TIM VAN DYKE
FROM LIGHT ON THE LION'S FACE
A Reading of Baudrillard's Seduction
For extravagance has passed into things
the curvature of things
the way things try to disappear
in a screen of ecstatic refraction
the lion’s face suddenly hidden by a cloud
the sun bearing down the moisture
my air is also glottal
no same note
but a release of tension
as when a lover straddles my neck
isthmus music plays
splayed words within a fish jaw
the suddenness of entry into another way
what dissolves truth and illusion
the lion’s face, painted black, radios code to the hymnal
and, so doing, learns how to inhabit what is sung
manifold are the durations one becomes
the lion’s face, of that which pertains to its moment,
fires, tilts, blasts, pounds, stabs, strafes, kills
death’s little rattle
could I but taste the joy
cowboys riding an atom bomb
huffing syphylline letters, the lion’s face,
This is war to extinction
cipher, work over the illusion
make it unreadable as a lion
makes of itself an erasure of its body
a false transparency
the lion’s face shifts, cuts, it vibrates
the lion’s face violates
breaks through rooms, letters falling in dense smoke
the lion’s face calls to open fire
to spread terror at a stroke
of an end imperceptible, of having no end
the lion’s face appears, an appearing
that emerges from nothing
what protects us from being
and disappearing
it protects us from death
all that is determined is condemned to be exterminated
lion’s face like a virus let loose in the city
like a leper wrapped in parachutes
Sound and Cerement of the body
what relinquishes itself
and unravels, revealing each wound—