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22 September 2011

they haven't considered taxidermy

currents and

crosscurrents

in the maelstrom of this vivid morning

in it's restlessness stillness beating

on the door to come in

smuggled in the tips of pencils in

the spheres of ball

point pens

verbs

and nouns congregate

a quiet coalition of corridors

arrange themselves around you

some kind of

embrace takes place

some kind of grace

offers it's hand it's window it's desk

and rests

diodes composed in rows

of uniform current

electrons speak

terminal to terminal

language seeps from cables

from chairs and tables secret

conversations machinations

they

plot

amongst the rot

of our festering values to impart their

frustrations their

observations I wish they could

speak the teak

table top and it's compadres

their

eyewitness accounts

of our

tendency to dodge profundity

in favour of ease the trees fuck

they could talk

of the way we walk...by

they haven't considered taxidermy

death by needle clean and legal

sell the heads

of the dead

to oligarchs to basking sharks

eager

to hang their status on a wall

blind

to the blood spilling drip drip drop

onto mahogany furniture

the maid wipes it clean every morning before thawing

her heart

on a radiator her needs greater

numb must drum

her pulse from time to time

an anticrime

as some might say

3 comments:

Brian Miller said...

surreal a bit with a wicked flow....

omiT said...

Wow. Polyrhythms and internal rhyme soften us up for the sucker punch, the most fantastically subversive line I've read all year: Trees as superior beings; the cruelty we inflict on all species has not occurred to them to do to us. This surely is the intention in the approach to the idea of furniture as taxidermied flora, given that the trees are the subject in the three consecutive clauses "the trees fuck" "they could talk of the way we walk by" "they haven't considered taxidermy". The economic dichotomy in the closing passage ('oligarchs' vs the subjugated 'maid') then reminds us of the cruelty that we inflict on and co-opt our own species into as well. And then that idea, too, is taken to a whole other level: the blood on wood imagery and the metaphysical suffering of the domestic worker both beg the question - Are we not in fact crucifying the working class? Awesome piece.

cat cray said...

Timo your a gem x