act 1 scene 1 black box recorder this archivist is tired Elizabeth don't touch the paper interstitial play looking at the guilty the cosmo-magical basis of the ancient Chinese city pinhole camera

4. Elizabeth don't touch the
paper

With mouth slack                            like a black sun
and twin sightless laudanum sockets
                                                              you'll disturb
no ghost universes.

Weighing a dead limb
                                                  a dustbin bag of ash
against any rationale                       grave-robbers
hope to offer                             pragmatic retrieval

of pages left, kittens
                             planted on the collapsing corpse
words in a grave                                melt together
                                                 gaps in transmission

poems unread                               an egg unbroken
in a snake's throat
                                            stomach acids scramble
definition. Elizabeth               I have imagined you

many different ways              your boxed absence
opens certain possibilities
                            sub-atomic thought experiments
write themselves up.

                                                           Elizabeth don't
reading intrudes        Dante's necrophilic daylight
desperate for hardcopy
                                    opposes quantum abeyance.

If I lock words in a box                                 bury it
certain fathoms in the earth
                                             boost every ambiguity
malformed intention                  natural processes

of decay                                   snowstorm on paper
avoid answering questions
will it balance history
against poems             he made too certain again?