Calling Disciples Man

At cocktail parties, perhaps because
his tie usually matched his socks, the man
would often find himself trapped
by tellers of insidious tales,
unsewn and waiting for the flesh
of coherence that never forms.
How, the man's shaking head wondered,
could these fragments lava forth
from contented lips on such flushed
and pitied faces, until he could no longer say
"O my" again. Like any other mantra'd thing,
this one too dimmed from meaning.
And so the man, incapable at last of mercy
for the boring who never get bored,
hobbled to the restroom mirror
and was startled to see his left eyelid
close by itself, without another muscle moving
on this cleaved face, and was rewarded
in his calm when he could do this again
and again, with one eye then the other,
petal gentle, each lid catching a leaf's breeze,
and the two pages of his face now seemed
spined by a new way to escape the fervent
familiars. He ventured out, armed
with his new mitosis, to corner
those who cornered and stare
into their sponging rant. At the right moment
the man closed one eye,
then the other, and the words stopped
and watched to see if the man's eyes took
their freedom seriously, their minds now
the baskets of a secret they were
unsure of deeply wanting.

--Ricardo Pau-Llosa, also here