As/Is







9.19.2006


TRACKMARKS

Trackmarks
Linear stigmata of addiction
Tomorrow's scar tissue constellations
disfiguring the body of work
Phonetic glyphs
of abstract correspondence
Their outlines traced in blood
Shrinking from the spike
or splattering across the page
A ring a ring o' rosies
Moments when the final things are said
Exposed in a brutal waterslap of clarity
In the coupling of the sinful
and the divine
There's a fine line to be crossed
Sequences of discrete
but regular consummation
inter-penetrating the punctured bodies
with the syrup poison
of transgressive desire
Wasping decorations
Fading in time from some
Long lost personal campaign
Along cablestitch flesh
Lesions where the world
has entered us
These tender spots
Rubbed by unconscious gesture
Til they stand chafed and pert
Prized in their shame
Less they scab over
With our ability to be touched
Behind the scenes of the crazy ward
in all cried out lucidity
Doubting Doctor Thomas
Pressing our wounds
in the chemical light of analysis
The marking on our skins
The words we choose to speak
The nettle of awareness we nurse
Haphazard paths through the wilderness
Creasing the undergrowth with bruised stalks
Discernible only by the spoor
of some animal long passed
Tiny clues to unknowable awareness
Patterned sigils in the drying clay
Trackmarks

  • MARK MADDEN


  • TRACKMARKS