Itch
I intended to roll it up, with all of my strength, that bluish cloth
Upon which you allow the gigantic, salty tear to slide
From the gentle corners of your mouth, shut.
I am now not reading myself in your eyes, dear Mirror,
I no longer talk to myself as if I was I.
I answer my own questions with such estrangement
That burns upon ragged flesh, an itchiness
Upon the bristling skin. And I shut. As if I was I,
Once written. As if I
Had devoured the tongue,
The hands, the nonchalant stroke, the independent words,
And the consolation—from my other self,
Whose desecration now lies, refractory
On the ground, brownish water puddle.
And I apologize to whoever must witness such a show
I keep speaking about this and that, unsubstantial
Inextinguishable, perplexing anguish,
You don’t understand, silence doesn’t eat you up like me.
I now feel the unbearable pain
Like a ball of air stuck in the narrow space
Unbreathable, between my protruding clavicles
And the throbbing nut of my quivering throat
Submerged in the low, snowy whiteness of the skin that imprisons it.
Oil emanates now from the wound, foreigner to itself.
The body is the space of the observable
Calculable, measurable, untiring at all costs;
I have to present myself a show with the utmost sophistication.
On stage, I planned
Rocking over the edge of an abyss where all I find
Will be my own gaze of profound, penetrating circles and
Grayish, leather eyes. Under which hides
A thick frown of suppressed fury
And teeth that reject, grind,
The same space to which they are confined.
I will be purely bones, sprouting from the blackness
Of my sullen and own center.
I’ll let them fit perfectly into the hypnotizing nakedness.
I haven’t lost practice in the art of pretending. But today,
The drowsiness seems to be sinking me
Within the plain heart of the intimate, raven night
The root, the root, the root. You do not understand
I prefer you do not speak
Silence doesn’t eat you up like me
I tried to suspend myself from a tensioned thread in still air,
Without succeeding, I now emerge
From a flame drowned
Beneath the disapproving, icy frown
With my own corseted fury
Suiting the body of a stranger.
It is facing the hermetical cleavage of silence
That owns me, tightly. It envelops my whole being
Like the burgundy carpet where
The body itself, sick and pale, will then be kept underground
Safeguarded from the endless hunger
For a non-sedated existence.
