I.

AND so it is the knife
is not a thing of dialogue

but soliloquy—talking believes
from head
and a face

and a man
and someone’s kin
scripted and casted in a saffron jumpsuit, trembling

tulip

or oriole
plumage

reciting transgressions
inside a camera phone:
saw and cut, and saw and cut sky sky

dissolve, fade and lather void
across a new century’s skull
stretched in human skin—slandered

on pike-spine
(balanced right
where a pair of nerves pass-out, padded

in the taboo musculature
where the name-tremor is
decanted into sand, easing

out the neck-stump dark
and foaming

as the heart empties
out its bag
of war-paint

II.

THOSE fibrous sutures fused as an infant
Burst forth & hatched a birth of blood
Like a gelatinous Athena leaping
Instead of some inept altricial bird—
Around your head a tidal pool of grume
& hair slurred away
As sunrays pressed
Through squinted louvers
Latched against the glass
Of high windows, stoic in the alcoves
& casting vents of light across the wad
Of valvate flesh, a slop to feed my panting eye
As others shook & wept
Asking why life should come to such a place.