<arnold's (excerpt from) "made flesh"> 2003-03-30.10:15 p.m. (excerpt from) Made Flesh Craig Arnold ��We are so practiced in the art of talking ����a craft as exact and neat as a glassblower's I bend to the furnace lashes curled in a blast of heat and dip the tip of a steel pipe in a bulb of soul-soft glass ����I spin you deftly ����prompt you into the shape I want you ���always at arm's length in a glove of woven stone ���I lift you up to my lips ���empty my cheeks blow you like a trumpet ��������turning my emptiness into yours ���your hope a bubble of soap ballooning frail Bottle of all my faults �����a world of glass on which I've lost my fingerprints impatient to admire my labor and taking it up too soon ����before the crystal cools �the core of fire red as a star about to fail A globe in whose reflection I am shown swollen ��gross and callous the ogre of a fairytale so cruel in his curiosity he can't keep from popping the blister can't help it ��can't resist ruining everything with the slightest tap of a finger ��������star struck out of a mirror ���������gash of air sucked into a punctured lung This isn't supposed to happen ��������glass, glass is a liquid ������given time even a window flows like water out of a frame its bottom thickens trickled down from the top ������a teardrop centuries in shedding �������Where is the flashing-forth of energy we call a violence ������clapping open a window onto beauty ��������forcing matter a moment out of mold green as the grass green as the glass at ground zero �the bomb's white blossom of more and less than sun a lava field eddied and whorled a stream one may not step in even once a string never to be untangled Where is the energy ��the injury defended the slight returned in fury Why the surrender ���������why do you cave in so quickly ����collapsing like the petals folded out of a blown bud? Nothing is broken Can't you see? Nothing can ever break ���������Our lives are entwined as an ivy-heavy tree with a galaxy put forth in every leaf You stare at me as up the deep black shaft of a burrow ��������where once having hunted you ������I cannot talk you out of �����so we come to grief back /& forth /& frosting names are often sad