by Clayton Eshleman

A MORNING WRITHING WITH Revelation

                                                  [Bacon & Giacometti at Gagosian]

Being here as an enraptured trap, an entrapture.

In John Edward’s shadow there is dark matter digesting his simian
     borders.

Giacometti’s gropentangled maya maze. Erase nothing.
(How can Nothing be erased?)

Bacon mayhem make–up: rouged New Guinea eyes by skillet heat
     widened.

Diego breasted in rubble: hoof–legged arms, a lap of Mars.

Hacked–into eaten–out Bacon head, riverine blood–lined hair

Car crashes babooning in Henrietta Moraes’ tusk–thrusty laughter.

Mohawked George Dyer, a semen-mouthed turbine in a slather of
     bulbs & rags.

Milking a man out of an udder fist: fornicate, whistling fission gist.

                                 This is the morgue of a mandala.
My efforts are to unleash the spirits of words,
to amble with & intoxicate their agencies
so that the morgue empties by the second
as new lines pour through.

And what exactly are these black discs set into some of these Bacon
     portraits?
The immobile, uncanny, unlightable lakes in humankind?

James Hillman: “This would be the ultimate task of soul–making and its beauty: the
incorporation of destruction into the flesh and skin, embalmed in life, in the visible
transfigured by the invisibility of Hades’ kingdom, anointing the psyche by the
killing experience of its personal mortality.”

Or are these discs Bacon’s versions of black holes?
Indicating that we are in the final stages of our species’ history?

That like certain stars, we can no longer produce “expansive force”?

That nothingness is now pregnant with the isolational reality of our
     being?
                                        29 November 2008

by Jerome Rothenberg

THREE POEMS FROM “A FURTHER WITNESS”
          for Anselm Hollo in memoriam

A PERFECT CIRCLE

the protocol
of light
runs through
the dreamer’s
thoughts

I seize it
unmindful
call it
my own
a flash

redundant
burning
kings
of chaos
rising up

from front
to back
the colors
make
a perfect circle

particles
in flight
the forest
with its thousand
birds

no prototype
more real
an actuality
of hidden
life

a fantasy
of animals
like narcoleptic
mice                                    (for John Solt)
& spiders

see
the sidewalk
rise
& strike you
dead

the way
the road
to paradise
recoils
& binds us *                        * blinds us

by Jerome Rothenberg

THREE POEMS FROM “A FURTHER WITNESS”
          for Anselm Hollo in memoriam

THE FLOW OF TIME

to pose
a question
& to answer
with a further
question
adding
one
on one
he finds
the choice
absurd
but cannot stop
the flow
of time *                              * of rhyme
which is
no flow
but all
exists
at once
the street
has trees
once small
now grown
beyond
his wildest
dreams
the waters
curbside
rushing
toward a hole
that lands him *                  * strands him
where
he started
childhood
past
& buried
count
the hours
shrunk
to minutes
as the universe
has laws
too easily
rebuked *                            * rebuffed
where time
stands still
reversed
a sorry
instance *                            * instant

by Jerome Rothenberg

THREE POEMS FROM “A FURTHER WITNESS”
          for Anselm Hollo in memoriam

AS THE SKY GOES BLACK

fixed in place
or running
half a man
& half
a crazed
machine

he feels himself
becoming
what he ran from
breaking free
of bones
& skin

a solitary
eye
that looks out
at a street
covered
with tiny birds

yammering
chirping
whose screams
call him
to life
& always birds                    (Han Shan)

my burden
more than
yours

a life
so poor
& pure

succumbing
to their
sounds
their wounds
will raise himself
by inches

sail aloft
the dream
is over
with our hands
we touch
the earth

beneath us
paw it
watch
in wonder
as the sky
goes black