208. Self-Portrait as a Means of Misdirection

You don’t know me,
which is good. It allows you the possibility of objectivity.
Your view of me is not muddied by direct knowledge
of who I am or what I do. Only in this way
can you understand me.

We will move
through the progress of numbers
to the summation of self.


in the case of the first

eventhough, the trough, by troth, I move through&through
is tough to thought and oughs me naught but nought,
the bough that bows beyond the brace of two,
in heavyweight, a twelvemonth span expended, then snow
will now impress the weight below the wait for now to make
the winter bellow, in ice, like hollow echo’d hearts of men


after the fact of the second

a heart runs blood like water through the rusty pipes,
in the sense that night is always blackened into worry,
or ice in creeping crystals covers windows into foggy views

a heart could pause from feeling or from beating out its drops,
the blood could stream like data, or stop and eddy in the chest,
dream resembles sleep except it never leads to waking up


besides the reason for the third

something rises
within irises, either
color or the perception of color,
a purple spiking, regal,
raising its head,
its eye, up
to send, to see,
to gaze through
whatever it is
you are


beyond the tendency of the fourth

life is African more than otherwise,
meaning western in continental sentiment,
burgeon and surfeit beyond breaking belief:

a storm of termites battering out
the sun, against the jalousies, a storm sung
against the thought of daylight, and leaking
through the slats, puddle, that a pair
of insects could pair and burrow, to grow,
eventually a mound, a hill, a termitary,
a single organism, which, if wounded, would
reveal the writhing white
blood cells of its still motionless body

birds in weaving music and of nest,
of action in constant flow of song and flight,
the thrumming movement as the trees
sway in force of breeze and sunlight,
dropsical nests building
fledgling
balls of sound and certain flight

or through the fact of a step into a warm stream,
how the fluttering swim of leeches, flattened forth,
extends to each intended footstep, as an array of moving,
to take the blood by drop, and leave a fluke to grow,

in each instance of living the secret
or secretion of death


through the expectation of the fifth

music isn’t made, but found,
as through my minor ear to the visible line,
the only effort possible as a denizen of the minor earth


in anticipation of the sixth

first of six in a set of eight,
born on the west, live on the east,
between as a sequence of 46 moves,
nine countries, four continents,
fifteen schools between kindergarten
and senior year, three schools
after that, married, two children,
fifty years of age and aging fast

but there is no-one in the facts of my life


within the boundary of the seventh

bound by snow
born by water

borne by water forth
come by air back

entrances entrance
exits require

tendency of a body asleep to wake
urgency of a body, urgency of a body

slipping as if moving
filling as a body fills the air and with air

hair left on a counter
hair curled in the shape of a nonexistent letter

character of light approaching sunset
character as the letter A walking through a play

being as a state of perception
being as a state of inertia

distance from
distance between

in a way
swaying


with reason given for the eighth

in the right light, white
(as ice or frost or snow)
turns blue, maybe in
the color of an eye, the
reflection of the sky

the eye sees but only
through misdirection
nothing visible save
in light’s presences
and its various hues

like watching a word
on a page recollects
sounds of the true word
in flight not light


beyond the realm of the ninth

the feel of the muscle of the hand
of ink flowing
like blood through pen pipe
and out to the pages
in swoops and swaths

in dance, a swish through air, the sound
of sweeping, sense of slipping ink to fibers,
this permanent mark, a human record,
fact of blood and body’s bone,
evidence on the sheet of movement,
distraction, thought and crumble

thus the body carries its marks
as scars, a specialized form of writing

keloid, ropy and read down
the center of a chest, bisecting sternum

scar across the upper knuckle of the left index finger
from an errant whittle

thin cicatrix on the sole of the right foot,
exit incision for a large splinter
that rested in that padded flesh
for three months until the foot burst open

scars across the soft inside of my forearms
across the tendons at my wrists

smaller scars over the body
one so small under my eyebrow
I cannot even find it

all this writing
all this writing over my body
the page of my body covered with
all of these words
telling so many muffled stories


for the purpose of the last and the least

eyes hazel
(so not of one color but various)

hair brown
(default)

height average
weight optimal

nose broken
from a push down stairs at age two

head bald
bearded

hair otherwise
furring the body

feet wide
fingers thin

big toe shorter
than the second toe