by Joel Giroux
What am I but your own
inhuman eye, blind to all
but the red vision I am
and am not, surrounded by
an amber world only periphery —
visible only from above, below;
my ochre centre rattling the crux
of a world you wish did not exist
but expands, still, like a gas,
an ephemeral non-thing,
a transparent lid lifted
by a blackened hand
to reveal a red iris, a disease
of vision bled into a broiling landscape
that lacks the utter nightmare
of me, gleaming like the rotten ideal
of your dulled, inevitable horizon.
Even in God’s bloody eye
I don’t exist, I do
in yours, and in the gold glare
that borders my face
growing slowly, approaching you
from out a darkness disguised
as everything the sun sees
but does not speak of, ever
out of immortal fear.
