Out of all the things I have lost,

A Thousand Darknesses
In memory of Holocaust Victims and Celan
 
 
We went to Mirabeau Bridge
and paid your promise.
 
The hours passed
on the Seine, our lives
 
increasingly smaller
grew confident
 
thinking a suicide
chose the side of the Tower
 
where nothing ends up falling.
We threw our coins in the water.

- blazon after Woloch

The Experiment

His doctors doctored him so that he might
remain alive immeasurable years
slumbering like a snail all day, all night,
safe in his shell, incapable of tears.
His dreams, they promised, would be far more splendid
than anything a human could envision.
For the morose, it’s what they recommended.
Of course it was, they told him, his decision.

He drifted at his leisure like an eagle,
partook of the most finger-licking fare,
shared forms of love that went beyond illegal,
wallowed in warm lagoons, vaguely aware

 
she is a matisse, monet
in the way she dabs her
face to make up a mask
representing how she
feels
 
. train wheels squeal in
to motion & lotion is
applied to hide ravages
time enshrines: age in
lines
 
. she smooths grooves
to deflect & invoke an
illusion of youth, even
though she is young her
-self
 
. skull as parchment she
writes a poem upon her
face, stroking into place
phrasing so eloquently
traced
 
. an iPhone mirrors back
what her brushes attack