From the Archives : Likeness of K. (2012)

Daguerreotypic the matter of meaning

that is deflection   

                         cauterized of skin of passed light

focusing the din of antique realia

forced still

                              just staring back at you

                    perhaps a little stupidly

And other photos that in a flash coerced your ownership

                    cohering you on a line’s length

the framed circumference of a day

Your print and detoured detail

                              the foundations strewn

     before you — and again

                         withal today’s deposition — walled-in

and automatic

the edification of being totally and without delay

     projected on collapseable screens

                                        and power-pointed

or breathing into chill air

     a rote synthesis

But each grain zapped alit resolute

               in place of revelation

                               acast a space group making up

     the trait defects veered of imagery

     the latticed parameter and scenerio latitude

                         such latencies slurred in salt and silver

               you suffered to body

                    Though I can't tell

                    any of this

               looking at you in sallowed gravure

                         hung now on some wall

     not you as you sit struggled still and look past

               interpenetrating violet orbs and yellow rings

               that suffuse and pierce the outlines

                         of a reflection you see

deep in the iris of the lucent lens

     extending from a hole in the wooden faceboard

                                             and what is it like you wonder

inside the hood where the Photographer

stands hunched over

          totally hidden from the sight of the world

                              and what does it withhold

and where are you

But still never your chamfered mind

                    because every moth-loved cravat

and shoeless spats of yours in fact truly is

                                   such a lurid seismograph

               or crumpled thaumatrope

and that is at any rate

enough to stoke the engine with at least

                    of the atoms continuing their sitcoms

complete with applause cues for no hands

and sempiternal sequents cut-out

               from some laterna magica vaster

than the wakes you could perform with your body

          such as your dreams and whose wetness

               bled-out listlessly of your lungs

and got up and played in the playground world

that always seemed to perforate right there in front of you

                              tattooing the pigskin of your sight

                         for it was painful to watch

So, there you are

dressed-up in your life

                                             that seems now

                                                  a posture

but even if the scene were

                    staged — by the Photographer devised

                    in his studio, the world a canvas scenery

                                        painted in gaudy color

flat and suspended

behind you

                    and you yourself — an actor

                                        just playing your part

                                   sitting with friends in a cutout

                                   prop monoplane

                    flying over the great capitals

                    of the sepia-sunken XIX Century

Even so — the photograph exposes nothing

                                                       but outlines

that registered

                         impassable against

                    the transparency of the glass

     The truth of the act

                                        was left to you

                              a weight you couldn’t even feel

on your skin

as you undressed later that night                                           

                    and went

                         to sleep