fragments of a broken mirror
froydir
01 the first prophet is a bird foretelling the sun
02 the wolves stand still turn themselves into trees their furry ears into silence
03 i am top heavy & ankle deep in mud water keeps blowing in off the south atlantic instead of winter a dismal unseasonal spring
04 the last apple is a red wound against the sky chestnuts rust their hands on the fallen ground & in the lake summer sleeps uneasy my chest shreds itself i gather the last light inside my closed fists
05 i swell & i swell & i swell until i feel gigantic a huge stumbling plague on the land lurching drunkenly across hills & trampling towns underfoot my big clumsy feet breaking bridges disrupting roads uprooting forests as grief freshly sowed sprouts everywhere around me in the mirror i am tiny
06 when my body caught fire my hair turned to ash slowly slowly dragging decades of burning & black-ice grief into white try to explain the days all backwards falling i forget what the words mean
07 no words for birds no words for flying no words for all the teeth rattling around inside of me for the fish slapping their silver tails in my stomach for the flesh i want to peel place it on a cloud altar & watch it evaporate/ hand you the little seed inside of me no words for love
08 nature morte: place a cat on the table place a dead fox/ its paw like a crumpled leaf wrinkled apples a mound of soil place your hair its long braids curled up next to the apples a flooded field/ three deer leaping towards a live hedge the cracked pane of your window a clock turning over silence the bus that never came place the torn shirt on top of the mound of soil stains tucking their hands into its folds place a knife a gunshot
09 i know that i am going to die when winter comes around dragging its thick cover of night placing its stone in my heart the mouth of it sneering holding the dreadful creak of its whisper to the shell of my ear
10 i open a door in the sky & step through
11 outside it smells like rain wet cement mildew something green & bruised clawing at the back of my throat
12 i just want things to be less painful, i say i have such small ambitions & yet even this seems unattainable
13 two swans have appeared like spring in the waterhens’ pond disrupting all their battles houses & trees lean over succumb to gravity the water is a peaceful mirror of suburban drowning
14 pondwater runs into the spill-off i take off my shoes & socks my feet lap at the edge of it
15 i want to take off every part of my clothing to wash the flesh from my bones flush the pink sludge down the drain & grow myself a new body the way a tree grows itself a body layer by layer touching the skin of the world i want to poke my little tongue out the soles of my feet & taste the earth
16 & none of this makes any sense i’m just talking to myself a ghost reflected in a broken mirror
17 i know no more today know nothing life is tired in me
thank you for reading <3 Š froydir 2015