Splotches in Space -- 1936

age lives from hair to hair
across the orphaned air
it lives like an egg
hatching a fruit
on a tightrope between two wings
the air has the age of the wings
the fruits are born of the wings
the leaves of the wings are bleeding
on the hems of the air


death's-heads
glowing like suns
roll thirsting toward the source of space
scorned by the stingy drakes
the craving babies
and the et cetera


the walls are of human flesh
the mushrooms have booming voices
and brandish heavy rapiers
against ancestral mice
with elephant teeth


porcelain udders swing
on trapezes among necktie branches
while stars jargon
and fly from fruit to fruit


siamese columns weep
knitwear tears
because they drop down at every midnight
from their saucers of ease
like dots dropping from i's


a landscape in a prancing coach-and-four pauses
before a paraffin canapé
star-gloves knead
the anthropomorphous void


flower-syllables cover
bouquets of fronds
bobbin-lace tents are bobbing
in cotillions corantos and galliards
with piggy banks full of wasps


the end of the air
and the end of the world
are as round as balloons
but while the end of the world
remains on its folding chair
the end of the air jumps
from a tournament tree
into an empty cage
that flits through the white


the diamond-peel tempers morals
the merrymaking draws out
sometimes even until death
and even beyond the railing
in worn-out space


the gluttonous clouds drive
their trunks and their tails
into the fragrant wounds
flowers wear honey wigs
and stroll about on the chatterbox water


the mouths of the light yawn
and reveal a vacuum
the blood engine
breathes happiness on the snouts
and endlessly repeats
the aunts and angles
the uncles and ants


is it really a blue coffin
and not a saliva-covered hermitage
if this apparition were ground up
would gleaming needles finally
tumble into the putrid light


beaks peck out the eyes of the light
the cheeks frisk about
tête-à-tête and toe to toe
the feet walk before their own feet
tatooed teats of teutoburg
shout the beaks with a teatonic fury


the biped coccyx barks like a pedigree dog
it barks it weeps
because it's the last of an extinct pedigree
pedigree extinct candle stupefied says the old saying


the oysters sing in the eiderdown
the flowers sweep the milk
of their visible voices
the stalks bend out of space


sit down on my big toe
little white and naked sky
remain a lackluster costume
remain white and naked
let former realities
mend the water
depilate the souls
fling the last word
beyond the last heart
remain white and naked
let the haloes purr
and filter their thoughts
let the roses stroll about
on the skin of a dwarf
let the four-voiced members
wave feathers of flesh
remain white and naked


the clouds undress
on chubby tables
the straw shirt embraces
the paradoxical sponge
beware of the machinery of faces


a hammer goes to the stream
to fish for nails
it fishes it fishes
but catches no nails
it fishes for the nails with mouse horns
it would do better to fish with pince-nez of blood
or with naked giants

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