after ‘And Otherness’ by Sun Ra
and we have never been ourselves enough to buy a mirror
never enough to buy a reflected ray
or green smashed bottle on the pavement
meant in the gaze of the Other,
our percussion is the time beyond hurt:
we wear bells ‘round our ankles
and dance over smashed glass,
asking the Other to appear in mirror form:
an orderly Self, a self-serving nurse,
a cure, a prescription:
a diagnosis in dilemma, doctor
there’s an opera behind those eyes and it speaks
of a slap, a choke, a scratch:
a toke to soothe (dis)c(h)ordant tonalities:
bloody feet, bloody feet, licked by a lying bass note,
a foot stool by the shore to watch the Midnight Sun disperse across ripples:
such a saintly circle, destroyed by the mirror
how many wave(form)(s) can (re)new reflection(?)
a trooper, my faction of (re)fraction:
I am calling on prisms to make fractal my visage,
and in fragments I found the electric (re)turn:
Frankensteined by the Othering blade:
I was asleep in the sunshine
while you stayed awake on the darkened half of the planet’s face
