SEX WITH SERPENTS
Lamios

I

The red stone
	- blood of the serpent -
fades into day

light falls on the sanctuary

II

Among the ruins
dry cantharides
glinting husks
scald-scabs

traces of aloe
on the tongue

III

Serpent
	the one who knows and begets
	who conceals
	annihilates

to reach him
you must become a wind
penetrate rock fissures

be the fire's tongue
	arrow of the god

IV

Where they broke
the holy amphorae
he hides himself

his words
	scattered stones

between muffled footsteps
and thorns
his fractured song

V

In his agile spirals
his green suffocations
his pleated silks
I breathe

I let the dust adhere to my ribs
the wind between my teeth

in his Orphic circles
his geometric eyes
his serpentine embrace
I expire

VI

Word
dry blood on the rock
		threads of a voice

palpitate on the tongue
approach and retreat
		explode
in a naked blaze

semen and light

VII

Intermittent
	blows of a voice
combine and rear up
into a single silence

		-hurricane eye

VIII

Resonance the stones enclose

the echo
	tumbles
	like a landslide

tangles of buzzing bees

		twitched threads

IX

The shrill sound
hangs in the air
becomes a bellow
		bull-roarer
penetrates pavilion
		labyrinth -

a multicoloured vector

X

From the open mouth
		as from a mask
syllables cascade
		a gush of sound

eye of silence

XI

Words knot the form
in their mesh

honeycomb
	humming

the dream of the nymphs
nourished by their sap

XII

Stuttering tongue
ripples
		of syllables

tongue of fire

devoured by its own phrases

XIII

From his mouth to my ear
words

the web tears
what grasped now flows
towards the west's burn

XIV

It hums between the chinks

slides soft fingers along the neck
briefly touches the thigh

it is the sure needle
sharp   whistle       arrow

XV

It passes through strata
		of meaning
that humid sentence

	wine filtered from
		a closed pitcher

XVI

In exchange for one flower
		of immortality
among the tense nettles
he leaves the skin
	as pledge

the wind bevels
		his scales

XVII

And the thorny voice
holds in its dry sheath
an empty shape

curls on the tongue
		like a living word
circles the haunch
like a sibilant hiss
	like a flame

XVIII

He unfurls his coils
rears up
	from the dust
friend of those who imitate
	his cadences

his new skin shine
		-O Radiant One
a sure target for your arrows

XIX

He seeks out the angle
where the ray of sunlight
touches the eyes surface
and plays at reflection

his shackled tongue sleeps
feigns that it sleeps
stretches into its fullness
savours its own darkness

XX

He casts an invisible snare
like a scent

curls into a circle
lets his echoes fall
to the crevice's depths

XXI

In tatters
	the careful weft
nothing left in the hands
fragments of sense
		skin-scraps

XXII

He enters the darkness

unborn words
between these rocks

XXIII

Voice
	contained in the air
word
	suspended in voice
	-and the word from where?

they have already forgotten

XXIV

It disappears
	into the light's centre

silence devours the words
like tiny insects
cantharides