the winds have ruffled my assassin hair
‘the winds have ruffled my assassin hair’
Georges Bataille
(i)
ache unto/
bled
(dry cough in a barren white roomscape)
a black turning
of lungs lashed from the caress of
night’s sheer
bone heart(less)
liquid flowers of decimated shit
I/ eye of vortices
meat to caress to turn from lack or longing
(blank-ed the eye…)
subtle as a snapped neck’s whispering
drag/drag/drag alone
of the bitten blood
semblance of dry light
and the smoke of
(pyre unto absence/
of…)
(ii)
welt/ breath of silent winds
stun/
else
till mark/spun/exigent
of the ruin rush ash and the wilting blood
asked of
spasm lock till claimed
(image of a sky’s black longing set to light)
kicking dust from sunk eye till break of none
spun aloud/
naught
silenced lest the petals birth the rot of hours
stitched colourings
ruin of
as if there never was
scattered remnants of what/
or else/if /ever/…
(iii)
raw ash
a bone’s closed tongue
till eye of/
distanced
locked sharp till hang-ed colourings
broke/spun
I upon
(once more)
the flight from which unto the none
dressage of night
and the bound blight wind claiming the less and less
till/
(lest there be)…
atrophy of the hand that gives
traces across
fleshed
I-spun/
laughterling of silence
the hung light
oceanic as of breath’s escape
( I dreamed the…)
(iv)
sheet white
hollowed drowning of spun till lack
(a-breathe)
divorced the skyline’s I
of the settled distance
the upturned eye’s devoid
a graze of endings echoings
and the absent blood
a landscape obese with night
(I/or if
as it lathes
empties)
blossoms of rip till knocking upon/
echoing of/
silenced
a foreign gaze fettered
stripped of all but the sky’s barren
parameters
(v)
scattered/
hollow
flourish of a skyline’s searing/
emptily
(un-trace…)
beacon of none come to claim the I-unknown
blackened fingers trace/
(yet…)
clamour for the tongue to lay its exigent claim
eye-shattered/
sun’s abortive
naught for the asking of
given for the less or else
these bone(ish) cries from out of which until unclaimed
(alack/ whispers/
the shale’s wind chimes…)
zero point
the retraced wind
blood clot of nowhere else through which
the drag of the flesh of the I-eradicated
splendour of the
irredeemable tide/of
(vi)
sting-havoc of
subtle embers/
embers
till utter dark
a coiled spring doused as a butcher’s blade
I-spun
in-dreaming else
carcass/ ashen
welts of sun light of the scuttling asked of
subtle as
no nothing no not ever
I/eye
collapse of
the flesh the bled ice of subtle laughter
fierce/density of the rind
masked till emptiness
a skeletal shimmering in the dawn’s pale birth
silence(d)
and the dead light’s knowing
long shadow of the final edge
garrotting
out the skyline…
(vii)
steel’s theft
to trace across silent flesh
as of funereal/
the tide’s blind suffocating lie
the beckoning outstretched cascade of
till fathomless
black waters
the flesh aborts the glimmer of I/eye’s reflect
as if unto sunken
funereal/
drought/
abandon
the air clefts the inhalations of toothsome wastage
(retrace the bones gathered along the way)
char/
blackened out from out of speechless
a shutter-snap
a scream slashed out in the emptiness
a callused hand of supplication unto final
as if unto birth(ed)
the jagged nothing/…of
(viii)
whittled bone
(echo of
till splice be done/
extraction of…)
the light streaks the fallen body bare
till emptied/
foreign
no nothing not a trace till nocturne echoing the cornered
shadowing
I-vice(d)
bled from out of a syringe of silences
as the tolling masks the absence of all else
a sugary dissipation
(sing high/sing low/sing tra-la-la)
callous as…
broken by…
knotted fingers forming foreign prayers
in a night of lies
I-spitting
upon the carcass wound’s benign
(ix)
seal the wound
a trace/of dead scars
whisperings
a pledge unto dusted dreams scattered as of
children’s laughter
where the break-neck/
( none)
spat from bloody trace
from the eye’s assassin climate
dreaming lest the eye forgotten/(asked of)
the coldness of I (unsaid/
never yet claimed)
the bone ravage
the shrapnel cast aside in mortal winds
rotting nowhere
echoing in chime of empty light’s obscene
blackened
knotted as the pulse
of the begun
(x)
confetti wings
(I a-dreaming)
dank air to follow in from out of spurious/
oblivious/
emptiness
libretto of pulse meat breath of skulk
the skull cracked as a black egg streaming silver lights
I hears the glass
there is birth of tongue and the sung stead of foreign
the fingers wilt to steam
yet still to knock upon
surfaces from which from out of which
I (in-dreaming)
and now forgotten songs
I bury my breath in the axe of wind’s flight
a child’s bones fall from my weight
(‘I’ was never else)
(xi)
ripe with pregnant graven
breathing
the toll of no/
not ever less than/
of the benign
culled the dead echoing out of fractal sleep
said
(-none-) once again
emptily the eye peeling in
artificial
lights
spoken less than ever
the shutter’s claim
and the drag of
absent light
cadaverlings of children’s murmurings
I/eye of the foreign asking
deadened fingers
till breath
finally do us depart(ed)<
(xii)
till glare/
held to ash/ till skull
skeletal trees of the left behind
and the flesh of
seasons
blaring
biting the stumped lung’s
chambers
blistered the air strips the pealing naught
(some solace
twisting in the eye’s silence)
heavier
heavier in the I/ eye
from out of which
the dead hammering never ceases to revolt
suffering as of an abattoir’s
caress
where nothing is/final/all
Michael McAloran (b. 1974, Belfast) is the author of a number of collections of poetry, prose poetry, poetic aphorisms and prose, most notably Attributes, (Desperanto, NY, 2011), The Non Herein & Of Dead Silences (Lapwing Publications, 2011/ 2013), Of the Nothing Of, The Zero Eye, The Bled Sun, In Damage Seasons, EchoNone & Of Dissipating Traces (Oneiros Books [UK], 2013-14); Code #4 Texts, a collaboration with Aad de Gids (Oneiros, 2014), Un-Sight/ Un-Sound (delirium X.) (gnOme books [US]). breath(en) flux (Hesterglock Press), and in absentia, In Arena Night, bone silences (Black Editions Press). He was also the editor/ creator of Bone Orchard Poetry, & edited for Oneiros Books.
