The 16th Portrait of Despair

in homage to Neil Gaiman:

The body in the Bay
had left a simple message:
“If a single person smiles at me
on my way to the bridge,
I will not jump.”



Robert Claus

When Astronauts Drool, Or: The Fisher King's Lament

What shape are the sounds
I speak?
What colour are they?

(Why should they be coloured?
There is only darkness in my mouth,
interrupted by speech.)

Yet my teeth partition
the latent sounds, my tongue
kneads the golem sounds,

and my mouth incubates
the quick’ning sounds until
they hatch as words.

Lips throw sound into focus!

The disembodied noises sortie:
speech upon speech is launched
to invade alien ears,

on kamikaze missions,
for each moribund word must ask:
who and what am I?

They solicit strangers and as they
see their holy grail, they disappear—
ignorant but certain that

their question was their meaning.

So there are no lettered sediments
that build up on the floor and
yield to passing feet.

But some words come back
to haunt: undead words
that go unanswered.

Perhaps they are still stuck
to my lips like ectoplasm,
but over vast distances:

my words inhabit the fourth dimension!

These words are infinite universes
that no one can see or find, and I’m
not even sure they’re mine.

Neither colour nor shape
reveal any sense;
the unseeable is absurd.

This arcane music reveals nothing.

My tongue speaks with invisible ink
and I rave like the Fisher King, waiting
for the right question.