RELEASE ME, THE TIME HAS COME
Though you won’t reach the neighbours, they will reach
themselves through you via the hedge, and the border
between the houses is a membrane
that’s drumming on the walls. Because
on your way, arriving where you say
that the state of play is an exhibit,
stepping aside, the light
resembles a squatter, sentenced
to the breaking wheel, the stairs drop, till the house, too
big for you, doesn’t leave you but
surrounds you like an empty house, then you
aren’t lying but nudging someone else
awake in the chamber of sleep
to where the exam is waiting, entangled
with the table, to leaf through the pocket
with Stork* as its generic name
till Antonin Artaud breaks your ribs
inside it as the motor of Artaud
is the rotator of the mercury
in your mind when you, at the window
over the bare garden, lose all sense
of self as soon as you read him
aloud, for he prescribes you,
or he cuts you open to the bone
and takes the lid off the hell
you then get to see and he passes
it on: my hollow hole, my acrid hollow
hole, in which the red lice cycle
splatters to pieces, the cycle of the solar
red lice, cream-white in the arterial web
of 1 of the two. But why two? And which
one of the two? Downstairs, Mummy and Daddy
are watching the tube. Are you allegedly in Mexico
with him though he doesn’t know you but he stutters
with his breath in your voice? The rug bleeds dry
on the floor around you till she stinks
because she eases and she soothes because
she sweats: caffre of piss
from the pit of a dry slit that chafes
when you stick it in, pissy camphor
from the mound of a dead slit
that strikes back when you break it open, and again
why two? And whose? The man
who crosses himself (or crucifies?) and then bears the son
of the abuse with his own
hardened arse? That must be it. Do you rave
in translation? Your throat does really
make the window steamy. Or don’t you know what
you’re reading anymore? Or are you falling into him? Or
sharing him? You hammer in the rhythm of Artaud
who roams through you. That beats much louder
than ‘The Wanderer’ and bland enough to go with that
‘The Peppermint Twist’ (‘Sealed with a Kiss’), the sickness
of lust, while smashing soulless rock the flame
breaks out which has ignited
the Saint Vitus dance in all the manikins
of the language they persist in passing off as
poetry in school. And this is, you are
certain (your mouth against the blinds
across the glass, the letters in your eyes
on the lilac air, full of the cloud
that flees across the damaged
reeds) no coquetry, at best
an escape, in a liturgy, from the factory
of the music of society to far-flung territory
which you can brush past by the hand
of the poète maudit imprisoned
inside. And he sees, as you already know, through
his big hollow eyes filled with oil from
on high, what you alone can guess at
to an extent however that does not amount
to fear and certainly not
to idiocy for more likely clear in late night
glow you will go, right through your head
loudly repeating his ji and cri, contracted to
ji-ji-cri-cri, deep into his rite
of the black sun, which in your case reads as
resurrection, for you will, on his behalf,
meet with whatever wishes to release you. So you will be
who your saviour is. But your lives will now be known as
industry