Vertigo
After Hieronymus Bosch, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” triptych right panel
But all dark notes are dismantled
there from the middle ear
downward. Voyaged mind, cauldron skin.
Can you claim anything is yours?
The burning salt hour
throws its black broken-glass frame skyward.
Left behind
the mum orchestra, body parts in peril
and animals dizzy for
lust past all lost
astronomy and wipeout,
this naked edible overjoy, a kind
of suicide in syllables, fifth
panic, fourth stall’s birds-fermata, this
half ocean’s susurrus is coming over us in the picture.
Can you akin? Can you
hear it, pinned to the unseasonable underearth,
an option for music and water
constantly changing shape, an answer
in dissonance? To hear desire
is to wake yourself inside, upturned,
long enough to know
tomorrow is exile. Chaos, body harp,
and painted butt music, crowd-crawl, rose
crowned to the chest, rabbit
call and playing cards ... listen,
I’m hell-humming in
your direction, giddy, I am too taken
to leave it alone, the will
locked in as if it is already
inside of me now: to fall.
Let’s be clear,
my darling, in the reeling
crave, spilled gut-platter
of enclosed bones, in
the final flesh-clean drop, it sounds
like fire rising
with the cliff’s updraft.
Source: Poetry (October 2018)