( me / via )

Masque of the Red Death.

“RETURN OF THE DAEMON

Floating jelly-slick, the word again
crawls up, loosens again and sprawls
on last season’s prophylactics, bald umbrellas,
soleless shoes, a palpitating bloom
returned to the wintry beaches of the ear.

The same year after year I stand, watching
tide bear it in, hear the rush
of children shrieking to the strand,
the stamp of drunken feet around the glare
of that translucent form reared up in air.

But crones like me are slow at our amens.
When we come tonight to bend our knees,
all ritual fires done, it will only be
to swing an axe into the gaudy hulk
and strew it, limb by limb, back to the sea.”

–-Lorita Whitehead

Matrix.

"A Pushkin in the language of the cicadas" --Brown & Merwin's Mandelshtam

Circles.