I. : flagellum (i: locomotion)
The skin of his hands, all scars and calluses – incapable of feeling or forgetting, writing as they were written on, stitching as they were stitched: grossly, expertly, with compassion and contempt.

He pulls closed the seams of skin and stories – stigmata all the same – suffering only sutures to survive.

II. : membrane & nucleus
He sits, in small rooms – an aggregate of cells, waiting for the Always-Already, the Delusion Foregone (sujet lost to telling, caresses lost to touch, skin lost to surfaces), knitting these divisions that unify (he spreads and spills), these barriers that bond (he saturates).

He is parchment and pelt, rind and crust, cuticle and keratin (an organ of awareness: we only ever touch through shells of cells aborted).

III. : flagellum (ii: defense)
The skin of his hands, vellum stretched across scaffolds – arthritic and forgotten. His hands: abeyant automations; deaf, blind but not dumb; reaching out and holding at bay: permeable perimeters, their surfaces the sum of his epidermal existence.

There he sits, in small rooms: an aggregate of cells bent on their own survival, an organ waiting for the Always-Already, always scratching for a way out.

11/15/2009

Author's Note: (I wanted this to be much more sexual but I couldn't manage it for some reason. As it is, it seems somewhat heavy-handed [no pun intended].)

Posted on 11/15/2009
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