The Nominal Mirror

The Nominal Mirror

The distance from eye to eye indiscrete, continuous.
Memory postured the practice of the taxidermist.

Who measures light reflected back into the sun?
No one martyrs an ant, their labor that resists bone.

The stomach is the servant of the mouth.
Tonight her lips mistook the size of my lips.

So you looking back at me cannot speak.
I am not talking to you. Who are you talking to?

Of course an elephant that paints its own portrait scandalizes.
I’ve walked around all day wondering if that stink was mine.

It was not the city that built the man. A man no longer builds cities.
And the function of beauty is difference. The appraised house

approximates value. Then burns.

Tom Clark

Like musical instruments
Abandoned in a field
The parts of your feelings

Are starting to know a quiet
The pure conversion of your
Life into art seems destined

Never to occur
You don't mind
You feel spiritual and alert

As the air must feel
Turning into sky aloft and blue
You feel like

You'll never feel like touching anything or anyone
Again
And then you do

- Tom Clark