Sandy Florian
Of Wonderland & Waste
Done with birds, my tongue lies tremulous in the corner. Its
stump quivers in its gape. My eyes are mere ornaments. For
all these walls are built from brick. You are speaking in stones
again. Bringing in the bones again. But there is no time for
memory. So I lean toward the imagined parts. Horses are
sloping through windows. A lover tap-taps on the window
frame. A beacon on the beach and bleeding. Dream house.
Life house. Earth house. Tree. Fires burns with animated
savagery. The detritus of longer days. So listen now. There
is music now. There is a ghost that is not a ghost. That’s
where it all begins.
A limb here. A line there. Soften the spine by compression.
I am stuck in the muck of it. Drinking the upside down of it.
Compelled, on the one hand, to live by chance. Disabled by
the brand of a father. Who suckles at the very victory. He is
made only by madness. Those bellicose sticks in the brick. I
am made only by magic. From the fabric of a feather. We are
gathered here together.
He is the bird who lines my spine with such symmetry. Of
flattened barbs. This is a system, not mine.
There’s no time for memory, so I lean toward the imagined
parts. With humiliated instruments. Typing the melancholic
disfigurement. You quote Ovid and live newly by the sea.
Where bulls wash up from greater waters. Like whales.
There’s no time for memory, so, beached under the covered sun,
I bear the weight of birds with ragged upturned branches.
Counting all the clouds again. Calling out the nouns again.
Stuck in the muck like a lift between shifts. It’s only in this
thickness that I can actually see the stars.
Children, ghost-ground, swing sticks through a window. But
that’s another lover’s bird. As framed.
Soften the heart with the dull thud of dread. I walk among the
dead. Toward the beacon on the bleed. While sand beneath the
bulls like angels made from snow. There’s no time, so suffer my
lover to behold. Seek me in the hollow of your heart. Find me
in the desert domes of Rome. Cruel, intractable roads. Bury
me. Then bury me again. Claim your prize upon the skies for I
am your bride of determination. Afflicted only by the forte of
your affection. By sword and by forceps, we were wedded. So,
bury our bodies in the blanks. Where children, ghost-ground,
make the snowy graves of the hollow angels.
There is a ghost that is not a ghost so blossom your body unto
mine. You lighten this pit. With loaf or a lamp. Your palace is
full of tongues. Eyes. Ears. Engines. The fragrance of the sea
makes for longer echoes. Wave after wave.
Speechless, I can only listen. Moonless, I can only position
myself in sleep. Pare the paws with the pendulum. Call myself
conundrum. Ornament the dioramas. This is the museum of
misery.
I walk a dumb and handless stream. Louder now by horn and by
hoof. Horses are sloping. Twisting tongues into trumpets.
Twine from the tramps. I alone can melt the angels. A hollow
cage. Sitting by the fountain. Like the old man of the mountain.
Drowning now. While the sea waxes my swollen feet.
Like a deluge in the double dead. This is a bed. Not mine.
The temples have all been trampled and the nightly owl flocks.
These are more fetal ravens. Your head stays drunk on the pillow.
Hammering gusts into trumpets. Quaking the opaque sea.
Wishing you to wake. I am clocking your grave mistake.
Tricking your unfixed dream. Tight-roped on the trapeze.
Where clowns are making monkeys out of me.
Of my word, go sound. Of my mouth, go net. Misguided hap
of misconstruction. This is a structure, not mine.
Twisting twine into time. I square my body with thump. I
square the sky. Insinuate a gift of more circular hours. By fury
and by fright, I might be laughing. By fury and by fright, I
might be finding my way out of these more modern times.
Drowning in the upwards inverted. These are the ghosts floating
in the underline. Gleaming in the sunlight sun. It’s all
clouds again. In the underbelly of the bigness, I am running
out of palace.
There’s no memory so make a paste of it. Take the underbelly
burgeon and make a song of it. I have said. Horses slant.
Lovers tap. So make a day of it and wander through the rotting.
Themes without tongues indicted. All in Rome. My headless
home. So, look to your house and seek an insertion.
It’s the distance that pulls you seaward. By the dull-thudding
of dolphins. Fragranced by the wave of it. Undiscovering the
hither and thither of me. There is a watch. Not mine.
The lift is stopped between shifts and I’m all in with a winning
wager that sometime between dawn and day, you’ll find me
dreaming. The shade in which your shadow shakes.
I am all bird and brass. My body’s been broken. With language
unspoken. Choked by the smoke of us. Building a bridge of us.
Charred by the double. Still life twinkles its lullaby. Goodbyes
confounded. Surrounded by stoves. A waiting machine is
building a building. Of cobble and bone.
Pens on the table make blasts of earth. There lie my lungs in
still exhalation. Hands of unsolvable nostalgia.
I have said there’s no mime. Sweet mother of time. It’s my
upturned branches on which you hang your heaven.
Compelled, by the candle, to remember your sidewalk machine
undoing December. By hell or by Hades, I am watching the
fountain. Heavy head on a mountain. As the tall man tips
toward a sublime slumber.
Done with tongue and stumble with hump. Making quarter
note snows on the open piano. Rootless and toothed. Bootless
by the bottom. Make a mole my anatomy. Make a dress from
the severed. I am several now. So make me the hole of your
slumber and sleep on the inside. Crude, unusual warden.
Quoting Ovid and calling me by name. Caterwauler. Clone.
Clock. Odd things, these birds, abundant.
The man in the machine at night. Of cobble and bone.
Underneath your gilded throne. There’s no time for melody.
So I lean toward the dreaming. You cut out my tongue. You
cut off my hands. A sense of a happening without occurrence.
Like a ghost that is not a ghost. Ready for the runaway parade.
Descending the steps, I give you my heart and my tongue. My
heart and my hands. My hands and my mouth. My mouth and
my fists. My fists and my fins. My fins and my funiculus. My
spine and my shadow. I give you my shadow so that you can
beat your fists into the unblack air. My air and my spleen. My
spleen and my skin. My skin and my liver. It’s happening all
over again. My earlobes. My elbows. My head and my neck.
Same after same after same.
I muzzle the edges of the guiltier graves. Those hollow stony
snow-like shifts. While a hundred running huntsman bleed
their rifles at the angels. There’s a marble table on the wooden
deck where you eat. But the tower is no longer a tower and you
can still hear the chirps of the dying birds. Equity is not a
topic. Aprons in the undertaking. I am weaving string from
flowers. Weaning myself from the world. There is a father that
is not a father. This is a body that is not a body.
Call me Snow Queen and throw me into frozen earth. Ice puzzle
of unreason. Piece the jigsaw from the duds and sing to me
a hymn for infants. This is false eternal. A lovely garden. Of
grove and green. A stove. Ever turning.
But your bulls die happily like love. Somebody brings you dinner.
There are fowls on your plate so you drink. Put a finger on
your cheek and wonder. While I am wandering the forest with
a fire. There is a burning of birds and another body dies. I keep
carefully like a sparrow in a box. My otherwise brother in axe.
It is I who took the knife. I thought it was mine. If I made a
mistake. If I misunderstood. There is marrow in the no tomorrow.
No other world that I have never witnessed. Not undone.