Lacan

Is my desire my own?

Or is it another’s insignia?

Do I find it in the gap?

Opened by an imago?

Desire goes beyond demand

Demand prunes it of need

Desire is excavated shy of

The unconditional demand

Of presence

And absence

Demand evokes the want-to-be

In the three figures of nothing

Demand for love

Negates the Other’s being

The unspeakableness

Of what is not known in request

Aporia incarnate

Demand borrows its heavy soul

From the offshoots

Of the wounded tendency

Its subtle body from death

Desire asserts itself as absolute

To this object

That cannot be grasped

To the mirror

A specular image lends its clothes

Caught in the net of shadow

Its shadow-swelling volume—stolen

The tired lure of the shadow

As substance