Four Poems by Michael Tod Edgerton || Author's Links

A Note From Underground       I tell you solemnly that I have wanted to make an insect of myself many times.      -Dostoyevsky   How the blood hunts down the heart wants only to pool like the twilight over the green blade of day. How the wind rustles the whispers. The whispering blades do they say something to you? Do you recognize the sounds they make? Let me tell you how they prick only your flesh and ignore your wish. Take only the lavish tongue and forsake its hush. How the slash of blue remains closed to you, its saltstorm of clouds their insatiable thirst. By all accounts, you may think it a cruel world. Let me tell you how the wanderlust of mountains bites into the clouds for a covetous taste, how the ambering hills pale beneath the sun's incessantly smiling face. Everywhere else ever greening. Ever keening. Let me tell you. The whispers the whispers the whispers are buzzing too loudly or too softly in your ear? In your hair, now they harry your lips, your liver, they're in your liver, don't you know. They burn. Try not to panic. Don't dare scream. Just whisper. They're delicate.   My Name Is Rose Is R   What are you whispering What? name-- Seeking sensation shivers You a mist showering faint sweet scent Dried roses, sweet sweaty brow A twittering mist musters, up flexes, into a semblance Assemblage of syntaxing, another, sentencing another outstretched Taking up a string of propositions, rehearses rehearse The form or elation of syntagmata which Might gel if knotted solidifies fluent gesture undulations inflects The line the whispering about little redheads cocked Catch tale of it-do-all the gossip Chattering each other up indecently Excluding you from their ranks their rank Subject these brittle bones these Shadow of their form or self--What are you whispering? Your wanting shout cannot Find the words. But roses are only roses only You tell you try yourself. Yes, but they're smirking there's something. The man he sent them curiously absent From the scene? Set to understated design. Heads bent all around look All contorted all distraught or are they Simply mock-contorted? Bent on looks bent giddy bent at see. Just A Wink Or Two, Twinkle Toes   I miss you already hello you      roll away cold to claim       sole your aim your own side      pulling      the sheep the sleep up over you and me       short-sheeted nude. • Me misses yours never     more kisses yours slappy play      full chide O dreadful child! pushing my limits the push that delimits     my skin      pushing back      your holding cuffs scruffling my flesh ruffling     folding it           pocketful of starry sighs      wherein you lie you try oh-so to trouble me double me make me a     promising little might      a pouncing maybe joy tonight but aim right you must your fairy dust your lusty gaze     and straight through the haze           of the tight strung light.      • I wanted you to be real to reel. It got me I did my wish.      • It got me I knew it not      not long enough to prove it      not along the bank of you long enough to move it no     rooting toil no      nesting in to test the soil against my split harried theory of you     boy of your existence. So allow me to I do I try     this moment momentum this     luxury suite of you      tease the seize of you     silly little sneeze of you in two my size into my breathless blue prize      wising up and coming true through.      • you reeled you did you peeled away the day you did straight into the fray      a tryst a twist and right into Ray.      • I missed you from the beginning     the winning first toss at last      lost of you      somewhere in the fold      of me and we at sea squared and everybody pared      somewhere in the cold     cooking up looking to get some      lime light a little white lie a little      silk grown time or some     plain old shut-eye. Figure and Landscape   chill through a window stared down from across the room the room opening into a mirror on the other side in which you sit on a sofa beneath the window into which you stare stained ice blue at sky second skin no first second skin no first cause no primary color only original sin only expulsion and the trembling figs only winter no spring all naked limbs only the slow accumulation of something like dust something not unlike lust a thin coat of flesh only ice it will not melt it just might break you want it to melt you don't know how to swim you want it to melt you can't look at it long enough invertebrate desire over the stillness to fall through can't see the ice for the nakedness don't look too hard can't see the flesh for the cold it might just break look long look hard look look

BROKEN NEWS || CRITIQUES & REVIEWS || CYBER BAG || EC CHAIR || FICCIONES || THE FOREIGN DESK GALLERY || LETTERS || MANIFESTOS || POESY || SERIALS || STAGE & SCREEN || ZOUNDS

Exquisite Corpse Mailing List: Subscribe | Unsubscribe ©1999-2002 Exquisite Corpse - If you experience difficulties with this site, please contact the webmistress.