth. Cut, cut clean.
Out of the woods, on his way home,
it was easy to read on the locked cottage
door an absent sign: Do not disturb.
Silence has its sharp language. It is clear.
2. Hunger
What remains after/ the marks are erased? / …You
could be the sound of a shutter, the blank/ accordion surface of blinds turned
down for the night. ---Luisa A. Igloria, “Erasure”, Via Negativa, 03-13-12
Look
harder into the darkened corridor
after the
shutters have gone down,
ignore
the clipped clatter of slats slapped
shut with
peremptory indifference;
blurred
shadows should start jumping
through
them as lingering sunrays
slither
like paper-thin serpents flapping
languidly
with the stale air. I am there.
How else
will my lost carrion incarnate
except
through the quiver of hungry loins
trembling
achingly through cold nights
when your
frenzied fight with the pillows
and
caressing flannel become urgent noise
echoing
unsatedly needy behind shutters.
--- ALBERT
B. CASUGA
Revised, July 22, 2014 Mississauga
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