Ayli Lapkoff

anesthesia   (for G.M.)



"Solitude was...something as hard as a prison wall; you could smash your
head against the wall and nobody came, no matter how you screamed or wept."
-Pablo Neruda

a smooth glass apple
i smash you, you cut
the frostbitten
nothingness inhaled/
inside these
impassive prison walls
it's market day for
converted carnivores-
(mumble on, Gabriel)
i'm poisoned
beyond hunger to
rabidly canibalistic anesthesia;
i'm aware only 
the (the hate of
your suspicious earlessness)
overflows my
butcher's-hands,
that you are not enough
and neither am i.

mask



(a catastrophe of symbolism)
the great pretender
a militant pacifist
blackclad and tremor-filled
licks his mochachino lips
weary from debating Hegel
adds some
je ne sais quoi
to his
we are not amused
and stirs.

eleventh hour



delirious requiem
so cosmopolitan      hypnotic
i scarcely dream
        (whimpering tangerine
pathos) evasively
featureless
tiger-lillies
summon sporadic suffocation
from (vulnerable
snailblue) veins
persuasively icy; silk
ladders of
        the eleventh hour

recollections



the first indication:
a sickening odor-
(my stomach sinks,
contorts) i smell
suspicion/repugnance/antipathy
everywhere,

my ability to 
love (rancid from disuse)
haunts me, taunting;
remembrances of
mint tea, the gentle
hands that stroked
shampoo-scented hair
have dissolved, diffused,
are nowhere,

today the humid
fragrance of dread, once more
permeates/
saturates the briny tears that
i cry disjunctively, disgustedly
and everywhere, everywhere.