metropolis
out of the sanitarium
we walked in backward
steps toward extinction
toward anthropophagia
toward metropolis
because of the skin
because of the face
you are victim of my g a z e
for me to make
s o a p and lampshades
out of you
and t r e e s out of umbrellas
books burn but words remain
like doubloons in a ship caught
in a genoan f i r e
and into the mouth of a cave i painted by my own hand
i will step
in hunger i came watching the tin witch
crash into a wall of streaming photons
and into the metropolis of glassseapylon
can our deformed b o d i e s
exist in autonomous margins
naïve primitivism is an affect
of the tyranny of our human form
a fact written in
disappearing i n k
as s k i n succumbs
to the fixation of liquid l i g h t
and d i s s o l v e s into
aggregates of silver salts
and a paper e y e
2 comments:
Where to begin. Well, first of all, thank you for your comments. My latest poems have concerned with the page as a field of composition, something I've been thinking about when reading Charles Olson's essay "Projective Verse," but also Robert Duncan's and George Oppen's work. I'm interested to what happens to the word when it is displayed in a non-conventional manner on the page.
Also, I tend to write in very long sentences and, this is something I've noticed recently, the paratactical and hypotactical constructions, combined with the lack of punctuation and capitalization allow the components of the sentences to be reconfigured. Of course, sometimes I wish a poem could begin with any of the sentences contained.
Hi Francois, excellent poem.
I really enjoyed your creative use of words and white space, and I love the interplay of themes, which to me read as comments on humankind's apparent drive to devour itself or disappear into madness in the huge cities we insist in living in.
Your poem made me think about a lot of things to do with history, culture and society and where we are headed, whether apparent progress is in fact forward, or merely a side effect of disintegration.
It's been a while since I read something with as much packed into it as this.
cheers for the read.
moon
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