The Aporia Poems

Poems

All eight Aporia poems, previously posted separate.

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Aporia Impasse I

In ecstasy of itch,
The skin will rip;
Our houseplants each have died,
The dog is dead and dried;
At the window of forbidden knowledge,
I have whistled a stillborn tune;
The mountaintops have shaken,
Sloughed off the outer rock;
A crevice in an old man’s face,
Has buried hundreds of the little ones;
Snuffed like a melted candle,
The judge has spilled upon the law;
Some men of feathers shed their lies,
And fled their skin in sacrifice;
But upon an ebony night,
The crimson gristle speaks from shallow graves;
The center of the world cannot swallow all the blood,
Like a high tide upon a sorry raft,
The reaper drowns.

And with a word the world is rolled,
The we might see,
All that glitters is not gold.

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Aporia Impasse II

Behold the flagrant noose,
Tied,
Tight,
Tighter,
Each coil,
Another chain,
The spiral destiny echoes
Through cluttered space;
And the beggar man’s open hand
Takes from the pusher man’s candy-coat stash.
A three-legged wolf with sulfur eyes,
Rips orchid flesh from spinster’s legs;
And about the town, the shops are out of stock.
No man can buy a wolf or a candy coat,
But every man can tie a rope.

Then with consent of a mandrake root,
Build your wax wings to seek the stars,
And take Leda to secret worlds,
Where birds shan’t chirp,
And a friend’s kiss is but a dagger
That pulls illuminate blood,
Which glows so deeply green,
That the tendrils of an old god
Writhe in the sanguine pool.

So when a stranger queerly knocks,
Close fast the door, and turn the lock.

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Aporia Impasse III

An agonizing text is bound
In the midnight flesh of a long lost cause,
And ceremonies in moonlight shan’t ope
A grimoire stained with tears of blood.
And from the sea, a beast arises,
Its heads nine in number,
Its dragon body rotten, decayed,
Flooded with bitter waters pouring from its wounds;
The stench of stagnant slough has overwhelmed
The kings of earth.

Like wings of a white owl,
The snow alights in her raven tress.
Her emerald eye—it glistens,
Bejeweled, bewitched, adorned, entranced;
As like the tawny hue of dusk
Is a sharp pain before the night.
Her ember eye draws me to her deathly lips,
Body upon body in the frost’s embrace,
Buried in winter’s shawl by a polar scythe,
Both dust to dust, in ice-trapped heat.

When fingers bleed from paper cuts,
Her voice seeps out the bloody ruts.

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Aporia Impasse IV

Grappling with ghosts in a dark night,
Shattering an urn in the moonlight
Assaying my nerves with a canine howl,
Gazing into the abyss of fright.

Heartstrings plundered of melody’s pathos,
Play not the weepings of ascetic men,
And dullness moves the brethren to sighs;
They the rub the dust into their eyes.

When the finch lands on a wind-tattered branch,
What does it mean?
But that the bird still flies and takes his rest,
And his nest remains to be seen.
But though by flight, he has retained the bird,
And his song remains to be heard.

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Aporia Impasse V

When you wag your devil tongue,
You smudge the page with slobbered drool,
And like a snake that wraps a tree,
You’ve wound around my thigh.
An ocean ice inflames my blood,
Like a seeping furnace sputters slag
The poison burns the iris blind,
Drowning my brow in the molten sludge.

Golden vines that garland your eyes
Bloom before my sight,
But the heavy thud of a Giant’s foot
Is never far removed.
The hounds of whoredom howl your name,
I think I’ve got the flu;
Werewolf eyes are burning bright
In the shadows of a stillborn night.
Oh take me moon and rend my soul,
Chop me down with your crescent edge,
Cut me deep with your silver swipe,
And toss me dead unto the wolves.

Her lunar fangs are buried deep,
Hunting forever in the lands of sleep.

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The Aporia Wastes 

The thick sick perverted desert filth
Wander yonder twisting up the crags,
Hauling sacks and rags, twine and tissue
Southward, duneward, tightening a noxious grip,
This profligate cult of bone stomping cross the sands,
Flagellate—Propagate—Annihilate—Mutate.

And the thunder rolled.

Halfway between the slouching pines
And the coaxing dim grave
I heard the deathmaiden whisper,
“Just a penny for a poor-man,
Spare a coin for a beggar.”

And the thunder rolled.

Down the alley, flanked by headshops and girlie-mags,
Where the slime sucked my bootlace,
I tendered the colloidal transaction,
Sold it all like a prodigal son.

And the thunder rolled.

And I cut from my flesh the cost of my life,
She grinned the evil grin and smiled upon my wound,
With lips of pestilence and a serpent’s bite:
“Just a bit more, baby.”

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The Aporia Ascent 

The mirror looks unto the mirror,
All seems quite queer,
Where psyches, naked, dance,
And flesh is cowled in furtive wraps.
What sort of thing just might you be
After tinsel stars retract their light,
When secret blooms seep poison sap,
And the dead shamble in the yawning eve.
A sheaf of complexion feeds the inner fright,
Allured distempers rage in fevered nights,
Static eyes stare past your soul
As the light flickers on her naked lip.
In fits of death you gouge your eyes
To cast away her vicious gaze,
Vicious because she looks you through
And sees nothing but a phantom’s fate.
Though free to roam, the lot is cast,
Condemned to know no soul
In truth or love or dumbest touch
Or deeper than your own.
What life is it, when full desire
Flounders on a shimmering knife,
In wait for blood that rues its birth,
But lacks the raw, unbidden nerve.

In dearth of light,
The earth is bright,
And swells to save
Its well-fed grave.

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The Aporia Heights

I.
The river’s high, been high a long time now,
It’s ‘bout time we best get crossin’ over,
Ford’s there under the water, just gotta hit it,
‘Course if you miss it, current will pull you under,
Slim chance on comin' back up,
Never thought I’d cross it like I am,
Not knowin’ whether I’d like the bottom better,
Sleeping on the riverbed, a son of Egypt. 

II.
I thought I’d die the night the earth laid bleeding,
The sky and sea contented hard for every seed,
And the abyss, black as raven feather, encroached,
Drawing out her bleating virgin moan. 
Wolves circle round, gray as sepulchral stone,
The dancing embers of their eyes move low
Along the narrowing gyre of their three-legged gait,
Until the smoke of a snarl shrouds a gruesome fate.
What then your foal by love of a mandrake root?
What then your calf by merry liar and lute?
What then your tribe by the sands of blooded dread?
What then your life, when the dog is dried and dead?

III.
Rocking in the cradle of a mother’s arm,
A book is bound in the flesh of night,
Ribbons red, spill from out the edge,
Dripping as drops of crimson tears.
A judge turns page to page and sloughing off decrees,
Drowns the reaper and the poet’s brow
In the melting of his waxen form
As like a sprig in winter’s sting.
The pusher-men and the beggar-men
Each all turn down their palms,
Empty their hands of the candy bits,
And flick the knife of a threatening grin,
To gather up new alms.

IV.
Lady, Lady, wrapped in sugared dreams,
Your fangs are sweeter than candied stones,
Your voice enthralls as like a viper’s chirp,
Your figure finer than a hell-spun honeycomb.
Your word is mixed and rocks me to and fro,
At times upbraiding nature to bolster grace,
At others, ripping flesh as to remove the itch;
If only I could read the features of your face.
Why then you speak with me, and tune me tight,
And pester my sight with visions of lusty distress?
If then I sing with strings so unbearably taut,
Will you slink hither and slip out of your dress?

V.
The white owl catches wing,
And all the woods echo and the answer rings
With the whistle of a maiden’s song,
As like a gainward call to the coming dawn.
And yet her bright visage in starlight’s catch
Has written my soul what the moonbeam said
When dark had fallen upon my doom,
And the drape of her hair covered my wounds.
In hope, in heart, in hearth, in home,
Let night release these languid bones,
Let mercy tender and dreams be pure,
Let moonlight fade and sunlight near,
Let trumpet blow a joyful wind,
That might I rise and live again.

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