Blood Prism

Hatred: On Returning to a Poem with Language Backwards

34 Hatred: On Returning to a Poem with Language Backwards i.e. I wake in solid walls of milk. i.e. “The Cut,” before they went to Spandau, got Ballet; that is, younger. So: I wake younger, then the eyelid circus stops. I wake at 2: 33, I wake at 4:16 and then, again, 5:57. I can’t find out who’s sending me these messages. i.e. Juggler. Two weeks ago last night I read: rape and murder, unnamed girl, just 14, who died, not from multiple penetrations of her anus, mouth, vagina, but from 4 heart attacks she suffered over hours. So: This morning loosed, so: “through the mud of just before dawn, white- tailed . . . ” I can hardly read. And a scrap of someone sayingsomething “smile, like a white bird.” I know there is a dream I had I can’t recall, one to carry me through the traffic, i.e: Stupid acrobat. The missing dream’s a little lightness and a thumping, almost, in my forehead. New sinus trouble. i.e. almost a scent too faint. So: no trail is. And now, as always, the music played backwards holds no clue: so: “ . . . deliat-etihw eht, nwad erofeb tsuj fo dum eht hguorht” echoes “drib etihw a ekil, elims” and so what? There’s light enough to read and I’ve learned how, i.e. I’m 60, still alive in this world, etc. with love and with its palindrome 35 * and so: there’s light enough to read, many years of it and I tell you here the imagination’s worthless. i.e. She was 14. i.e. etc. ...