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