The Little Nightmares

Wittgenstein got out of the car

and started shouting at the woman.

It was dark, the field of senses 

held their breath.

Cicadas made a maddening noise.

Kant put out his cigarette,

contemplated another taboo,

believed it felt long and hard,

the object-hood of a tree,

infatuated with harmonic fields.

The dead body, deep and thick, 

somatosensory,

just lay there in the trunk,

lay there

and lay there,

the woman, being shouted at.

The camphor tree, towing truck, 

wide and fuzzy:

nothing spoke of the truth.

Wittgenstein came back

for inspiration, 

for more, this interesting struggle, 

a treatise on Japan, 

language and death, necrophilia.

Kant pricked up his ears, 

a total of ten stories, he counted, 

each consisting of five movements,

sniffed and snuffed, 

rich and hot, olfactory.

The drag queen-turned-cyborg misbehaving 

in the public bath, number one. 

Cruel data, two.

Something about things as they go, 

three, and four and five,

six to eight, questionable methods

and depressing results, 

conclusions about the brain of man,

set in war zones and disaster areas, 

Mao, Hillary, the nutcracker, stalker, 

the sacrifice, things as they go

in the cracks of the real world, 

on beaches, in forgotten places.

Kant lit another cigarette.

What could he do?

What was there to be done?

The field of senses made

their maddening noise.

It was dark,

the anatomy of black felt long and hard,

he believed it was like

the chorus of the imagination,

the woman’s corpse just lying there

in the trunk. 

Wittgenstein started the car.

There was no, none of it,

looking back. 

Infatuated, 

harmonic fields.