JOSEPH KERSCHBAUM
Selections from The Human Remains:
1:
doublethink
I can erase your existence
just with the removal of my memories.
If you don't exist
inside my skull
then the world will forge your void.
Outside of me
is a world created by
the way I see it.
Everyone and everything
is affected by me
and my interpretations.
The moon is never new.
About every four weeks
I pull it from the sky
and skip it on the waves of an ocean
that will never bare you from shore to shore,
only swallow you on my command.
The broken pieces
of glass in the sky
are just that,
reflecting at night
the light that bounces
from the planet
on which I live.
I'll soon remove them
and have total darkness.
I'll soon remove you
and have total peace.
You won't even know
you're gone
until I can't remember
your name.
2:
fitting into skin
Here is the knife.
I have sharpened it myself.
The pain will be precise
to the incision.
Once you have cut deep enough,
pull out everything.
Hang it on the spit
over the fire.
A ceremony of liberation
and alteration.
A celebration of self-inflicted wounds.
Soon we will dance in foreign flesh.
We will sing with the voices of the dead.
We will speak in a language
never heard by our ears.
Once we are not ourselves,
we will love like we never could.
3:
still here
My sight has evacuated,
fleeing from
the sterile white light
shining down
onto my supposed corpse.
This is not
what was
supposed to be.
I am not
supposed to be
here now
but I've arrived
or have I returned?
For a few, select moments
the world was the womb
and I was safely standing outside
with a scalpel.
That black tank
of birth before death/
death before birth
coated me.
I was warm. I was gone.
My throat feels
like an auto accident. My teeth
are open nerves and my skin
is a forest burning down.
The doctors
keep talking.
I'm not understanding
anything. The flesh I tried
to leave behind
hunted me down
and pulled me out of
the lost
and found.
4:
the corner
The corner is quiet,
bare and white.
The half-open mouths
and shy child eyes
all point to and reside
in this quiet corner.
The furniture is absent
but since it was never purchased,
this is no surprise.
Nothing has ever been removed
but everything has gone
missing. We both believe
this is how it's always been.
Maybe one day we'll wake up,
severely wake up,
and notice the absence
like some minute change
that's hard to detect
like a fading scent.
We'll live with this
bone-toned corner.
I'll picture flourishing orchids
over there
and wonder
what it is
you see.
5:
(re)place(ment)
when you leave you'll be left behind
when you leave
leave behind you
your memories are replaced and rearranged
rearranged are replaced
you're replaced
your skin is like so much other skin
skin is skin is skin
your other skin
fingers will find other fingers to touch
touch other fingers
find fingers to touch
in the heart of your lover, you're a replacement
your lover, your replacement
in your replacement heart
my heart, traded-in and given up
traded in my heart
my given-up heart
6:
solely hers
(me and these flowers
in her bedroom)
Your redness doesn't belong
solely to you. The redness in you is the redness of lips
after they've been kissed for hours.
And you reside in the sweater she wore
on Christmas.
You are painted gold
and your gold is beautiful
but it's not solely yours.
The gold you wear
is the tint of blonde hair
of a girl pouring two glasses of wine.
Your gold is yours
but it's also the necklace
that gently rests around her neck.
The green in your roots
is most certainly yours
but it's also the shade
that leaves me entangled
in her eyes.
You are certainly your own being
but you would be nothing
without her.
7:
dissolve
Exhaustion subsides to sleep
and we dissolve into dreams.
I hold her here but she's not mine to keep.
Exhaustion subsides to sweet sleep.
She disappears to depths, I don't know how deep,
then she rises higher than spent steam.
Exhaustion subsides to sleep
and we dissolve into dream
All
Text Copyrighted by Joseph Kerschbaum
Appointment: 1228 N. Noble St. (coach house) Chicago, 60622 (773 348-8536)