Goya's Penitentiary

My shadow is on my face and its a darkness that I inhibit whenever I can. I find it personal and it is something I can't share with you. Not since I burned my clothes so hastily and proclaimed myself free of the mincing fear of myself have I been so confident. It all began in front of a statue of Goya. I turned to find myself a bandit, a driver, a male drawn too late. In a chapelI was Osiris, my clothes wet and by no means an August body. Unable to recuperate my precious breath, my body roaring. Discriminating. I hold no intimacy, I hallucinated an image of my soulin the background. Flung open at once, oil on a brush, tincture of a animal skin. This inevitable dying horse drug across my flesh, the position in my eyes was struggling, burning of my infection. I was in the painting wide awake. Forty three point eight by thirty two point seven.


- Chris Mansel

The Pineal Eye

running from the earth
like a diamond in reverse
same as nature its heard
the front seat of a hearse
get the bad weather first

nothing is so divine
as the pineal eye
from a lizard to a king
from Lorenz to Laing

syphilitic through the vein
the ship's sails of intestine
sailing under another name
misguided as Charlton Heston
signal fire spelling out fear

nothing is so divine
as the pineal eye
from a lizard to a king
from Lorenz to Laing

its just a merciless suicide
to touch a child who's died
waters swollen from the tide
screaming till laughter cried
the hearse hits the pole first

nothing is so divine
as the pineal eye
from a lizard to a king
from Lorenz to Laing

- Chris Mansel

Bodhicharyanatara – The Reincarnation of the Peasant Buddha

Irrational pubic descent, I remember waking with the taste of gasoline in my mouth. I knew I needed a change of clothing and I hadn’t eaten in a few days. Pubic bone severed my spine. A hair fetish overcame my companion and we spent the day at sea, the vagrancy sutra repeating in my head.

Helter skelter on my forehead, helter skelter in my hands. Blood is causing the boat to sink. We’re on the shore and there’s music. Tribal incantations to remove my spinal column, baptisms of urinary fornication. I am brought to a boil in pools of excrement and force fed the pages from my writings.

My companion dead now bobs up and down beside me, she died quickly before they could ask her anything. My vertebrae is removed and used as a drum by the shaman who tells me he can make me well. When I awake it is three years later and I am crawling the shore retching up blood and watching as the drops construct the Sistine Chapel in the sand. I collapse into the crucifixion.


- Chris Mansel

Drawers of the Wheel Watch

ankles feasting dug their faces away
undergrowth reinforcing contempt
crawled mud-soiled body of one
a whisper that curls briefly – surging

immediately into the moment
Where it seems
To suddenly
Burst into place
Like a murderer loosened from the restraints
First black then white then back to white again
Burned the dead silence
Inebriated unmade bloodied
The dead lay face to face turned on their sides

The dead were exhausted

Reviving their ageless demise

Carrying themselves on their backs down the hell
At dusk to the gates brandishing sunken cheeks and tattered souls

(downpours of excrement)

were undressed and catered to the living
cold water poured under the door
in the darkening dream

siphoning every ounce of pain
that could be swallowed or beaten
the
gray
wash
of narcotics pouring
from
the faucet

the mystery has been thrown to the ground.


- Chris Mansel

Freud In Whiteface

The psychologist prays into the cloth
his blood he carries in the ear of his dead child
immerses his soul into black coughs
mau-mauing turrets of speech
cupping his hands in the raw meat
drinking from his soul, answering her face
race guerriere
clotting the steam
pregonal
ejaculating lincocin
perspiration beading up on the floor
skin is dead, and forget the orgasm
will shed the phlegm of the conscious

- Chris Mansel

Jon Berry's 23rd Psalm

Creatures, seven stories depth of genetic sand
Fall into prayer and storm across the river alone
Becoming the leaves the laws would later appraise
Ectopistes Migratorius cutting the barrels way
A message for the highway, an arrest for the city lights

Suffering for the paved road, a gathering for the soul
The abandon wheel sought a tree with five limbs
Just then a thunderstorm passed over a hole
A Socratic garden erupted with air wafer thin
An alluvial plantation padlocked without the toil

An underground city where vehicles grow
Germinating light from the rows
Dispassionate about the blackened snow



- Chris Mansel

Photographed In The Distance

The stars will beckon but not call
Their souls disintegrating
Like the prayers of the wicked
Or the youth of a child


- Chris Mansel

Night of Candles, and Dark Outside

The muscles have so much left in them
to suspend the poison of the brain with
the animated shrieking of movement.

The head shaking, inside when you
can’t see the motion and the shaking
back and forth when you think I am
disagreeing.

My hands contort in almost the same
motion. Sometimes I think
when I am dead I’ll still be shaking when
the fires of cremation startle the skin and
relax the bones.


- Chris Mansel

Arias For The Midnight Runner

I remember a body with ribs exposed leaning out of my hands
The heat of the day
And the pain in my head

I was open to the medication but closed to the symptoms
A coiled relief map of extremities
Trees awaiting the river to wash over the grass below

The notes of music that come from tires on the road
Coming from under the window above
Slowing when the wind slows

The phone that doesn’t ring anymore heated to 425 degrees
Receiving the bill by mutual respect
Ash not withstanding the caller

- Chris Mansel

Arias For The Burning Tire Ring

The uncontrollable lines of the human form
Chained to the canvas, unable to escape
A horrible but convincing argument
For the end of sight

Sound from the open doorway aboard the
Sinking ship trails back to the darkness
Than to the remaining light of the day
Swallowing up the last gleaming, screaming
Shining tears from the reflections lost
Forever to the parental blue waters of the sea

She opens her ears and the holes close
We open the ground and the hole is filled
The body is laid in, the ear ring is hung

The evening she lost her finger
Her eyes dimmed


- Chris Mansel