Thread: Scar Tissue - Marko Zlomislic

I present to you a poem written by one of my favoured philosophy professors:

Marko Zlomislic

Cinema means pulling a uniform over our eyes, warned Kafka
-- Paul Virilio, _Open Sky_

Scar Tissue

You are taken to see but your eyes are not prepared to
look at the spectacle placed gently in front of you
like a birthday cake.

It is the dead who blow out the candles as your
illusions are cut into pieces.

The dead devour what still lives even as we eat
the recycled remains of what is planted in the field,
delivered to supermarket spouting forth freshly sprayed.

To live on as one of Prometheus' children. Shreds of
his liver torn by the eagle to re-grow. We are his
scar tissue.

The sweep of the broom over polished concrete
stepped on by a million daily commuters, mute
and unthinking, blind to the little
pleasures as they search for the nuclear fusion
of the orgasm afterglow.

A shoulder to sleep on as your head is cradled.
But there you already feel the skeleton underneath
the varnished skin dying to leap through tissue,
sinews, frayed nerves and muscle.

The little acts of revenge are sweet especially
when you have a key to the Other's door.
Declare a war against vending machines and
parking meters. Fill their slots with Chuck E.
Cheese tokens. The Real seeps in through the cracks
of the imagination to leave its stain.

Left on the doorstep, a letter, a video,
a dead mouse; all brought as a gift.
These do not satisfy your hunger.

On TV a horse takes the lead in the
Tour de France. A preacher plays the
electric guitar for Jesus who is still
smoldering on Golgotha.

It is a fun house ride with death hitching
on your admission ticket.

Magnify the details to bring the disaster near.
Cut and paste until you create the ideal
Adobe view. Where and when will we meet?

We seek order where chaos rules.
The bits are packaged: salad, porn, apples,
cuts of meat, coffee spoons.

The light enters when the illusion becomes tired.
The cliche, "I love you" should be returned
with silence. The echo you seek is an old repetition.

The knock on the door, the ringing of the telephone
are all reminders to stop eating the remainder.

How is this possible when Death nourishes what survives?

~