POISONING 1 Comments

A rat runs
into the gaping mouth of an alligator
continues down to the stomach
and eats the rotting remains of an oryx calf

‘and then out, out of this place
fucking fast out of this place'

Pakistan and the mountains, no parakeets in the mineshafts
only onyx-children with dioxide and monoxide in their lungs

granite quarries hacked out by murderers in the colonies

I cut through cobblestones
and marbled bone, I pick out children
but Church Street has no number for them

‘nothing is more contagious than a child'
‘no one is sicker than a murderer'

is written under the church's floorboards
broken up by the bones of children
the text is revealed to the ecstatic
but it is too late for ecstatic archeology
I read Kindertotenwald
and hear the grieving give birth

I infect them with the inheritance of a house,
my father's house, where ballast stones from the full-rigged
Sørlandet form the foundation
if you kneel and press your ear against it
you can hear it's a wailing wall

what you bind upon the earth, shall be bound in the heavens,
and what you resolve on the earth, shall be resolved in the heavens

I want to talk about the king of Crimea
1347 - during the Mongolian siege of Caffa the pest-ridden bodies were
catapulted over the city walls to infect the inhabitants
infected Genovese merchants sail westward
Constantinople, Sicily, Rome: Doktor Schnabel von Rom
German and English ships sail west and east of Kristiansand
Bergen, Oslo, 1349: the alter of St. Sebastian
Stavanger, 1350: Bishop Guttorm Pålsson
dies as the last in the realm*

I could have been an altruist like the black rat, but

city bay, 1991
for 23 years I have infected myself
with disease like a child
with text too light in my hands
too heavy in wax, too sterile in light
too dark for the place from which it comes

child is a hard language

when you find it in the streets
where the houses are coal-like
and the careful remorse
is most apparent under great, white wax-lights

why did I get a name here,
a state and a god here?

alb, christening robe
chalice and water, the sails
of the three-masted ship over our heads

sails from three masts up the Oslofjord
angustifolium in the wind

‘they press a white cotton washcloth
in between my jaws, so I
won't gnaw off my lower lip'

the human bite is 250 kg per cm2

when the mandible and the maxilla are locked together
the throat closes like a marsh violet at night
it's too late for prayers and hypnosis

these did their faces irrigate with blood,
which, with their tears commingled

‘It's simple: if you live in pain, you perceive the pain
the blood that runs over your chin is the blood that saves
but not before you bite your lower lip off, there is One
and only One who can open the violets
so you can breath'

Bearmarsh Road, 7:32 a.m.: an ambulance
from one of the city hospitals
they record the opiate poisoning
pull up milky white Stesolid
and ask if I can see the full-rigged ship in the fjord:

‘The masts, the wind in … white sails, cotton
cotton tufts … light … the wind'

and all places are good places, to sleep with the wind
the August wind


* The plague never reached Iceland because all the sailors died before they arrived.
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