Poetry Sarah Lippek — March 28, 2011 13:30 — 4 Comments
The Dead Man’s Head – Sarah Lippek
His new voice
comes from somewhere that is outside & inside
at the same time.
His new voice is another head’s weight on his shoulder,
the weight of a conjoined twin. This confirms everything
he has heard about opposites, attraction, doubles, kismet,
he believes he has multiplied
really, he has
split.
No pain, no end of pain, no end, no death. No dead man.
Without pain, no man, no man at all.
A penny saved is a penny.
A man saved is a man saved
until death. A man who will be dead
twice, dead doubled.
Visions will come
to his bedside, & ghosts.
(when his head is splitting open he can see blue lights
like gas fires & between the fires
there are moving figures
bodies undressed
in white rooms—
this must be true; it is happening, somewhere.)
He will call her on the telephone
& speak in this new voice
he will tell her
“buy a gun I love you
too muchâ€
The bedsheets are soaked.
There is no sleep.
The dead man sees the future
& she is there
without him.
In the sudden array of choice, direction
she is wading through him, past him, alone.
The windowshade is beating itself against the sill, rainsoaked.
There are sirens, dead futures unspooling
outside on the street.
He stares at the place where she has been.
Where she has pushed her hips through him
& got away. He speaks to her absence,
his savior, another head beside his own,
he describes all that has happened
so far.
4 Comments
Leave a Reply
What am I?
Bioluminescent eye
That sees by the shine
Of its own light. Lies
Blind me. I am the seventh human sense
And my stepchild,
Consequence;
Scientists can't find me.
Januswise I make us men;
Glamour
Was my image then—
Remind me:
The awful fall up off all fours
From the forest
To the hours…
Tick, Tock: Divine me.
-- Richard Kenney
Beautiful, haunting and densely narrative. Wonderful to read.
A woman who would be God
but who will never attain
that we she herself hides from herself
An endless liar
Only curses tame her head
She herself will atone
She herself shall be alone
A woman disguised as the name
Will never know true love
I would have never dione it
And that is my revenge
The call has been made beofre it exsisted
Never attaining that we is a trivial fee
For gaining godhead, my good Head.
You would have never? You exact revenge?
Which exact revenge? Which ‘it’ would you never?
Were you given a chance? Just that once, ever?
Who would claim, while invoking the capital God,
that ‘true’ love cannot be mustered alone?
Who is more alone than your God? Is his love thus less true?
Perhaps it’s just you?
Who sees Woman alone and succors himself
where she refuses to suck
calls her liar for refusing to lie
in the bed made for her where you lay without.