• Vol. 04
  • Chapter 06
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Hoc Est Corpus Meum

This is my body
it transforms
it is transformed by pain, nausea, hunger and morbidity
it transubstantiates
reconstitutes bone into sticks
it is less than hope can hold
it convulses and folds
it is the real presence
it is Actaeon after the feast
and it sheds flesh like death.

What nourishes me also destroys me
A blind conspiracy of t-cells
A dissonance within, a mute fluttering
the dolorous baying of ravenous entrails
the moxie drawn from reticulated limbs
and the world shudders down under black wings
to void all memory
to disgorge all resonance
to vomit all in an exegesis of viscera.

Even in paradise there is death
Tumor necrosis factor alpha
slaved to the monolith cytokine
a malfunction in stone and
all broken once again, once and for all, broken
hollowed out and broken

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Hoc Est Corpus Meum

slow to reassemble from twig, rust, wire and wax
tottering up through the black, broken eyes
of the starved carcass
my memory is mute.

No more pain
Hand me the knife and I'll do it myself
cut deep to the dark nucleus
below bone and sinew, entangled viscera, rusted entrails expose the locus of pain to my inimical eye
an exorcism of self evisceration
vivisection without anaesthetic
to quell the quixotic arrhythmia of pain’s functionless utility pain is a landscape
a psychogeography of acutely attenuated persecution
language articulates the self, but
pain annihilates language.

No one is free who is slave to his body
Bone pinioned to broken wood
a murmur in the marrow, warm perturbations
some distant sobbing in bones, branch and tendon
a dissonance within
slick twine pulling at the emetic compulsion
equanimity is deferred as nausea’s compassionless leviathan rises.

Some day this pain will be useful to you
One moment ... no, it will not
it will neither enlighten nor inculcate
it will not invoke contrition
it has no utility, no sagacity, no wisdom

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Hoc Est Corpus Meum

it will not cast shadow
it will not divulge, expand upon, enlarge or re-modulate
it will not instruct, elucidate or enrich
it will not clothe or confirm, deny nor affirm
it will not hold mass
however
broken sticks stuck into fecund soil may strike
the tree's womb may regenerate old souls
if only for one moment ...
it may grow flesh like life.

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