I have always had a fondness for poems about death. About the aging process. I wrote an entire thesis on entropy built around the work of A. R. Ammons' Garbage.
What I'm trying to say, is that I have a love of decay. The beauty in the moment of no longer being.
The USS Guardian stuck on the Tubbataha Reef being cut into four sections so it could be safely removed. It is stark. Poetic.
I have also always been fascinated by the image of a cut out tongue. The muting of a person. From Titus Andronicus to this:
I'm Charles
Swaying handcuffed
On an invisible scaffold,
Hung by the unsayable
Little something
Night and day take turns
Paring down further.
My mind's a ghost house
Open to the starlight.
My back's covered with graffiti
Like an elevated train.
Snowflakes swarm
Around my bare head
Choking with laughter
At my last-minute contortions
To write something on my chest
With my already bitten,
Already bleeding tongue.
-Charles Simic
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