Within a Secret Cloud
Where to grow my orchid that will last for a thousand years …
big decisions take many tiny minds– like Dracula in his den
my persecutors imagine they’re seeing me smile.
If you don’t hide them they’re not even deeds. Thus the most authentic
illusion I have crosses itself out, hands over the boiling knobs
that spin alterity into my virgin’s shroud. It’s the last thing I’d want
for you to be seen wearing within sight of my window, another
collapsed parent, arms crossed loosely as you hang there in the sky
such that I would feel pressured to choose someone for you to love
among the frightening people section of my memory
but where the appendages jam each other up, and betray their mechanism
it’s true, for now, that nothing catches them;
though they impart a sense of buoyancy, of running quickly with your pen
its shiny knuckles going clang clang clang within a secret cloud.
Further Reading
despite eating the ice-cream of isolation, imbedded interrelations
bring on immediate relief, filling jugs with the limestone filtered water
that drips beneath the famous cornice of the northern sky
I’m just obsessed with being in houses
anyway even if it’s not real crabmeat
even if that crab flavored ice-cream psychically suggested to me
by foreign entities melts in the drawn out procedure of this surgery
it’s the image of oneself as composed entirely of things
that dwells among infinite circumscribed personalities
a diabolical recognition
of which one fears dispersion even when standing at two trees distance
you have to keep stirring the sauce no matter what
even when someone comes once a month
just to make sure I’m embarrassed by my tiny watch chain
and when the door swings open its single shabby door
it’s very similar to the dalliance with a stranger I’d been yearning for
but when they reach out their arms to grasp me, neither of us are there.
The March Toward the North Pole
Tell the drowned simpletons that trusted us
in the coliseum of ceramic decorations
animals rip their toys apart & the toys &
pictures & the house all watch caparisoned
upon my horse I go with my household into battle
not spooky but infinite containing you know what
one begins to wonder is it all just for exercising
punctuation so much is in motion that a hand
could slide right through the obsession for
holding my dummy’s hand
surfing in a place where they have never heard
of surfboards one acquires the right to formally die.
Tamas Panitz is the author of several poetry books, including Toad’s Sanctuary (Ornithopter Press, 2021), and The House of the Devil (Lunar Chandelier Collective: 2020). Panitz is also a painter, whose paintings and stray poems can be found on instagram, @tamaspanitz.