JOURNEY INTO A TABLET OF ASPIRIN

I followed the Hercynian shores and the laughter of jellyfish
the very long string of spring then the flight of bats
when in the tree of unknowing ceaselessly
The cosmopolitan embalmer bawled out his orders to shave the mountains
Whose peaks supported the brooms of witches
planted like so many acupuncture needles on the surroundings of emptiness
I put my hand on the table cleared of these factories
to mystify the opera of everyday life and I hide under it
until the spark of the present comes to me
A red lantern shone on the back of the turtle
announcing the dust drawn by these six lunar hairs
since this is an area like an apple pie
that neither the Emperor of pebbles can conceive of
nor the cannonballs that since the Battle of the Black Indies
go round around a tiny sperm whale drained of his sperm

***

It was one day necessary that the poets defenestrate themselves
and fall into the unspeakable cauldron
that now among the grasses of reclaimed savagery
is nothing more than a miniature railway
resembling the lines of the invisible man’s hand
But I do not know why it was just as necessary
that this morning I read in the newspaper the strange death
of an old woman killed by the fall of a cactus
These two events are both keys
for understanding that microcosm and macrocosm are
the same scarecrow erected on the field of coincidences
which in my native village touches on one side the original fire
and on the other, the sound of sirens still heard
at dusk when the bees finally stop
to forage on the frozen labyrinths of the runic alphabet
One of these sirens seems to wait for me at the end of the table
a green cabbage placed on her head like a carbuncle
She invites me to jump among her leaves like masks
enveloping the heart of time
Masks of air and fire I climb the grilles
to get into their crystal eyes
Travels in the spasms of the dew whose shadow
is this hair torn from the sun that serves me as a raft
to cross the uncertain lake of neurons
There someone signals me with a jade butterfly
invites me to cross the threshold of a cloud
that is a spinning top in the tiny center of the Earth

May 12 2018