from “Cognitive Capitalism”

by Aleksandr Skidan
     translated from Russian by John Narins 

* * *

I descended into the subway, I saw the homeless
with plastic bags on their heads,
with garbage gags in their mouths, like mummies
in mausolea of intrauterine slumber,
like the raided tombs of the brotherhood,
embedded
in the window-frames of the fetal footlights,
dissected into equal sections of inequality
in the distribution of disintegrating halos
by the ribbon of the escalator defiling
down the hollow tunnel of the harrowed pupil,
where a socket night picks out
the dragon-tooth filament
in the diurnal incandescence of the retort
with its currentless strand
slipped through a venerable limb-stump,
a surgical strike of humanitarian aid —
a creative industry with a red cross on board

* * *
     translated by Thomas Epstein

It’s like a wall of rain
or a wall of news
when you’re crumbling like chalk
as if the world were tottering
and could be righted
only by
crumbling —

but the world is precisely this wall of news
in which your chalk is embedded

* * *

speech stones flow around the dictionary of nothing
seven of them in your sinus
mouth, nine

lysis conveying aporia
< unleashing decision >

when you decide to unleash
the knot of life

speak

* * *

the grammarian disseminates semes
fractions of seed
sacrificial miniscule

a name is a gravestone
a circumcision

and shiva’s wool is dipped in a boiling column
of dancing flames

but the heart —
o heart in vain

* * *

the substance of value is thawing

global warming

in a relationship
between ectoplasm and stem cell
cortical computer and alpenstock

O Earth, your mantle nomos!
O coronal sun, ecliptical!
cognitive dissonance
cognitive capitalism

trapped in love

tuft of light gaping

like dry ice

lost < forever? >
swimming in printmaking

the absolute referent

— la mort