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requie·scat i.n pace

by harris feldman

writing, I lie in the subterranean fires
of a hell beyond knowing:

and the blind soul, burning among its wounds,
creates

from the memo?) of a scream

a high altar in the flared dusk, raised
on the antlers of a howl

upon which I see, burning, burning,
black flame"tips, candalabras of blood,
red-tinted diamonds whose tongues

mouth mistery in ten thousand languages:
all these and more, and more: death

on a rabid mare, spitting
black venom into my mouth,

this and the carnival empire of terror, its whore
cobra caravans foaming behind wan toreador pants,
all leather and dust-smeared velveteen,

in harlequin glasses smashed by a shriek at dawn,
this, all this I see in the fear"twisted night

and the long madness of my days and: ruined hours
bends backward on its knees .like a death"maddened
in the dark mging with echoes:

and the moon burns my torso to a ghost of white ashes.

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