In The Strangeness of Infernal Dreams

in a land where the angels sleep in the road
and mothers shout with ecstasy
a hundred more years will not corrode
I'll be in the hollows of a noisy sea

and now December is hidden
and poverty swarms
someone has poured alcohol
on my heaven in the middle of a storm

madness is my ambition
and madness is my decree
I have medicated the orchard
and bottled the trees

I'll tear at my soul like a lover
on a nail in the ground by a shoulder blade
over this flagellant I will hover
and the mark will be made



Chris Mansel

Taxonomy Illustrata

I'll show you silence
says the corpse in the window
his chest sprouting birds

imagine he says, a torn elbow seperating the stairs
or the life of a maggot once his insides hit the open air

chrysomya rufifacies here, he gesturing towards where
once his heart beat...one after another, he laughs

this silence I am speaking of you find as they feed,
I find the movements of deformities...unceasing and exquisite

this he said and his species shook until it was smoke



Chris Mansel

Anaplasia

the mirror collapses
it falls but the image
does not

the sound of the glass
breaking
is archaic, it's an ancient sound
the amplitude
carries over into silence
it is a mutation

the timbre is unfounded
undifferentiation occurs
the image
is dominant



- Chris Mansel

Dear Sigmund

dear sigmund, accept into your uncharted lands
an emisarry, young Cherkovski, aged sixty-five
he will be arriving on the Oceanic line carrying prints
of Hammershoi and papers of introduction from
his travels
as you open the window and greet him as he strolls
up the path into your garden, please realize he is
charitable and wise
please read and analyze his unpublished memoir
Cherkovski, may wish to stay on for some time
as it is his birthday.


Chris Mansel

Symphony In The Cold

what you see in the smoke
is eating through the light
as if storytelling were to awaken
from beneath its blindfold
to a beautiful river who's breath
is immolation


- Chris Mansel

Relief In Passing

a testimony from Babel
collapsing constructions of lies
like Dresden, translators fall to ash
cancer in the early drafts
gathered from the classrooms
falling asphalt fragmented into the sky


Chris Mansel

Pamphlet

ghosts move about on frequencies
illustrating their own private hells
with each movement like a corpse's
raft circling the blast site
where a guerilla lowers his kerchef
to the sun, emptying his weapon
into my face


Chris Mansel

The

The coyote half-submerged knows the current cannot hold him
The ash from the brush fire is like confetti
The naturalist is watched by the owl until he changes

- Chris Mansel

Nights In The Examination Room

its indistinguishable, the cruelities
disseminating an experience by pain
where the cartographer listens as the ground moves
and hears nothing


Chris Mansel

Dostoyevsky From The Chinese

Our guide is familiar with isolation and changes in the light
He shows us an ecosystem unknown to motion and reachable by light.
He draws a glacier on the ground and steps back,
gesturing towards the end of the day

chris mansel

Siberian Folk Tale

if I bury you in the snow
I will wait till it rains
if I burn you in a car
I will leave your name
if I abandon you in a well
I will not drink


Chris Mansel

seneschal songs

a monologue continues anonymously
while a body is carried above a sheet
to capture the sorrow and to be burned
spread the ashes over the body the voice explains
it began with Charles Dickensbefore his body was
removed and transported to India

- Chris Mansel