Andrew Joron

CONSTANTINOPLE II

Living in stems 
Of artificial weather
    on that airless world

Market aires, fluorescent in

    code-membranous 
Relay. Byzantine maze
    or avenue-of-ascent

Mapped as manuscript 
As anxious alignment
    one gong-driven autumnal Letter

Sleeping with the god 
Of reason. One dissected chord
    anatomy 
That glows in galleon frame

Advanced identities 
Compass-pincered

    atlas frozen at zero

Rumors of the sadness 
Before time. Discursive loop

Scans carapace 
Of the cricket -- found where 
Equator intersects the poles

Sominum route. The waters 
Of which it is forbidden to speak

Flasks 
Of the Covenant summon 
Year Million's magus
    under a dark-spotted sun

Numeric 
Of that endless [theorem 
Corrupted in transmission]

    the vital organs, like 
Edenic animals depart
    from dying body

The final city 
Fire-bannered



MASKED DIALECTIC

Forced witness. That the face of witnessing become, finally, its own 
slashed portrait.

The details vanish, not forgotten but subsumed. An everyday occurrence 
raised on its hind legs, crazed by lightning.

Walls worn smooth by those who have passed here. The story of 
civilization is screened nightly.

In proximity of a ribcage enclosing clockwork, the head fairly swims 
with sentiment.

Further tragedies exist beyond motion. A glyph is also a coagulum, 
drawing blackness from the white crevices of time.

Ceased continues, spectral within seized. The raw cords are 
replaced by silvery trails of fluid.

Plotted against these coordinates, the noise of sunrise: a thought 
empinnacled on hierarchy's ruin.



AUTOPLASTIK

The orbiting reflector 
Turns night into day; petals ping

Accelerated workers
    swarm into the plaza 
A blur on the soul's dead instrument

Everywhere, windows are blanked 
To the same newsreel

I alone 
Inhabit a mockup of the early nineteenth century

I, the great idealist
    who confesses 
On the first page of his diary: Father! 
There are no living atoms

& the diary answers: Identity 
Is that 
Which is eaten from within

Another man is partially assembled 
On the table

Another module 
Unshrouded, revolves in sunlight

    filtered through noise 
A simulated victory

Crawls like a glove 
Animated by music