Blood Noise*

Intestines in eyelids while still living
—Leslie Scalapino

Tears and excrement of wax scratched
By substance a distant idea of this

What's that in your mouth the failed
Absolute bird string or song like a field

We can't enter my heart can't hold
All this blood my hands are a mould

For no one distance is where we begin from
Mastering your ridinghood

Wounds the animus we are foregone
Stamps of simulacrum and death masks

All the animals started dying all we
Could do was continue plugged

With blood my heart can't hold
So far steeped in what’s left to fill.


*composed spring 2007-spring 2010, a version of the above was published in War and Peace 4 Vision and Text, ed. Judith Goldman and Leslie Scalapino. The title derives from a drawing by Kiki Smith, exhibited in Smith's 2006-2007 Whitney retrospective. "Intestines in eyelids while still living" is taken from a reading Scalapino gave at St. Mark's church around the same time.