samedi 10 septembre 2011

cruel mistress, lazy doctors


Roberto Matta Echaurren (1911-2002)


she's back with her weaving web
into the synapses of my insula
stimulating my shrinking adrenal glands
and i can't keep up

her frenzied lightworks
assume the better part of me
as she stuffs her ever youthful hand
deep into my gray matter

this ghost of pain past and present
burns through complex networks
and all the birds stop singing
when they hear my agonizing cries

yet nothing emerges from this throat
but small yelps of helplessness
there are pills that could save me now
but my doctors won't give them to me

they cannot feel her sink into my skin
my lymph, bones and intestines
they do not have the courage to look
past the invisible into the neural

she is there in black and white
with over twenty years of scholarship
yet they will not take the time
to enter search words in a browser

and so i am left with her foot
poised ever harder on my erratic heart
as blinking lights of the autonomic
flash their warning signals

heat rises, lights go brighter
sounds swell, smells nauseate
and the pain is so great i must keep vigil
at the gates of sleep and wakefulness

narcotics will not kill her
but they diminish her all-consuming flames
they will let me wait in relative safety
until the research comes to save me

Aucun commentaire: