To become empty. To allow absence.

Να το πέμπτο ποίημα της σειράς.   

Τούτον εκόστισεν.

V

This bitter deadthing 

I

had swallowed    

this

Everything

her

shadowthing    it left me

tore itself away like her Abandonment

and

out of their 

red cavities it

took my arms

and flew somewhere secret

with her lover

and

with it

out of my oyster took 

my oyster teeth and

i stood  

tooth and arm-less

it 

took my mouth bones 

and

i was suddenly

missing 

ribs and

jaw bones

they flew in an arc like

boomerangs

behind them flew

the

teeth

tongue 

cheeks 

eyeballs

i saw them break the horizon like 

carrion birds

there were suddenly Things  absent from me

like

black  holes where planets angry as Saturn once sat

it took with it the valleys

and the limestone caves

it pulled out the 

lemon tree orchards 

and

olive groves 

it

dragged them

burned them 

streaking across the sky

the way a space-shuttle burns 

lavawood ashes hammered down

it

rained flesh for forty days and nights

flooding the lung valleys

spleen rocks and 

island liver nations

and my teeth

        once spears sharp as War scattered across the oceans black

they left me 

and in their absence i was alone

barren as a  carcass womb

as empty as first loss

Still

as the stone 

    father-made Colossus

I became this War and

wrapped  the river beds and canyons round my neck

smashed Vesuvius on my skull

burned  ten times 

Became

this Red Thing

and I

raped and pillaged this earth

although I was

arm-less

rib-less

tooth-less and

missing a mouth 

i raped it with my Head

until 

I

became a tumorthing

hidden away 

folded away like a deformed secret's pupa

devil-bloomed like carved limestone left

in a dark cave's acid leprosy

I

comet-burned like the 

half million trees at Tunguska

died tenfold

fossilized 

without body parts or

desires

And this absence became Me.

And then I left me.