Without Asylum                

Trevor Joyce

for
Angela

true we may surmise
how a knife hatched
out of meat
should fledge
 

 
span with blade
then unexpectedly
take flight onto some sill
moult there with clutch
 

of fist falling from it
arm with balance
of muscles altering
to lift and lay 
 

its murderous
intent and disturbed
dreams and brood
how everything broken
 

so they say points
to the unbroken
forgetful is it of what did
the breaking as I witness
 
 
my own loathing
and desire walk
through the dreaming
labyrinth of my child
 

while detailed depositions state
how further on
within the wood
whose skew bent
 

registers which wind
prevails itself perpetually
ragged and worn
from ocean breath
 

and sun and every flame
it quenched in its far
fetch the bright axe
blossom suddenly

the long bones lever
up from it like anthers
and beyond the startling
calyx of teeth
 

an avid buzzing perishable
fruit set thicken
and disintegrate
to load with sweet
 

secure deposits
of afflicting gold
their remote cells
and stipulate eventual
 

shelter from the fall
asylum from the edge
a luminous domain
unbounded
 

seldom they relate
why the innocent whose mouth
is like a bowl of blood
blurts words already
 

darkened with gods
and sacrifices how
I have the face of those
whose faces have rotted
 

and although whirring blades
have been observed
to crystallize spontaneously
throughout the native
 

rock and ramify
in gangs and casual crews
good companies exfoliate
pervasive and exotic dust
 

where tellers and their firm
controllers fight to reconcile
accounts and sound
is severed from the dogs throat
 

there is no further testimony
to the effect how in this
realm of agents deeds
and instruments
 

one sees at last displayed
an armoured beast whose
head a growth of flame
in the shadow of the ripening
 

clocks the river sames
destroys itself the jug
absconds leaving to the grasp
only a sustained bewilderment
 

like dice spinning