Within You Without You

Poem: Within You Without You

(trying to wrap my head around Bodyworlds)

All the liquid drained from your body,
Replaced by an artificial chemical
But the outer casings still real
Like the housings of sausages
You will last forever, perched at the
Pinnacle of the ski jump
As though reaching for your
Medal attempt, and you too,
The couple etching their
Love into the ice in cuneiform
Graceful script,
She is eternally arched above
Your head, mid-spin,
So naked and pure
You not only don't need skates
But don't need skin,
You are shed of identity,
But you still have your eyes,
Having been fixed
In the window of time
Before they cloud over,
Still full of color like synthetic
Emeralds. As they
Say, as she, the most recent
'she' in my all-too-real story
Reminded me--'you signed up
For this.' In the name of
What occult science
Are you held in perpetuity,
Never to fall from your apex,
Never to conclude your climb
With an inevitable descent,
You are robbed of your final
Clause, the death
Of the body to match the death
Of your spirit, the one thing
They couldn't preserve. Are
You my parents, looking back
At me from age-tinted decades,
And in the same way myself
Looking back at myself,
Reminding me of the death
Of my own self, the illusion
Of me standing here but
At least you don't hide anything,
Even your penis, reach for
Medal-winning extent. Reminding
Me I am already dead.
The future is now,
But there is no now,
There is only the blood
Threading its way through
The fine lacework of the capillaries,
Under the intense, almost
Inconceivable pressure
Inside the concoursing veins,
That somehow manage never
To burst, the hands on the
Clock never sag under the
Weight of time, exploding the
Glass in front of their face,
The glass that holds you,
Organs calcified, perfect and fibrous,
Any extraneous skin or fat
Shed like seconds from
The skin of time, the pulse
Inside the chest: there is a day
When you will look at them too
And they will look back at you
And you will see yourself
Already eviscerated.

Brian Staker

Poem: Projectionisms

PROJECTIONISMS

this story begins when I am producing
environmental recordings, taking
the minutes of crickets

I am in the country of dyslexic
cartographers--that's my map, baby

but this text comes from deep inside
the projectionist's booth, found
outside in the archeological dig,
blown about by inclement weather
until miles from its origin. These
are the only fragments remaining

that's what I made my hell out of

"want you to stroke it/till you
broke it" note in the projectionist's
script

diving with you there's almost no
danger, at the seaside escape

and come see my latest project--
it's only visible in the dark.
You're a part of it, too.

I may not know where you live
but I know where you're at

and you don't even need to wear
a halo in my heaven, just bring
your own holographic self

"go ahead and harass me; the
first one's free, but the
next one's on me"

give me your pheromone number,
I'm a pheronomenologist

& if the logistix sticks,
wear it, oh yeah, uh huh

& I gots the drug you don't
even know you need. You don't
eat it; you plant it in the
ground and watch the world
wig out

& our love can be an act of
high performance art (if that
don't get you, I donno what
will--maybe you prefer sports?
like meta-boxing)

the cracktor prior to this chiropractor,
adjustamacated you wrong; you need
me to }shift yr. scrapula{
--wanna get yr vertebrae
horizontalabrae?

I want to see you amidst the greenery
in all your obscenery

& while yr. not looking, you might
find something projected onto you--
go ahead, check the back of your hand,
or maybe it's your own shadow you
project onto the ground--doesn't it
seem a bit darker now?

but then maybe that's all you ever
were, a picture on a screen, nothing
more than I dreamed you to be

like a star in the sky, the light
I see is coming from a distance
a considerable time ago; are you
even in the same place now? I think
you know where I am coming from

on a clear day, wonder where my own
shadow went--I seem like a walking
ghost

and maybe you can be my window
on the things that I can't see
from here in the dark/and I'll be
your mirror to make you look any
way you want

don't look at me, though; I'm just
a projection of the man in the booth

perhaps you, too, are just a projection:
but of what?

I'll project all my emotions onto you,
all my frustrations can melt in the
mirror's flame

but the light is blinding me, everything
appears like a hollow tunnel, spinning
into the distance

it is as if you had broken all the surfaces
in this place, shattered them into shards,
then ground them down into sand and
reassembled them all into glass
under the heat of your magnifying eye

now, years later, do you see me
in your crystal lens? I just go
home to the empty house and the
silence of the years

a word from you would be like a
transparent insect attached to
the skin on the back of my hand

please don't cringe--you'll just
magnify all the quirks of the camera
as you swim across the ocean of
my eyes

who's the man behind the curtain?
perhaps he is afflicted
with the lazy eye, needs the camera
to do his dirty work

and as for me,
there is only the inability to see
the reflective surfaces of things,
I can only guage their position
through echolocation, bumble about
as though underwater

this ode is to you, oh my elusive
one, I long to touch your tangy
tendrils, in my dream even our
minds are enmeshed

but you are more and more
obscure, you don't even appear
on the map; even your voice is
weightless, like a flightless
bird that doesn't need wings to
go awaft, just simply floats

even these thoughts are reconstructed
through the silky film on time,
projected on the back of my brainpan

and everyday the terrible mirrors
beckon me to jump in