Were a Throb to Entice a Brief Possession
or Give Voice to a Wreckage Deprived of
Expiration...
             -- Luigi Ballerini

A good thing
is that rock
can curl in the palm
of hand, and it feel
the precarious signs
of the very neat incision,
cut, chasm of what cost
even rock its existence
as a mass, craving for
cathexis. It deters it,
stretches what the hide,
starched and caged, covers
to escape-the possibility
of its projection across
space. If only one could keep
the hidden, heap the mass
in middle of the palm
to not exort a reflection
into a contortion of what's 
dogged by leash-the murderer always
slashes faster
than reaction, tosses the first
second, third
stone before the victim perceives
even bruise or blood
let alone the urgent throb of result.
In such a wilderness, a voice
cannot survive if the tongue
is tied to feldspar. It needs
the joint of the active fingering
down, around, surround to crush
all that can destroy
the rubble of its nervousness.


[from Luigi Ballerini]
April 24, 1998