Starts Around
Starts Around by Dan Raphael not vomiting but 3-d figures and scenes spuming from every orifice like all times in one, the clock a blur of steady lights hands shredding pockets walls geography no one changes their furniture anymore, chairs asag with moisture and memories incandescent coldfires of frass & dead wings no, the bee was born full formed out of my neck, flying backwards to the home its never seen
Let’s start one stanza at a time. “Not vomiting but…spuming:” frothing or foaming, and not spewing, which is close to vomiting. Everything in space, all time. “Hands shredding pockets walls geography” puts it another way, from the personal, indoors, to the world at large. (I like this line a lot, but wish it had been “shedding” instead of “shredding.” But shredding could be part of the spume and the “frass,” plant matter chewed up by insects.)
Abrupt change, back to the domestic indoors, metaphorically. “No one changes their furniture anymore” could refer to mental/psychological states. “Chairs asag with moisture and memories” a great line describing a mind that doesn’t clean house but just broods in stagnancy. “Coldfires” are microchips, right? Part of computer memory? Anyway, tiny, on the order of frass and “dead wings,” which could be the frass of insects, themselves chewed up.
Direct connection with “the bee…born full formed out of my neck” and “no one changes their furniture anymore.” One of those horror stories of insects laying eggs inside a human body and then emerging–here one insect, full formed, in an apocalyptic explosion from inside “flying backwards (in time, one assumes) to the home it’s never seen.” This must represent the psyche of the individual destroying its mildewing confines to get back to its origins–memories that have been suppressed–in search of revelation, which is like one’s whole world being destroyed. Quite a poem. The title eludes me.