
Absinthe Letters
1
Dear Doctor,
From the first letter
due to its condition
we may read only the following:
as to yr queries
attend yr reading
cadences which are
no voice
compact exact
but obsessed
favourite composer when
Pigolesi (sic)
chance
feeding on the brain
And then:
Have you not thought
of safer opium. I know
it doesn’t align close enough
but doesn’t
doesn’t this body?
And the other day I saw
those hogs rooting again
in the refuse (somehow they’d gotten loose).
They were tearing at something
that was no simple heap of tubers.
2
I have not seen you in five days
you attend yr meetings, or are locked in yr room
someone plays a whitened
a bleached music while I write this
the page gets more intense
as I scratch at it
but you know all about that:
the sections obliterated
enact angles, parabolas:
the signs of a semi-literate person
It drinks up the ink
the negative of the nights
we spend together
3
Not only long-necked
glass, a delicate stem
on the table
you never finish
at first you thought flamingo
this letter a warning
x the doctor explains
my hallucinations are sympathetic
sympathy is a head tax
a warning he who devours the pig
is devoured by its images
finds it whole in his head
going straight there
do not sit at that table get up
squealing through nipple fornix
and nozzle cells cells of political
agitation words in a pig-latin syntax
it carves the knuckles
(actually I think it starts there)
the spiked ear the brain fume
drawn out in its ribbon
the parabolas of the wormwood grain
it snouts it snouts
you you
the aesthete at the table
the dumb food of words
anyways Rimbaud took up a trade
love
yr sister
ps I will not be coming to dinner
there will be nothing left of you
4
Jan. 13
this bed: not asylum enough
do not worry, it is empty
my life has been simplified
the hospital they keep you in
has white walls, do not worry
you live with permanent ghosts
whitely
the letters occupy you like bad tenants
in moments of lucidity you may read
yr mind a supernova
connections permanently fused
will you recognize me this time?
Artemisia, you miss her
she left you children
5
you tell me
(seed under rind)
a crystal grows in your brain
you still love me
when someone looks through a facet
trees, breasts, open, their minds
display before them
the world
twisted into light
that is something
but yr body has disappeared
and you tell me
you want no more books
6
dear idiot brother
pig-head
they tell me you are not eating
(you should have listened to me)
where are yr politics now?
you have not written a poem in months
you say they are alive
in yr head
you may grow divine
but I grow old
I am not paying for another day of this
I am looking for another lover
(say hello to the angels)