Hands find their hands on the book, we look at the holder looking,
We are the paratext, gliding smoothly along the edges of unlined pages
That turn hurriedly and dismissively searching for the part
Bound by four fastenings, rustling pages, parchment swoosh

The pages are being flipped backwards in time until it lands on the one.
We enter as though from a peephole through the closed doors,
Everything already happening. Now Tricky is the soundtrack.
Too miniscule; you think you’ve really seen it all.

The men bob around in their hoods “But”
Their jawlines and hairline croak,
As though I have forgotten how to spell them.

We pan from left to right; we’re heading east for the Sunrise tomorrow.

The empire of imagination is bored stiff.
The empire of imagination is secretly amazed.
The book holds the space between their faces,
Between one incredulous mash of
Interiority and another’s; the book is the threshold.

The chain on the ankles; the chain on the book,
Held between them / the gaze is full and heavy, upwards -
Gazing to meet another.

Listen. The empire has nails, moles, hats, hair in triangles.

They lean in. With their mouths. Their mouths are closed.

The origins are unbearable; the fullness of the tear
Is a mouth, noses gazing. The container for god,
Overflows - The eyes cannot look ahead,
How is the image? Wings? Crown? Gown?

Incredulous that the vision comes down to this.
The lips are pursed as we gaze from below; lips, nostrils, folds, creases, collars,
hoods, the head away up there.

How long was the hair of the saint?

Being in between the sphinx, the gazes cannot penetrate.

Eyebrow to shoulder, to earlobe to scowl, lower jaw to side-eye; a beast
With no beginning or end, sharing notes, consulting cumulative flesh.

Lips to cheeks, tears are now spit. each of stone, we pass right;
the beast disrupts itself.

The swords exit through the doors and the doors close.
The cave is pointed towards the pews.

“Did god make you promises of any kind?”

That has nothing to do with your trial.

Your embrace, velvet eyes, we are all eyes,
Series of haunted rooms, open mouths, open eyes,
The long face of the inner room bows down,
Soldiers clutches touches

Silhouettes at contraposto poses, eyebrows marching spears
Through the open doorway, again, like an essay on Force,

Grifting force, with a cave painting,
Such layers of robes separating the head from the body,
Whisper ear to ear, like someone fell asleep during the movie,
And the whispers are the subtitles,

Did god make you promises? How do you interview a spirit?
The rights of spirits on trial.
Constantly the light from open interior rooms,
As though the eyes belonged in another room.

Face leans with a new emotion at an angle across the room
Within this sanctum,
She is the one taking the ring, take sympathy from the brave.

A gaze comes through a peephole,
Just another top expert on the supernatural,
He cries with his ears, while she reads, without reading.

We are in a room, written inside, inlaid.
The soul on trial like silence on trial.
We see the outer surface of the trial
in the night, on the water, so ashamed.

A top expert, like a ghost in a jar.

The face lays like a slow release, a face held in outstretched hands
That hold the state.

The soul is shy she says with her gaze, and looks away
Hers on a petri dish, a scalpel, magnifying glass.

You are not, You are, You are not, You are.

The book which she cannot read.
A tinier place inside erupts.
Three torturers arrive, tickling with a stick,
Tossing the crown and arrow, shaking the jaw,
A caricature, the jester walks like a standard,
Artaud wipes away the tears, clean pristine in a room
A dream of being judged

Evidence, proof of the inner chamber. I will not stay. Inscript.