It was not unusual for many people’s tolerance of alcohol to reach a point where they could see but no longer read; regrettably, it was the opposite for The Wichman. He craved lucidity though it was beyond him: he wished not just to master but to have such a complete domain over it he would seem its creator, its copyright holder: The Wichman would sue your ass if you even considered having a lucid thought of your own. Unfortunately, The Wichman was all talk, all ancient sound abstract on black interior monologue, yet an unharnessed joie de vivre dwelled within. The Wichman lined his desk with dollhouse-sized busts of Apollo he found in the trash. The Wichman could not bear anyone, even if made of stone in one-quarter scale, gazing out at him the same way the bluebirds and cardinals on his windowsill eyed him as if he were a moving concoction of suet and sun-flower seed. The Wichman nonetheless with a sense he was on the verge of becoming his own little person, desired to flex his guns or be wronged in some way to justify a more errant manner of behaving.
Lipoic acid and malic acid, picolinic acid and pyruvic acid
Coenzymes and chondrotins, selenium and andrographis
Anthocyanin, alpha-carotine, isoflavone, gingko extract
A whole bowlful of supplements
Instead of the morning meal
Vitamins H, I, J, K, L, M, N
Potassium and calcium, magnesium and germanium
Glucosamine and glycogen, taurine and turmeric
Cat’s claw, chitosan, eye drops made of maple, melatonin
A second bowlful of supplements
And still nothing for my skin
Placenta, pueraria, collagen, squalane
And then there’s those menstrual cramps
Progesterone, pasque flower, chasteberry, evening primrose
And if they’ll rev me up there’s the men’s meds
Zinc, selenium, arginine, ginseng and viagara too!
Hōhokekyo
Hōhokekyo
Kekyo kekyo kekyo kekyo, hohohōhokekyo
I feel like I’m flying
Looking down on the whole world
I feel nauseous
This won’t work, relax. For relaxation try
Carotine and resitine, teanine and valerian
And let me throw in something to prevent senility
I gulp down gingko extract once again
Polyphenol is now out of date but
One can cover the old-fashioned supplements with
Acerola, chlorella, ebios, biofermin
Vitamins O, P, Q, R, S, T, U
Flavonoids and grape seeds, marigolds and oligopeptides
A thirtieth bowlful of supplements
Vitamins V, W and X, Y, Z
A thirty-first bowlful of supplements
And still I can go on
Still there are the things written only in kanji
Luohanguo, lidanyan, licorice, cordyceps
Wheat germ oil, flax oil, egg yolk oil
Lactic acid bacilli, natto bacilli, colon bacilli
Folic acid, nucleic acid, medium-chain fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids
Pills to fight crotch itch and athlete’s foot, pills to lift a man into seventh heaven, pills of potassium cyanide and quince and aconite
Ointment to make a shiny head grow hair in a flash, powder to make a body grow ghostly thin, beans for off-the-cuff word play……
I will not get caught
I will not get caught no matter how long it takes
I am a slippery, smooth pill
Sliding slickly down the throat
The supplement is I
α, β, γ, δ
Hiragana, katakana, kanji, romanization
Alliteration at the beginning, rhymes at the end
The words tangle together
The words tangle turning
So rhythmic they bring tears to the eyes
A heavy rhythm within a light-hearted one
Here within this poem
*
Did it dissolve?
Is the mystery solved?
What you have swallowed is language itself.
On the bus I saw the scientists. They were re-enchanting
the commute. Atom after atom exploded for them;
every instant they looked at—a kiss, a tattoo—
bloomed, and I learned to hate my kaleidoscope
for making such cold work of beauty. Things change!
At the back of the bus, professor-poets schmoozed Western buddhists
and their backstage passes dazzled us all.
A child, I wanted the buddhists’ marigold minds
and t-shirts, but the scientists wore mild beards of wonderment
and every rider turned a blind eye
to the small-time pushers, the new money planting our medians,
the government building’s blacked-out windows,
and the small way my friend with the yellow braids
vanished. Every loss is a chrysalis, said the oldest poet
through his four-part beard, a living mandala on the 204.
Beard like a river, a tantrum, a tendrilled florescence,
and I pulled the bell-string, exercised my small power. In memoriam
I fixed a dead-grass soup, a weedy tea—scent of paste,
of making. Now the driver wears high-end headphones
and I see the signs for peace and anarchy
switchbladed into safety glass, the scientists
taking pills in precise measurements, pale tongues of gum
stabbed by poets’ pencil tips. The buddhists gone bald
and gossiping in the back, everyone reciting
an abracadabra: Prayer wheels. Power plants. Bluebells. Bus tokens.
It happened the moment she said, “Art is not a business.” Then she put the bird on her head and it stayed there for thirteen years.
I saw my future in her. I wanted to be a woman who has a bird on her head all the time for a noble and inane reason. I sneak around the internet trying to collect information. But she is tight-lipped about process. I find a photo of her singing under a scratchy blanket and an email to a tax service.
Mine is not a physical attraction because I do not have those. It is an attraction to what I lost before getting. It is a delicious, oozing mystery. It is terrifying.
Her bird, too, will have nothing to do with me, not even when I burn my Old Navy wardrobe and put on moccasins of sewn leaves. Not even when I use the mantra I paid $3000 to learn. She mocks my crooked plexiglas lampshade strung with plastic pearls (“the tired peachy hue of it will destroy your living room yet”); pecks out an eye when I say “I am not sure what art can do for anyone, really.”
I shoot at books and ex-lovers and mirrors across the room. Things that I love, or used to, explode before my face. Yeah, her bird still shits on me when I approach, but I can feel myself getting closer.
The Raiders that are stomped. The alerts that were mixed. The throngs that stomped. The pains were thronged. Fingers blocked. The fantasies that are raided. The mixes that are mixes. The hordes that were alerted that the throngs have been fingered. The stomps that were pained. The Raiders used force. The hordes were alerted that they had been stomped. The Raiders stomped. The alerts were mixed. The bones felt stomped. The pains that were alerts. The fingers that were blocked. The fantasies have been raided. The mixes that were mixes. The hordes will be alerted. The fingers that were bones. The stomps that were pained. Raiders are Raiders. Raiders that were piles of Raiders in the mud. The alerts that were fantasies of Raiders in the mud. The bones have been stomped. The pains that are fantasies of bones. Stomps stomp. The fingers that were flocked. The fantasies will be raided and the mixes will be fixed. The hordes that were alerted. The bones and the fingered. The stomps that were pained by the Raiders that were raided. The alerts that were stomped. The Raiders that have been stomped. The alerts that have been stomped and mixed so that the bones that were stomped were stomped. Alerts that alert. The pains that were boned. The fingers that are flocked. The fantasies that were raided. The mixes will be mixed. The buckets that were alerted. The bones were fingered. The stomps that were pained. The Raiders wore braids. The alerts that were stomped. The Raiders will be stars. The alerts that were mixed. The bones that are stars. The pain of bones. The fingers that are flocked. That the fantasies were raided. The mixes will be fixed. The buckets that are alerted. The bones that were fingered. The stars that are pained. The Raiders will be persecuted. The alerts that are stars. The Riders that were stars. The alerts that forever shall be mixed. The bones that were stars again. The pains that were bones again. The fingers that were fucked. The fantasies that were hidden. The fixes that were mixed. The buckets were alerted. The bone was fingered. The stars are still pained. Riders rode. Alerts and stars. Riders that were stars with there backs to the stars that were mixed with the bones that were stars. The pains that were mud. The buckets that were flocked. The fantasies that are ridden. The mixes mixed into fantasies that are ridden. The buckets that were backed up. The bones that were the fingers of Riders. The stars that were pained. The Riders that were ridden. The backs that were stars. The Riders that were stars. The backs that were mixed. The bones that are bones. The pains that were boned. The hammers that were swung and flocked. The fantasies that were flocked and swung. The mixes that were mixed into buckets that were backed. The bones that were hammered. The stars that feel pained. The Riders felt ridden. The backs of stars. The Riders that need stars. The backs that were broken. The bones that were shattered. The pain of bones that were stars again. The hammers that were the ecstacies of the ridden. The mixes that were mixes of mixes. The buckets that were bucked. The bones will be hammered. The stars will be pained. The Riders are ridden. The stars are back. The Riders were stars. The Riders were opium. The bones that were stars. The pains that were boned. The hammers hammered opium. The ecstacies of opium. The opiums that were opiumed. The buckets that were opium buckets. The opium that was hammered. The stars that were stars. The Riders that were ridden. The ecstacies that were stars forever. The opium buckets were full of stars. The stars that were ecstacies. The dancing that were stars and forever opium. The opium of ecstacy and stars of dancing forever. The ecstacies that were dancing. The opium that was forever dancing. The forever buckets of opium were stars. The bones will be shattered. The stars that danced. The Riders danced under the ecstacy of stars. The opium of the ecstacy of forever. The opium that was shattered. The bones that were opium.
The people who owned the little dogs laughed.
A seagull swooped down and pecked a terrier’s snout.
The dog yelped and tumbled nose over tail in the sand.
The owner of the terrier laughed.
Some other people laughed too.
The terrier shook the sand out of its fur, cast a hateful eye at the seagulls circling above, and trotted shamefully up to the parking lot to wait for the time when the owner would be ready to leave this cold, harsh place.
A long-nosed creature in a blue raincoat came along and took the dog in its arms.
The creature tossed the dog in the bed of a rusted old pickup truck.
The dog braced itself for a hard fall, but instead landed in a pillow-sized heap of stuffed animals.
As the creature in the blue raincoat climbed into the cab and the truck started to drive away, the terrier stole a final glance out toward the sea, where its owner continued laughing, now leashing up a seagull with his – the terrier’s – leash.
The terrier felts his weary dog bones melt away.
His blood lost its liquidity and became thick like cotton.
The long-nosed creature in the blue raincoat pulled the truck onto the charred coastal highway, still hot and smoking from recent fires.
The terrier tried to brace himself against the wind, but he failed to hold onto the stuffed animals.
The terrier flew out of the truck and soared high into the air, his shadow a gray dot on the smoldering earth.
The creature in the blue raincoat stuck its long nose out of the side window.
The nose nodded up and down, as if to bid the terrier good luck, before the shadow of a seagull fell in with the terrier’s and soon erased it.
The sky is everyone’s private property
but the ruby and emerald lights
so elaborately carved
into the curved silver underside are just ours
hereafter whatever happens whether it’s a half-brother in jail or a nephew in rehab
you’ll be my emerging nation
and I’ll be your development loan
and sometimes possibly vice versa
considering a move to LA; what's the masturbation scene like out there?
And what of the abstract fairy in charge of costumes? From which plane is it that you impart your wisdom and usher us into this realm looking like we just stepped from television?
“Come here,” she said. “We have light in our lungs. We speak into each other’s cheeks. Would you like to buy a puppy?”
“You’re the only one who understands how much it hurts,” I said and hit her.
The street sewn with Christmas lights, carolers serenading parking meters. Runoff from the slaughterhouse drips into the sewer. There is blood in every brain. “Teach me the meaning of the meaning,” she said, but I could not.
There is strangeness in the past months. I get my haircut daily because it grows that fast. The barber is not afraid. I go to his shop. I sit in his chair. I say: “Are you afraid?”
“No,” he says, sharpening his scissors. “Unless by afraid you mean lonely.”
More days come. Not everyone can have a white coat and a gospel. I stay indoors. Winds punish the trees. My neighbor preaches string theory, but I don’t understand.
“Get it?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
He says: “This will be the prime of you unless you round up.”
“Touché,” I say and hit him hard in the stomach.
He doubles over.
I take a vacation.
I wait and wait at the lip of a volcano. Nothing. For lack of a better world, I go home. Now I’m dressed in a Bermuda shirt. My skin looks two-thirds cooked. I’m far from television.
Science began with the Copernican Revolution. Recognition that the world is an average planet, and that our place in the cosmos is nothing special, has allowed humanity to make generalizations about the universe based on local observations. Yet while the Copernican Revolution has enlightened scientists for centuries, art remains Ptolemaic. The work most cherished is esteemed for being atypical. Whether admired for academic skillfulness or avant-garde boldness, the masterpiece is our artistic ideal. If art is to foster universal understanding – and be more than a cultural trophy – the great works must be abandoned. We must banish masterpieces as distracting anomalies, just as scientists routinely discard artifacts from their data sets. Art ought to be mediocre. The art of the future must be Copernican. 1. Painting must have the average color of the universe. Let it be beige. 2. Sculpture must have the predominant composition of the universe. Let it be gaseous. 3. Music must have the gross entropy of the universe. Let it be noisy. 4. Architecture must have the fundamental geometry of the universe. Let it be flat. 5. Cuisine must have the cosmological homogeneity of the universe. Let it be bland. 6. Film must have the mathematical predictability of the universe. Let it be formulaic. 7. Dance must have the characteristic motion of the universe. Let it be random. 8. Literature must have the narrative arc of the universe. Let it be inconclusive. This new Copernican art can be made by anyone. To achieve complete mediocrity, everybody must participate. In all genres, new work is required. The Ptolemaic past must also be reexamined, standards reconsidered, masterpieces rectified.
“Our fathers are correct, Roddy, though neither one knows how right they are. There is a pattern. But it isn’t one of myth or science. I caught a glimpse of it in the air. Something beyond our fathers’ imaginings, a glittering and navigable geometry that covers everything and passes through everything. Cords of light, braces of gold. I learned to make use of them last night. I actually flew, Roddy… And the faster I flew, the brighter the pattern appeared to me, until I realized there were animals with me in the sky, making use of the pattern… Beings who’d recognized the great geometry.”
I’ve tried to come up with a comparable experience to describe what I witnessed…and the only event that comes close to seeing Amon Garrick levitate is seeing my father in his coffin, his body impossibly stiff and painted among the silken folds. The lack of motion in my father’s normally animated face was so unbelievable that my mind attempted an adjustment. I actually saw his brow lift, his lips purse because I knew they must move. Likewise, seeing Amon step off the ground and stand in midair, my mind attempted a correction…I imagined the shadow of his boots had taken on some unknown weight and become part of his foot, that the shadow was, in fact, pushing him off the ground.
When Madame is allowed to return to her museum, which was only partially destroyed by fire, she will make a secret figure in wax that will never be displayed, a copy of herself as she looked in prison, head shaved and without eyeglasses. She deepens the eyeholes until they are caverns, elongates the jaw into a wolflike muzzle. And when she is finished with the monster—while the wax is still warm—she pounds her fist against the thing, weeping and wishing more than anything else that she had taught the queen to make the foolish dolls for her children.
People remember the day we met as the day frogs and other small amphibians, also squirrels, rats, and at least one mutt—a mongrel pup called Spitz—fell from the sky. When I saw the racoon hit you in the head I pulled over and rolled down the window. I don’t normally stop for hitch-hikers, you can never be sure. “You okay?” I called, and held up a questioning thumb. In hindsight, okay, this was dumb. You were clutching a tree in a storm and a racoon had just hit you in the head. The forecast had promised rain, increasing in the afternoon, maybe a little snow on high ground, but nothing like this. The twister had sucked up the smaller life-forms of the region, spat them out all over, and moved on. And how. It moved across the horizon like a coked-up Cohiba on a mission. But here, the worst was over. A toad splayed across the windscreen, dead. The worst was mostly over. The racoon slipped into a corn field.
Once you realize that your writing isn't as important as some other people's writing, you won't kick yourself anymore. And you'll quit distancing yourself and craving "alone time". You'll read more, too, I wager. Once in a while get up in the midst of the crowd and tell them all what you think of them, or explode against the unfairness you've encountered, to which they all seem blind, and were they to take off their blinders or quit acquiescing to the unfairness, that unfairness would be cut down and compensated. I guarantee that performing this act, with regularity but not in excess, will rid you of nervous habits forever. A particularly good antidote for nail & finger biting.
Kirk Pinho is made in Kirk Pinho’s image. On the fifth & sixth days, he created the chameleon & its stereoscopic vision. He told the dinosaurs to piss off. He created the porous ribs, the thorax, the anterior, the bicuspid valve of the muscle Kirk Pinho once called the heart. Kirk Pinho is a good substitute for angioplasty. His heart is wide for you like a nail bomb. His heart is wide for you like a nail bomb. His heart is wide for you like a nail bomb. His heart is wide for you like a nail bomb. His heart is wide for you like a nail bomb. His heart is wide for you like a nail bomb. His heart is wide for you like a nail bomb. His heart is wide for you like a nail bomb. He would love to shove his tongue between the gaps in your teeth. He would love to pull your pants down to your knees & fuck you in an alley, syncopated to a soundtrack of cats yowling. The carrion stuck to their gums. He would love to have the memory of math. He would love to be the thumbprint of himself on a loaded semiautomatic. He would love to snort coke from the stretch marks on your stomach, baby. He would love to see how much light the stars can rain. Kirk Pinho speaks for no one but himself. He would love you in an alley. He would love you like artillery. He would create you, & you would create him back.
A room is 10 x 10. The space seems small, relatively, once there is a bed and a table and things like clothing and stuffed animals and books and people and other things that you put inside of a room to make it seem as if you are alive; you are a person that lives; you are a person that lives in that space. If you laid some people down on the floor, you could not lay multiple people, not even two people, along each wall, unless they were excessively short, unless they were each shorter than five feet tall, unless they curled their knees up and scrunched themselves down to sizes that they are usually not. These people you laid down against the walls, they could not stretch out, the eight of them. This is how you know that a room that is 10 x 10 is a small room, relatively. It is a small room until something gets lost, like a key, or like a note, or like a cellular phone, and then the object you lost, which never seemed particularly small, even if you did have to occasionally dig in your pocket or your purse for it, even if it did not always present itself immediately from a space, this object like the phone or like the key, it becomes smaller, and the room becomes larger, and you wonder how it is that you never noticed how large the space is, relatively, to the other things, to the things that are not people, to these things that you could lay end to end against the walls, in multiples greater than two. These things, like hamsters and bunny rabbits and cats and children, these things could be laid end to end without bending knees, and these things could get lost inside of a room, in a way like a key or note or a phone, in a way that a person never could. And the size of a room, which can expand or contract, relative to the situation, even though this expansion and contraction is a psychological effect, and not a physiological effect of the elasticity of the walls, this expansion and contraction of space is what we compare to a vagina, when we talk about lost things and the vagaries of space, although the things we talk about losing in a vagina are not keys or cell phones or children, are instead tampons and condoms, although those different types of things, I suppose, are not exclusive to those spaces. We have lost condoms in rooms and I'm sure someone I know has lost a key in a vagina, even if I have not heard the story of it yet. What we are surprised by, when we discuss it, is the relative space of the vagina, and the similarities of experience, and the realization that a thing can, in fact, be lost inside of a vagina, a thing that was deliberately placed there for a specific function can be lost, and the confusion and disease that is associated with an object being lost inside of a body, and that yes, this is a space that can expand and can create room roughly the size of a newborn but, Really? I have lost an object? Has it disappeared? To what extent can I use my fingernails as a grappling hook? How many places can a condom hide inside of a vagina? How much can a tampon actually condense if I am drunk and forget that it's there and have sex anyway? Will I have to go to a hospital if I cannot find the object? How long do I wait until I visit the hospital, and then, there it is, between the clutching talons of fingernail, and using the fingernails like that hurts a little bit, sure, but it is so much better than a visit to the hospital, and so you shout from behind the closed bathroom door "I've found it! I feel like Indiana Jones!" and it's funny in a way that a lost key in a bedroom is never ever funny, and you pretend that you are not bewildered, although you are bewildered by it for the rest of the day, and when you finally mention it to a girlfriend a few days later, she expresses a similar story with a similar sense of bewilderment, and on and on and on until you all wonder why you are so bewildered by something that happens so often.
All of my friends are celluloid like me. We sit and watch the real world full of flat shapes we can't win for losing, and return to our TV sets and the red flags. We can't love strangers without cheating. Sometimes we sit and watch ourselves on TV. We hold hands or pass popcorn. We coo into each other's ear, place a taunting finger near one's privates. During breaks, we discuss plans to spend the night. In the morning, we say good-bye but never kill each other off. Some of my friends die on Reality TV. Some of my friends spread rumors that many of my friends are ghosts
What you have heard is true: there is nothing left here but salamanders and movement. There is the sight of wind if you could see wind, if you could see it sprawling out from our backs like tails, like turning your head too fast, like too much perfume. Above the cats and above the library and above the folly is an airplane spewing smoke as it crashes: an airplane with a banner trailing its body. It is telling you and I to eat something, it is telling us to call someone. All of the letters and numbers are reversed: here is an eight, here is a zero, here is a child's S curled like a lizard, unraveled like a snake. I am watching you watch the water roll in and it is beautiful—you with the beginnings of a freckle and me with beginnings of little to be proud of, of sand not yet made into castles, places to live, a gazebo, an elsewhere. In the airplane is a man who knows nothing about these things—a man who sees horizons from anywhere but through glass: a plastic tree, a hollowed rock. Here is where we put the water in. In the airplane are lights. We know this. We know this but choose not to look at what is left—there is something here; there is something here, too. We choose not to leave. We imagine being in a body inside of an airplane inside of a body—his body perhaps, watching his blood drift towards us, white and red cells, walls of stomach, a kidney here, romance and remembrance of the inside of eyes, what has been seen. We see things floating like orphans, like our brain reaching out to touch us, like an impossible wall. What you have heard is true: this happens when staring at too much blue or too much white or too much you—it all dances—snakes and liars, centipedes and rotting logs, hellbenders from torrents and sirens, viruses, maybe, with their fat heads and little legs speeding slowly like a child, like us when we were children, looking up at the sky like a lost limb at night or like me and you on an evening where we went east to just sit, nothing left but sitting—not moving—our blood the temperature of water: Asiatic and lungless. What you have heard is true: we do not follow the lights. I asked what we are looking for. I asked what we are looking for and you said nothing. Your body is leaving you. There is a chip there, there is a vessel—there is something inside of you that causes you to take your hair out, piece by piece, to leave patterns on your scalp, to pluck your eyebrows from out of your face, to take your eyelashes and hold them between your freckled fingers and blow them out into the river that has become the sea, to make a wish you say, you tell me to make a wish, make a wish, you say, make a wish you say again, make a wish for each punctuation mark, each comma, apostrophe, pause, possession, to make a wish because they always grow back—these pieces of self lost in the red clay that is left, that we cannot make wishes while they are still attached to our bodies, that we must speed up, we must double our wishes, we must double our options. I wish I could say a part of you floated in the air towards the propeller of something, a ceiling fan moving forward. I wish I could tell you these things, I wish what you have heard is true, that you are beautiful bald, that there are reasons for anything beyond living, that each piece of hair is actually something to hold onto after it has become detached from what you are and what is left. There is nothing here but rocks, you say, and things couldn't be further from the truth—here is a pulse, here is a piece of glass. They will make statues of us from these rocks, I say. Our ears will be pressed to the ground. Our mouths will be open.
How our temple brightens these young hills. We of Saxon strain. We of the Lord. We learn of heathens only when gunfire clatters the house. Out our window homes are burning in the snow. Our neighbor runs into the woods grabbing his organs in. The snow is loud with fire. They are so many strong even our dogs do not rise up. Still I wait on the Lord’s will in the kitchen with my child and my knife. Still the heathens shoot through the glass through my arm. I get dark with hate and pain. They come to us. They walk us gory through the rocks and ice. They walk most of us dead. They leave us in drifts where we drop. Still the angels feel thick around us in the half-light. My child fouls herself astride the pinto. She growls at me. The smell of us. Still I trust the Lord might set His hand to heal my wound. What they call their village but a strew of twigs. What they call their homes but errata. The swollen hole in me that leaches white. They guard us in a muddy hut. Still our nights and days full of the peace of the Lord. Overnight my child expires in the filth without a noise. Still the Lord says not to weep but keep an eye to His relief. Still the Lord says justice is mine. The pale horse. They wrap my bluing arm in oaken leaves. They grouse around their fire. They smoke a weed. I watch the hills for English steeds. I want their heads to break. I want the snow to dark. I want the Lord.
The pig pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged in pens. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged in pens. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pig pigged over pigs. The pig pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged in pens. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged in pens. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pig pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pig pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged in pens. The pigs pigged in pens. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged in pens. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged in pens. The pig pigged on pigs. The pig pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged in pens. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pig pigged on pigs. The pig pigged in pens. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged in pens. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The pig pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The pig pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged in pens. The pig pigged over pigs. The pig pigged with the pigs. The pig pigged in pens. The pig pigged in pens. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The pig pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged in pens. The pig pigged in pens. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pig pigged in pens. The pig pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pig pigged in pens. The pigs pigged in pens. The pig pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged in pens. The pig pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pig pigged on pigs. The pig pigged in pens. The pig pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pig pigged with the pigs. The pig pigged in pens. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The pig pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged in pens. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged in pens. The pig pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pig pigged in pens. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged in pens. The pig pigged with the pigs. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pig pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged in pens. The pigs pigged in pens. The pigs pigged in pens. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The pig pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged on pigs. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The pig pigged over pigs. The pigs pigged over pigs. The pig pigged with the pigs. 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The woman pigged in bed. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The man fell on tables. The man slept on tables. The pigs laughed with the pigs. The woman danced over pigs. The man slept over pigs. The pigs pigged with the pigs. The man danced with the unicorns. The umbrellas laughed in bed. The pigs danced on tables. The pigs slept in bed. The umbrellas fell on tables. The woman fell over pigs. The man fell with the unicorns. The unicorns laughed in bed. The children pigged with the unicorns. The pigs pigged on tables. The children laughed on tables. The children slept over pigs. The unicorns slept with the unicorns. The children fell on tables. The pigs laughed with the unicorns. The unicorns fell with the unicorns. The unicorns danced in bed. The children laughed over pigs. The pigs fell with the unicorns. The unicorns danced over pigs. The umbrellas danced over pigs. The man slept with the unicorns. The children fell over pigs. The umbrellas danced on tables. The man pigged with the unicorns. The children slept in bed. The unicorns pigged in bed. The umbrellas slept on tables. The umbrellas danced in bed. The pigs danced over pigs. The pigs danced in bed. The man danced on tables. The man pigged over pigs. The unicorns slept over pigs. The children laughed in bed. The unicorns pigged on tables. The woman fell on tables. The woman slept in bed. The pigs laughed on tables. The unicorns fell over pigs. The umbrellas pigged in bed. The umbrellas slept with the unicorns. The woman danced on tables. The unicorns danced with the unicorns. The umbrellas danced with the unicorns. The man danced over pigs. The umbrellas pigged over pigs. The children slept on tables. The umbrellas fell in bed. The woman pigged over pigs. The woman pigged with the unicorns. The woman fell in bed. The man laughed in bed. The unicorns danced on tables. The umbrellas laughed over pigs. The children laughed with the unicorns. The pigs danced with the unicorns. The woman pigged on tables. The umbrellas pigged on tables. The pigs slept with the unicorns. The pigs laughed over pigs. The children pigged over pigs. The unicorns slept in bed. The man danced in bed. The pigs pigged over pigs. The woman laughed in bed. The man laughed with the unicorns. The umbrellas slept over pigs. The woman danced in bed. The pigs pigged in bed. The woman fell with the unicorns. The unicorns fell on tables. The children pigged on tables. The children danced in bed. The woman slept over pigs. The unicorns pigged over pigs. The woman slept on tables. The man pigged in bed. The woman laughed on tables. The children fell with the unicorns. The children danced over pigs. The pigs slept on tables. The woman slept with the unicorns. The man slept in bed. The umbrellas fell with the unicorns. The man pigged on tables. The pigs slept over pigs. The umbrellas pigged with the unicorns. The pigs fell in bed. The children danced on tables. The umbrellas slept in bed. The man laughed on tables. The umbrellas fell over pigs. The man fell in bed. The pigs fell on tables. The umbrellas laughed on tables. The pigs laughed in bed. The woman danced with the unicorns. The unicorns laughed on tables. The pigs fell over pigs. The woman laughed over pigs. The unicorns fell in bed. The children fell in bed. The children pigged in bed. The children danced with the unicorns. The man fell over pigs. The unicorns slept on tables. The children slept with the unicorns. The man laughed over pigs. The unicorns laughed over pigs. The woman laughed with the unicorns. The umbrellas laughed with the unicorns. The woman pigged in bed. The unicorns pigged with the unicorns. The man fell on tables. The man slept on tables. The unicorns laughed with the unicorns. The woman danced over pigs. The man slept over pigs. The pigs pigged with the unicorns. The man danced with the unicorns. The umbrellas laughed in bed. The pigs danced on tables. The pigs slept in bed. The umbrellas fell on tables. The woman fell through hoops. The man fell with the unicorns. The unicorns laughed in bed. The children pigged with the unicorns. The pigs pigged on tables. The children laughed on tables. The children slept through hoops. The unicorns slept with the unicorns. The children fell on tables. The pigs laughed with the unicorns. The unicorns fell with the unicorns. The unicorns danced in bed. The children laughed through hoops. The pigs fell with the unicorns. The unicorns danced through hoops. The umbrellas danced through hoops. The man slept with the unicorns. The children fell through hoops. The umbrellas danced on tables. The man pigged with the unicorns. The children slept in bed. The unicorns pigged in bed. The umbrellas slept on tables. The umbrellas danced in bed. The pigs danced through hoops. The pigs danced in bed. The man danced on tables. The man pigged through hoops. The unicorns slept through hoops. The children laughed in bed. The unicorns pigged on tables. The woman fell on tables. The woman slept in bed. The pigs laughed on tables. The unicorns fell through hoops. The umbrellas pigged in bed. The umbrellas slept with the unicorns. The woman danced on tables. The unicorns danced with the unicorns. The umbrellas danced with the unicorns. The man danced through hoops. The umbrellas pigged through hoops. The children slept on tables. The umbrellas fell in bed. The woman pigged through hoops. The woman pigged with the unicorns. The woman fell in bed. The man laughed in bed. The unicorns danced on tables. The umbrellas laughed through hoops. The children laughed with the unicorns. The pigs danced with the unicorns. The woman pigged on tables. The umbrellas pigged on tables. The pigs slept with the unicorns. The pigs laughed through hoops. The children pigged through hoops. The unicorns slept in bed. The man danced in bed. The pigs pigged through hoops. The woman laughed in bed. The man laughed with the unicorns. The umbrellas slept through hoops. The woman danced in bed. The pigs pigged in bed. The woman fell with the unicorns. The unicorns fell on tables. The children pigged on tables. The children danced in bed. The woman slept through hoops. The unicorns pigged through hoops. The woman slept on tables. The man pigged in bed. The woman laughed on tables. The children fell with the unicorns. The children danced through hoops. The pigs slept on tables. The woman slept with the unicorns. The man slept in bed. The umbrellas fell with the unicorns. The man pigged on tables. The pigs slept through hoops. The umbrellas pigged with the unicorns. The pigs fell in bed. The children danced on tables. The umbrellas slept in bed. The man laughed on tables. The umbrellas fell through hoops. The man fell in bed. The pigs fell on tables. The umbrellas laughed on tables. The pigs laughed in bed. The woman danced with the unicorns. The unicorns laughed on tables. The pigs fell through hoops. The woman laughed through hoops. The unicorns fell in bed. The children fell in bed. The children pigged in bed. The children danced with the unicorns. The man fell through hoops. The unicorns slept on tables. The children slept with the unicorns. The man laughed through hoops. The unicorns laughed through hoops. The woman laughed with the unicorns. The umbrellas laughed with the unicorns. The woman pigged in bed. The unicorns pigged with the unicorns. The man fell on tables. The man slept on tables. The unicorns laughed with the unicorns. The woman danced through hoops. The man slept through hoops. The pigs pigged with the unicorns. The man danced with the unicorns. The umbrellas laughed in bed. The pigs danced on tables. The pigs slept in bed. The umbrellas fell on tables. The woman fell through hoops. The man fell with the unicorns. The unicorns laughed in bed. The children jumped with the unicorns. The pigs jumped on tables. The children laughed on tables. The children slept through hoops. The unicorns slept with the unicorns. The children fell on tables. The pigs laughed with the unicorns. The unicorns fell with the unicorns. The unicorns danced in bed. The children laughed through hoops. The pigs fell with the unicorns. The unicorns danced through hoops. The umbrellas danced through hoops. The man slept with the unicorns. The children fell through hoops. The umbrellas danced on tables. The man jumped with the unicorns. The children slept in bed. The unicorns jumped in bed. The umbrellas slept on tables. The umbrellas danced in bed. The pigs danced through hoops. The pigs danced in bed. The man danced on tables. The man jumped through hoops. The unicorns slept through hoops. The children laughed in bed. The unicorns jumped on tables. The woman fell on tables. The woman slept in bed. The pigs laughed on tables. The unicorns fell through hoops. The umbrellas jumped in bed. The umbrellas slept with the unicorns. The woman danced on tables. The unicorns danced with the unicorns. The umbrellas danced with the unicorns. The man danced through hoops. The umbrellas jumped through hoops. The children slept on tables. The umbrellas fell in bed. The woman jumped through hoops. The woman jumped with the unicorns. The woman fell in bed. The man laughed in bed. The unicorns danced on tables. The umbrellas laughed through hoops. The children laughed with the unicorns. The pigs danced with the unicorns. The woman jumped on tables. The umbrellas jumped on tables. The pigs slept with the unicorns. The pigs laughed through hoops. The children jumped through hoops. The unicorns slept in bed. The man danced in bed. The pigs jumped through hoops. The woman laughed in bed. The man laughed with the unicorns. The umbrellas slept through hoops. The woman danced in bed. The pigs jumped in bed. The woman fell with the unicorns. The unicorns fell on tables. The children jumped on tables. The children danced in bed. The woman slept through hoops. The unicorns jumped through hoops. The woman slept on tables. The man jumped in bed. The woman laughed on tables. The children fell with the unicorns. The children danced through hoops. The pigs slept on tables. The woman slept with the unicorns. The man slept in bed. The umbrellas fell with the unicorns. The man jumped on tables. The pigs slept through hoops. The umbrellas jumped with the unicorns. The pigs fell in bed. The children danced on tables. The umbrellas slept in bed. The man laughed on tables. The umbrellas fell through hoops. The man fell in bed. The pigs fell on tables. The umbrellas laughed on tables. The pigs laughed in bed. The woman danced with the unicorns. The unicorns laughed on tables. The pigs fell through hoops. The woman laughed through hoops. The unicorns fell in bed. The children fell in bed. The children jumped in bed. The children danced with the unicorns. The man fell through hoops. The unicorns slept on tables. The children slept with the unicorns. The man laughed through hoops. The unicorns laughed through hoops. The woman laughed with the unicorns. The umbrellas laughed with the unicorns. The woman jumped in bed. The unicorns jumped with the unicorns. The man fell on tables. The man slept on tables. The unicorns laughed with the unicorns. The woman danced through hoops. The man slept through hoops. The pigs jumped with the unicorns. The man danced with the unicorns. The umbrellas laughed in bed. The birds danced on tables. The birds slept in bed. The umbrellas fell on tables. The woman fell through hoops. The man fell with the unicorns. The unicorns laughed in bed. The children jumped with the unicorns. The birds jumped on tables. The children laughed on tables. The children slept through hoops. The unicorns slept with the unicorns. The children fell on tables. The birds laughed with the unicorns. The unicorns fell with the unicorns. The unicorns danced in bed. The children laughed through hoops. The birds fell with the unicorns. The unicorns danced through hoops. The umbrellas danced through hoops. The man slept with the unicorns. The children fell through hoops. The umbrellas danced on tables. The man jumped with the unicorns. The children slept in bed. The unicorns jumped in bed. The umbrellas slept on tables. The umbrellas danced in bed. The birds danced through hoops. The birds danced in bed. The man danced on tables. The man jumped through hoops. The unicorns slept through hoops. The children laughed in bed. The unicorns jumped on tables. The woman fell on tables. The woman slept in bed. The birds laughed on tables. The unicorns fell through hoops. The umbrellas jumped in bed. The umbrellas slept with the unicorns. The woman danced on tables. The unicorns danced with the unicorns. The umbrellas danced with the unicorns. The man danced through hoops. The umbrellas jumped through hoops. The children slept on tables. The umbrellas fell in bed. The woman jumped through hoops. The woman jumped with the unicorns. The woman fell in bed. The man laughed in bed. The unicorns danced on tables. The umbrellas laughed through hoops. The children laughed with the unicorns. The birds danced with the unicorns. The woman jumped on tables. The umbrellas jumped on tables. The birds slept with the unicorns. The birds laughed through hoops. The children jumped through hoops. The unicorns slept in bed. The man danced in bed. The birds jumped through hoops. The woman laughed in bed. The man laughed with the unicorns. The umbrellas slept through hoops. The woman danced in bed. The birds jumped in bed. The woman fell with the unicorns. The unicorns fell on tables. The children jumped on tables. The children danced in bed. The woman slept through hoops. The unicorns jumped through hoops. The woman slept on tables. The man jumped in bed. The woman laughed on tables. The children fell with the unicorns. The children danced through hoops. The birds slept on tables. The woman slept with the unicorns. The man slept in bed. The umbrellas fell with the unicorns. The man jumped on tables. The birds slept through hoops. The umbrellas jumped with the unicorns. The birds fell in bed. The children danced on tables. The umbrellas slept in bed. The man laughed on tables. The umbrellas fell through hoops. The man fell in bed. The birds fell on tables. The umbrellas laughed on tables. The birds laughed in bed. The woman danced with the unicorns. The unicorns laughed on tables. The birds fell through hoops. The woman laughed through hoops. The unicorns fell in bed. The children fell in bed. The children jumped in bed. The children danced with the unicorns. The man fell through hoops. The unicorns slept on tables. The children slept with the unicorns. The man laughed through hoops. The unicorns laughed through hoops. The woman laughed with the unicorns. The umbrellas laughed with the unicorns. The woman jumped in bed. The unicorns jumped with the unicorns. The man fell on tables. The man slept on tables. The unicorns laughed with the unicorns. The woman danced through hoops. The man slept through hoops. The birds jumped with the unicorns.
We do not lack communcation. On the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present.
The revolution is coming, Rhys says so, and it’ll be just like we always dreamed: blood, streets. First day in Yangon, time- lagged and tongue-tied from my trip across the Atlantic. “Things will be changing soon,” Rhys says. “The situation is not stable.” His accent is hard to figure. The words rise liquid from his quivering paunch. “What part of Australia is he from?” I ask an Aussie. “The drunk part,” the Aussie says. So the boss comes to work legless every day and talks revolution, though no one ever says revolution, they say, “situation” and “the lady” and “change,” eyebrows hovering around the hairline. It’s very subtle. Subtlety is Rhys’s thing, really. When one of his prostitutes arrives at the office he stops looking at porn in his glass cubicle and retreats, sly as a fox, to a concrete-walled conference room. The middle-aged front-office secretary, taught damelike etiquette back when the Brits were in charge, has the girls write Guest in angled script. This is before an American we’ll call The Veteran glides into town, frictionless, swimwear smooshed flat against some biblical literature in his backpack. The Veteran will want to speak to Suu Kyi, which we will know to be impossible, and he will attempt this in the direct manner of children and the insane. He will have a message for her, something about a vision, and we won’t be there to warn him that he’ll die before he gets close. We’re not the vision-having, message-delivering kind, we being me and Chris and Kat, the white-skinned staff Rhys handpicked from our tepid e-mail inquiries. We’ve been in Myanmar a year now and we’ve seen postcard Myanmar, coffee-table-book Myanmar, memoir Myanmar. Brown boys jumping off buffalo backs into clean blue lake, monks all ribboned up in a tight little line along the shore. We got bombed with some wizened, cigar- smoking sages and met those long-necked ladies with rings caterpillared from collarbone to jawline. We’ve seen unblemished beaches and distended bellies, but mostly we see the inside of this office, from which we publish what passes for a newspaper. People read it because what else are they going to read? Everything else is banned. We aren’t banned because before we print a word, the government man, Wey Lin, reads the copy and faxes it back with thick black Xs across paragraphs he finds displeasing. Fluff’s all you can shove through Wey Lin’s filter. I pretend to know something about real estate and cook up a column called “House of the Week.” Half my Burmese colleagues have had family members disappeared. My friend Phyo had her father and brother dragged screaming from their kitchen when she was nine. “The second-floor dining room,” I write, “is perfect for entertaining.”
here lies a man who as a boy would follow his father into the woods and worry that he would be left behind because what if his father wasn't actually his father but an android or a highly sophisticated robot or even a sort of shapeshifting alien which of course he was not or so the son figured even though sometimes the idea took hold so fiercely that the boy became nearly paralyzed with fear for they were so deep in the woods and so far away from home and of course he couldn't share this information slash fear with his alien father who moved quickly through the trees often allowing limbs to slap backwards and hit the boy in his face because if he did say something who knows the alien father might have no choice but to terminate the experiment which was could two alien parents raise two children i.e. the boy and his sister without them knowing that they meaning the parents were aliens or androids or whatever they were and yes of course this was only the result of a hyperactive imagination since in truth the boy's parents were kind and good and generous to a fault which was probably why the deceased entertained such thoughts in the first place since other fathers he knew had cheated on or divorced their wives because they didn't like them any more or because their wives had contracted degenerative muscular diseases and then these fathers had abandoned them for women who were not as nice or attractive as the first though maybe these second wives were better in bed a thought that would not cross the deceased's mind until many years later when he looked back upon a friend who was the product of quote unquote a broken home a friend who seemed from the perspective of the deceased to have the world as his proverbial oyster meaning that he was allowed to ride his bike wherever and whenever he wanted and who lived at his mother's trailer or his father's lake house or in an apartment behind his father's dental office which the deceased thought was incredibly cool not only because it had a light switch cover that featured a fat chef with his fly open thus granting the illusion that the light switch itself was a nubby penis one flipped up or down to magically create light but also because the deceased's friend was basically given full reign over cable tv and radio meaning he was allowed to listen to the album thriller which had been banned in the deceased's home and to watch classic films like ghostbusters which had also been banned in the deceased's home not only because of bad language but also probably because like thriller both mediums presented the idea that the dead could come back and that there were such things as ghosts when in fact his parents and the deceased and his sister and his entire family going back for generations refused to believe thanks to their interpretation of the holy bible in ghosts or rather they believed that a ghost if you happened to be unlucky enough to encounter one was a manifestation of satan who from the very beginning had taken the form of a snake and in order to convince eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had promised that she would not surely die and thus the world's first lie would come to find itself reproduced over and over again in stories and song and this idea still rang true in the deceased's mind as he had to admit how tantalizing it was to believe in the supernatural or to even pretend to believe in invisible forces that were engaged in vast conspiracies which was probably what he was up to back in the woods trying to convince himself that his father was not who he claimed to be a man who ended up after many years of life to be a life form as familiar and alien as anything the deceased had ever known
An unlicensed suicide hotline operator was charged with reckless endangerment. She was accused of encouraging a distraught man to shoot himself, based on the fact that she had hung up on him the moment before he pulled the trigger of his gun. This was only after she had counseled him and encouraged him to live for several hours. In court, the operator explained that she had been seized by an unexpected whim and that she no longer believed in the glimpses of hope that she had offered the man. Furthermore, she felt that is was her responsibility, at that moment, to share with him what she thought was the truth, to validate his desperation. She then felt that continuing to coerce the man from his will would taint the truth that she had spoken, so she hung up and, a moment later, the man (a divorced attorney) pulled the trigger of his pistol held at such an angle as to destroy his brain and the back of his skull. The fellow hotline operators who sat in the call center that afternoon testified that their unlicensed colleague simply set the phone down and walked out of the center, without saying a word. The members of the jury who heard the case all agreed that the operator's decision was reprehensible and surely contributed to the man's death. Yet, when asked by the judge, their foreman pronounced a decision of 'not guilty.' They could not find a way to understand her moral reprehensibility as criminal. The hotline that the operator worked for had the highest success rate in the city for aiding callers, despite its dubious licensing and hiring practices.
Those two dogs are going to kill each other and no one is going to see it. It's why there's a carnival in the center of the city. No one likes animal violence and everyone likes cotton candy. There's a Tilt-A-Whirl and a Gravitron. We're all holding hands and winning big stuffed pandas for each other. Who wants to microwave a corn dog and eat it in front of a dog fight? Here is where it's bright and from the Ferris wheel we can see our whole city. There are our houses, we say as we rest our sticky fingers in each others' belt loops and shiver a little in a way that's pleasant, and there, look, Mr. Edison's doing some digging in the garden. Who gardens at night? Where do shivers come from? But we aren't cold because it's a carnival, it's just that the air up here is so unlike the air down on the ground where the dogs are. It's just that all the sounds are whoops and gasps and quick kisses like water hitting our metal seats as it starts to drizzle. The rain's just for us because we're so high up our city council members and sports referees should make all official rulings from where we are. But they're not here, they're in their houses and we're watching as they one by one turn off their lights, so we pass legislation and call holding on each other until we're tired and then we say I love you because there isn't a thing we can think of that we're missing.
Swinging from the dangling spine of God I play with my fantastic breasts in front of my worst enemies & their moms & dads thank you all for coming I’ll be here all day pull open your blinds in the morning I don’t need a day off I feel so incredible in the wind I pee on underage girls my whole naked body an ecstasy node a little bird called me a dick he thought it would save my life it did I throw all my weight until my knees cramp & I let go a long howl long after everyone has left before I dismount into the blackest flowers
I love you like a Kraft caramel, like a paper kite, like a blue green chameleon, I love you like the yellow Texas rose, like bluebonnet, the black-eyed Susan, I love you like the Plaza, the Barbizon, the Algonquin, the Azure Banyan Tree, I love you like chocolate mousse, like Passover gelt, like the Corvette Sting Ray, I love you like books, like sharpened pencils, like wooden toothpicks in May, I love you like Band-Aids, like animal crackers, like the anti-defamation league, I love you like psychoanalysis, like Double Stuff, like Charmin Ultra Soft, I love you like rock candy mountain, like gastroenterological regularity, like the absence of TV, I love you like rolled up sleeves, like blister-less toes, like other people’s failures, I love you like Michigan J. Frog, like necessary brain surgery, like un-nicked tweezers, I love you like Crayola brand Razzamatazz tangerine crayons, I love you like Desenex, like Victorinox, like Vladimir Nabokov, I love you like men who break women’s hearts and return to them to do it again, I love you like Ibuprofen, like Carl Theodore Dryer, like 3-in-1 oil, I love you like general anesthesia, like dead parents, like the absence of pets, I love you like MiraLAX, like Elmer’s glue, like Robinson Jeffers, I love you like antidisestablishmentarianism, like usufruct, like uxorious, I love you like the Bugatti Veyron, like Constantin Vacheron, like my potato peeler, I love you like fraudulent religious artifacts, defrocked convicted pederasts, and dead fascists, I love you like Deet in spring, like raspberry bread pudding, like suicide before murder, I love you like rabbits, like Winchester 30-30s, like leather bull whips, I love you like children confiscated from abusive parents, like a fresh sketchpad, like weight loss, I love you like Divorce Court, like Wild Bill Hickok, like celebrity cellulite, I love you like under-tipping, like getting something for nothing, like removed road kill, I love you like adulterous politicians, desecrated crucifixes, Eyjafjallajokull’s eruption, I love you like new car smell, vine ripe tomatoes, picking toenails in bed while watching Jean-Paul Belmondo blow off his painted blue head with a dynamite belt, I love you like Huckleberry Hound, like Mercurochrome, like huntsman’s aluminum shaft spinning towards roebuck’s heart, I love you like shaving cream, like atheists, like the ecstasy of championship over devastated competitors, I love you like baby photos, childhood photos, yearbook portraits, like fatal vehicular accidents in which life goes on, like photos of grandchildren, I love you like anti-Semitic gore caked on a car fender, like the amaryllis, like Hellman’s Real Mayonnaise prior to ptomaine poisoning, I love you like retsina, like liquid nails, like King Kong, I love you like I love the moment sissy surpasses bully in dominance and solidity, bully a mushy quasi-alcoholic fat-boy facing impotence and beautiful mirages, I love you more than I savor his eventual suicide, I love you like Pez dispensers, like Comet cleanser, like the apprehension and execution of escaped Nazi collaborators ensconced in Argentina or Czechoslovakia with wives and butchered meat and antibiotic pills, I love you like Nicanor Parra, like shore bird squawk, like intrepid explorer in deepest reaches growing beard of worms and mosquitoes, I love you like dead radios, like laryngitis, like the paradise between symphony orchestras, I love you like Aunt Jemima’s, Log Cabin, Canadian maple syrup, cane sugar, beet sugar, black strap, Karo, agave, brown rice syrup, barley malt, date sugar, honey, apple syrup, turbinado sugar, sugar in the raw, and spreadable fruit, like Tootsie Roll Pops, like cocaine, like dissolution, obesity, bulimia, body dsymorphic disorder, circus mirrors, binge eaters, and one trick ponies, I love you like surfboards, like Briggs & Stratton two stroke engines, like The Beach Boys’ God Only Knows and Caroline No, like a boy’s first kiss, like the poignant exuberant hair-covered crushability of the back of a young man’s head, like summer swelter drowned yellow jacket summer swimming pool Dreamsickle with half-naked mother towel-tanning on scorched green poolside grass with friends, like penny flickering through water to deep end drain and scissor- legging through thudding emerald explosions, I love you like trap set Troggs and Yardbirds amateur banging in shut-door bedroom, Heart Full of Soul, Wild Thing megalomaniacal, euphoric, and immortally-pumping, like larvae, pupa, cocoon, butterfly, like the pushing, teeming, swollen insect and maggot rivers and oceans riddling, beneath its skin, Earth’s corpulent body, collectively the blood of the planet, I love you like individuality, like peppermint toothpaste, like shutting to external influences earlids severing to silence repercussions and reprimands such as ostracism, marginalization, expulsion from the power-herd and mother dust cloud choking sun and asphyxiating lungs with powder, I love you like ducks, like bandanas, like bananas, I love you like Disneyland version of Davy Crockett, men of leather, sweat, and integrity, fight-to-death blunderbuss men, but non-threatening sensitive husbands, survival-adept, self-educated, half cougar, half tortoise wielding axe and delivering calf, and hefting and hurling boulders into creek, who thrusts forged steel into boiling heart and butchers the meat, and dies altruistically in a distant fort, I love you like ducks, like islands, like yo-yo tricks, I love you like continuous low-level depression-narcissism’s near-perfect manipulation of intimates, swinging attention to my catastrophe and spidering outward the illusion of seductive torment, half an ingrained deliberate tactic to win female sympathy, half the justifiable melancholy of the hypersensitive personality, like electric staplers, like parrots, I love you like Balinese children, like Chinese children, like Ethiopian children, oh hell, like all brassy, fascinated, audacious, overconfident, dictatorial, voracious children- optimists, like Mississippian grits, like Wilson Staff golf balls, I love you like Renee Maria Falconetti, like Anna Karina, like black-faced Monica Vitti in a Roman condominium African drum-dancing with spear, like a pocket full of pine cones, I love you like disgust, like vulgarity, like Babinski’s reflex, like brutal truth, like sour cherries, like despising the despicable and, Christianity be damned, wishing them mal— malfunction, maladjustment, malnutrition, malpractice, and malaria, I love you like The Palladium 1977, Frank Zappa, Black Napkins, like 1966, Fresh Cream, I’m So Glad, like Bethel, NY, August 17, 1969, I’m Going Home, Ten Years After, like rural nighttime darkness, like rage, I love you like rage, like bitterness, like onomatopoeia, like animadversion, like laziness, like in late night Roman alleyways white-fox-coated Anita Ekberg balancing a Persian kitten on head prior to smashing with lust Marcello Mastroianni’s obsequious and foolish face, I love you like a psychologically stable, sexually questionable male fashion model trekking the Himalayas in L.L. Bean Pathfinder Cargo Pants, Moose River Hat, and Vintage Field Watch, interrupting a twenty-three thousand foot ascent for banana and Clif Bar under cloudless skies in mid-afternoon surrounded by delphiniums, like cattle torsos on hooks stringing blood in slaughter houses, like Plato, like Worcestershire sauce, I love you like terrified patients in ambulances who are not me parting traffic en route to intubations, neuromuscular blockades, pneumonectomies, skin grafts, or amputations, like sharp scissors, like Hershey Kisses, like son’s plexus absorbing father’s knuckles, I love you like the infinite hallways of me posing between two mirrors, like gasoline odors, like cordoned crime scenes, like pickle relish, natural catastrophes including fires, power outages, flooding, emergency shelters, and devastated families, I love you like Carnation Condensed Milk, like bicarbonate of soda, like a perfect score, I love you like tearful catharsis. like the shamed humiliated season-losing goalie slumping to locker room paper-cup pelted dragging headgear like a broken spine, like Calamine lotion, like tin sheriff badge, like stadium of devastation and false sportsmanship littered with wet confetti and nacho mangers, like flat-on- back marital and financial failure prior to resurrection as a jackknife or furious humanist, I love you like the meanest, whitest white-supremacist son-of-a-bitch in creation with his brickbat, credo, and magnanimous wife assassinated at cookout by Emmitt Till, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, and W.E.B. Dubois, like cat’s eye marbles, like chameleon lizards, I love you like glitter, like buckskin Cody coat with rattlesnake vertebrae beads, like Robitussin, I love you like the apocalypse, like asunder, black sun, monstrous scorpions, nihilism, implacable vengeance, social breakdown, decadence, beastiality, like priests in tutus, like gapped front teeth, like Chevy’s 1967 Nova Super Sport L- 79, 12.5 quarter mile, like Maalox, like Dan Blocker, George Maharis, and Richard Boone turned-up black leather collar facing the cold, I love you like sleeves and strong hands bridged by muscle, integument, tendon, clamping dense awkward objects like human beings, furniture, tree stumps, yoke and plow, scarred, nicked, torn calloused, broad, or rocking dejected head like an ostrich egg, like seaweed, like Andre Schwarz-Bart, like the conflicted brain, I love you like physical object the saxophone, complicated exoskeleton of rods pins, neck, bell, lids, like the rail job’s welded fleshless bones connected to pure radical performance or nothing but architectural stand-still, both capable with the human soul of extreme power, speed and will, like Spanish Brush, like hummingbird feeders, like a wind-whipped, weather-shredded, viscerally-torn northern Maine island American flag sagging on a white pole, like dead emblems and curled parchment scrawled with ancient prayer and lamentation, I love you like Saguaro cactus, like Coup de Torchon’s Cordier executing with pistol two insignificant hectoring ruffians after a total eclipse of the sun, like surgically inserted aluminum knee pins, like the osprey, like the terminally ill mentally ripping off bedclothes when in reality merely ineffectually clutching at rags to die as they were born, naked, I love you like old Bijous, like Tabasco sauce, like the creel of regrets, I love you like full metal jacket .350 magnum from mid-distance spraying Hitler’s Final Solution out back of his head, like Comrade Napoleon, like collision of passions in wounded woman facing once again gorgeous abuser, like Mr. Pibb, like laser beams exploding the kidney stone, I love you like Happiness’s beast effortlessly sliding off his drowned wife onto his mistress, like poisonous wasps and heavy nectar-dirigibles droning to the master hive, like two friend-enemies on opposite sides of scrimmage after snapped ball pushing each other so endlessly hard what’s between them squeezes up in curled sheets like cheese, I love you like delirium tremens like Coco Puffs, like the stone man becomes—blood, heart, and bowels—when experience over-opens him to empathy, identification, tenderness, love—an automatic governor against self-annihilation, dead robotic eyes staring through and into distances, split from himself and surviving, like Opie Taylor, like Sweeney Todd, eyes like ashen coals, like Boris and Natasha, I love you like lawn mowers against nature’s surge, trees dropping cones, swelling, muscling in, the battle clash at yard’s perimeter between pine, oak, maple, ash, monkey grass, only asphalt triumphs over sapling, paved moats surrounding Albany, Des Moines, Indianapolis—freeway loops, strip malls, parking lots—and still Ursa Major defecates Amazons onto sprinkler system, like oatmeal, like Neosporin, I love you like pink lemonade, like cupolas, like weather vanes, I love you like noiselessness, like stick candy, like the Butcher of Buchenwald’s toothache, I love you like the red giant, black hole, white dwarf, supernova, Andromeda, event horizon cosmic psychedelic insanity—psilocybin, mescaline, lysergic diethylamide twirling through mind alternately megalomaniacal phantasmagoria and suicidal insignificance, frothing wordlessness, like the ceaseless washing machine overloaded with soap, like nonpareils, like Arabian knives, I love you like Freddie the Freeloader, like Sam I Am, like war casualties encased in lime Jell-O slurped by God and His Seven Angels, Shadi, Nuoko, Kelja, Shianka, Savi, Toomdja, and Nkaawadj, ladies all spooning piquant skulls, fruity thighs, scrotum, colon, eyes from chilled metallic bowls dripping sweat and mayonnaise from mansions in the sky, I love you like castrati, like Benito Mussolini, like cat scratch fever and its ghost hallucinations of Imelda Marcos, Baudelaire, and Harry Houdini escaping with a delphinium and bromeliad bouquet from a clamped and locked Iron Maiden inside a solid concrete block, I love you like in absentia, like Erick Von Zipper, like night dreams with oceans, always oceans sucking, rip-tiding, tugging at feet, sweeping sea foam across itself, and I hauling in crappie or red snapper, mackintosh, wading boots, yellow rubber hat, fluttering like ragged paper against a raging infinity point, foliage-woven surf —roots, runners, branches, vines, leaves, needles, blossoms— whole liquid jungles lifting and dropping cargoes through muscled self, and I surf-riding past high-rises, sea walls, spectators with pets, buttresses and embankments against the raging rhyme, I love you like this and this and this and fingers and crab legs and tool boxes and light houses and picture frames and pot holders and Milton Bradley and assassinations and hippopotamuses and river silt and transformer boxes and dog whiskers and mortality and Ingmar Bergman and Henkel cutlery and Peter Pan Dust and the transfiguration and Eagle Claw hooks and reptile assassination and Black Cat explosions and motor boats and gypsum and spinning tin carousels and Kensington beach shirts and the Russian steppes and Sergei Eisenstein and baby caterwaul and Betty Boop and cardiac surgery and blueberry cobbler and spousal abuse and influenza and finnan haddie and slug juice and whorling grottoes and rail splitter nails and reinforced walls and Alex Delarge and Log Cabin Syrup and failed mathematics and antique hat pins and deceased Llaso Apsos and Morton Thiokol and the holy communion plate and intergalactic travel and profligate bankruptcy and suicide by hanging and stainless Moen fixtures and the Marianna trench and Quetzalcoatl and fly bonfires and bleached clavicles and double hung windows and myoepithelial carcinoma and sickle cell anemia and clear thread noodles and Chief Halfoat and high-powered hunting rifles and clog dancing and bloody knuckles and motorized remote airplanes and Halvah and Black Gulch Rock and cigarillos & and & and & and the man shot from canon who catches trapeze mid-air back flips lands on platform dives into bucket half-full of water springboards to feet and squirts jet from lapel daisy to standing ovation of cousins and children and sodden fathers and milk shook mothers and uncles flipping nickels for nephew and niece and gesticulating ridiculously like clowns, Like all the aforesaid standing on Earth’s surface and all that lies under in bands and striations in rock and ice and fire and glacier unexpressed, unperceived, or, as yet undiscovered I love you and love you and love you.
Death pole-dances to Nelly Furtado, dimpled hemispheres, rocket nipples, psychedelic light-bath, cinnamon candy lips, Death’s G- strap cuts her vagina, money—crisp laundry—folds over string, Death flips stiletto into crowd, men tongue it or stick in sweaty knuckle, kaboom, kaboom, boom-boom, boom-boom, boom- boom, Death fucks air, air moans, love love love, upside down, nobody firmer, higher, creamier, or slicker, not Vicki nor Bri- anna, amber honey coats her creases, above God I worship her, above riches, Bugatti, I crave only her tight rigid clasp, locked woman rider, she’s not ocean, begonia, forest, nor tide but heavy intestine, muscle, saliva, and lash, flexed ridges, immortality’s crack hit, addicted addicted addicted addicted, none else do I crave, I am desiccation, clavicle, cracked glue without her, scalp-fleck on sofa, cat hair, styptic stick, bathroom cleaning implement without her wet slurp slip baby-breath, Death my cataleptic acrobat who rope- dangles from my teeth to hers, naked, spinning to primitive drum, I eat, I bliss, I suck, I flip, I gaze, I drown, I dance, I slash, she loves me afresh deck after deck, wild vanilla scent, Pantene Blonde Expressions, acrid jungle musk, and then with kidneys or lymph or brain she gets down to business.
My wife’s mouth and teeth remind me of mouth and teeth of hyena, boar, hammerhead, rat, porcupine, bat, aardvark, also beetle, mantis, and water bug mandibles; reminiscent of chimpanzee, snapping turtle, wildebeest, steenbok, skunk, pigeon, and frog is her neck; hands and arms mirror appendages of starfish, Rottweiler, sea urchin, meerkat, grizzly, octopus, brown recluse; breasts recall images of hog, opossum, humpback whale, dromedary, elephant, titmouse, sloth, teats mammaries nipples heft; hair mi- mics hair of loris, tamarind, mountain beaver, tarantula, bird of paradise, blow fly, dik-dik, armadillo, warming, attracting, protecting, marking; her hips, those curvaceous globes, those dune-smooth hills have no truck with donkey-baboon-capybara-woodchuck-kangaroo hips and the hippopotamus’s swaying ponderously, poundingly, playfully, aromatically across fields of pods and crushed weeds pungent as paradise-ground cumin, cardamom, peppercorn, nutmeg in nature’s natural black pumice stone mortar & pestle; oh her genitals one wants to com- pare with apricot, mango, fig, red plum but these mindless rotters pale beside genitalia of the buffalo, duiker, polecat, wild ass, pronghorn, tapir, and common dog, prominent, glorious, folded, pulchritudinous; her ass— incomparable—but let’s whirl, scorpion, mayfly, walking stick, mud dauber, red ant, blue duck, greater flamingo, manta ray, Sumatran rhinoceroses, emperor penguin; my love’s taut, veined-wrapped, anticipatory ankles, who but I dare analogize, blue-footed booby, nanny goat, pileated woodpecker, reticulated giraffe, Komodo dragon, hundred-booted centipede, funnel weaver, American quarter horse, frog, cricket, tick, and the Cir- cumducta satyr, irresistible, erotic, narcotizing; and I being sucker of toes, toe connoisseur polished or nude, dominant middle, excruciatingly stepped, stub- by or slender must only mention thick black mud squeezed upward between downward trudging over- burdened yak, suck and squish, beads tearing off and splatting, sheet rising between toes, licking hooves, folding back into sludge slowly, torpidly, a languid slop as she plods in the putty river; finally, that cumulative coordination of the whole: posture, my love’s com- pilation of Athenian bones floating in muscle, anchored in grace, with the spine-centered balance of ballerina, my love’s clavicle, shoulders, and wishbone, supple but erect, thumbs forward, unparalleled yogi master quality of comfort with self and bilateral symmetry, like amoeba, paramecium, nucleotide, protozoa, sea jelly, wooly caterpillar, backward propelling prawn, vole, lemming, fat tailed lemur; all these she, and Galapagos tortoise, great frigate bird; she lumbers in beauty like the Polar bear, rump ascendant, snout downward, fountain pen quills, udders jolting, slash- ing blubber, cracking skulls, rearing occasionally on massive pads to crimson berries, dabbing at icy table with God-forged claws nectar, blood, or gravies.
I don’t give a fuck. I talk to unicorns. I talk to the dead for a very long time. Someone give me your orange juice. We do whatever the fuck we want. Prop open the door with your pregnant gold retriever. Some people can’t touch glitter without getting cut. Smoke dust. Hail Satan. I’m a spaceman tethered to the mother ship, tripping on my minor depression. My costume is my brain eating itself. Some nights I can’t get Halloween enough. To the points on the globe, I say next war, next war. I keep the ghosts of birds in my breathing. This is my body. This is the end. I’m going in.
Maybe I need my own medicine pouch. Let’s not idolize other people’s misery. Even if I give up art I’m still nightblooming. Rent a room in the pleasure zone & read unhealthy mysteries possessed by holes. Everyone lives jacked in the fleshless realm. Feed some crocodiles young mutated boys. Renew a long lost relationship with sensual abandon. My house wallpapered in werewolf fur. To throw money away on a ten piece orchestra. The erotic melancholy of what the fuck was I thinking. Maybe one day I’ll join a zombie cult. Trumpet is my instrument. I’ll demonstrate my total celebration of everything.
God, if you exist you owe it all to me. Alphabetically living devoid of breath. Not all fruit trees hate you just this one. Do not be so moved by everything. The latter designs the winds tuned to a harmonica unrehearsed. I had a baby once but I also had a cucumber. Perhaps the sum of damaged engenderment. The universe drugs me in its calculated orbit to rebuff my neural galactic core. The fuck you going to do? Bury me? Sunday morning, I can’t ignore the sun. Wherever I stand on the sidewalk, I melt. Do not joke that you are ugly because you are not ugly.
Here we are, said Peter. He lit six lanterns that hung by ropes from the cave ceiling. Writing covered the cave walls in bright colors, mostly pictures of animals, a few words in bubbled letters Daniel couldn’t make out. In the center of the opening where they stood, was a huge square built of blue pipes. The outside of the square was comprised of pipe ladders, which Peter used to climb to the top of the massive structure. All of this, he said from the top where he stood, is made from very expensive pipes. And it’s here, in this cave. His voice reached a needle-pricked pitch. I told you it was special. Peter stayed on top of the pipe square for a few minutes before climbing back down. Iamso wrote furiously. Peter told Daniel to climb to the top of the pipe square so he could show him something. The pipes were warm and had rust-scabs that Daniel picked off during his ascent. Bats flew over and disappeared into a black ledge. Once atop the square, Peter asked if he was ready, and Daniel said he was although he had no idea what that meant. He felt ready for anything. His wife was missing. A faucet, a little wagon wheel shape attached to the cave wall, Peter squeaked to the left. A hose ran from the little wagon wheel, down the cave wall, and across the floor, until it reached the pipe square Daniel sat atop. Daniel felt each pipe below him fill with water. Under his thighs, warm water rushed through the vintage metals. The entire shape, this mad-contraption constructed who-knows-when-and-who-knows-why, woke up, shook with rivers. Pipes as pumping veins pressed into Daniel’s skeleton. His hands wrapped around pipes as limbs. His arms vibrated as the shape vibrated and Daniel smiled. What’s the point of this, he shouted to Peter who kept a hand on the leaking faucet. I don’t know, he yelled back. I just think it’s beautiful. Maybe it has no point, said Iamso. That’s what I just said, yelled Peter. It’s beautiful and that’s all there is to it.
I returned, and saw that the garden Had not moved from me but that some illness Of the garden carried it away From me regardless.
Lance always had an open sore. Grew up with horse farming and sugar diabetes. Strict and you better measure up. From what others have said or would have said, a huge stupid ego was drafted into service. One of the most over used words in horse training and traveling is Goddamn—this indicates it was not an experiment shaped like a cowboy. It says it was meant to be a trip to be forgotten in our lifetime. amateurballetsilliness. jonna tanja mia me and a dozen other stuffed panties. we lift our legs all the way to the ceiling. heaven is ours and we are its glowing stars. use the pole for all kinds of stuff: PENETRATION. many here seem incredibly relationship-scared. jonna hasn’t had a relationship (has never even dated) since the end of the millennium. tanja has long been a divorced single mom. mia is anemic&anorexic (in addition she’s on medication right now which causes a number of side effects such as incredibly strong B.O….). in other words: WATCH OUT! these are fragile ballet dancers. bend our backs apart&intopieces! twist and tear our legs apart! partner oh partner! russian partner swedish or turk. SCREAM. leotardtight stiff-necked garden rakes. unfucked against their wills. soon retired from the hobby classes at the ballet academy. ugly distorted and cramped by stunted shrivelled desire. the studio is full of girls women and ladies of all kinds of tight body types (most of the bodies are very nice because most of them train several times a week (I train four days)). you can just come here and have your pick and wreck! plus two faggots. bonus. look at her the zealous and spazzy one. in the middle of the floor. work it baby work it HARD push it real good. totally sweaty and panting. LIDIJA is her name but her dear mother and father call her lila or the little cat or mommy’s son or my gold or my eyes or our everything. when she has been a nice obedient overachiever. lidijas parents worship their daughter. when she has been nice obedient and good. that’s why lidija always works as hard as she can to behave nice and proper. toward all all all. unfortunately only parents teachers and sadists are attracted to such behavior. hardly intellectual equal men who find lidija old-fashioned and corny. but that’s irrelevant. for even lidija’s emotional life is like her parents’ totally intra-family-based that is to say totally focused on her parents – from habit laziness cowardice loyalty pathology… - you can choose. but what i want to get at is: LIDIJA WANTS COCK! LIDIJA WILL GO CRAZY IF SHE DOESN’T GET ANY COCK NOW! she just can’t deal any longer! it’s been far too long! after velja she chose to be celibate (lidija even wanted to – i swear – join a convent but her parents advised her not to because they want grandchildren to carry on the family genes and serbian heritage in the diaspora) but over the years she has gotten into what is often called a VICIOUS CYCLE. and now she can’t like break free. it’s not easy for lidija to again get close to cock. as if it ever was. lidija gets close to mom dada book and ballet pole but there it stops. lidija has always been terrible bad at cock and now it’s worse than ever. as you know lidija is big in words small in the world. as you know lidija is all talk and no action. as you know lidija is a reflective-head and reflective language. after the velja dis lidija decided that she would write in this life not fuck. the more lidija writes the less she fucks. since she now basically writes and reads all day and night she doesn’t fuck at all. the more lidija writes and reads the more all the cocks around her wither. when lidija fastens her gaze on a cock to analyze abstract criticize the cock slackens in front of her cunt. pulls away from her. at those moments when lidija takes a break from literary creation she takes ballet classes with the other well-behaved girls. but even there she is incapable of taking the step from thought to action (at least not attractive action). this results in a failed pirouette a couple of unextended leaps manyconfused questions (but she does as well as she can!) then quickly back to mamma book and pen. on the subway she hides behind the culture section of the daily papers. sometimes she finds in those pages some historical female author who also lived without cock and that she can imagine identifying with while the subway rushes along the red line and lidija’s heart beats home sweet home! snowed-in asocial anal hole which socially winks through its asocial anal hole. hey hey do you want me? pretends that she prefers body-dancing to body-fucking. pretends that most of all she prefers body-writing. kind of like this: i prefer to write my body my sex my sexuality my feminity instead of becoming your victim. so says lidija the lying or the truthful (she doesn’t know herself anymore– she’s said it so much) and slams the door in the face of the small group of brave but dorky admirers that don’t care about her and care even less about actually knocking on her door. lidija in her room: writes reads masturbates writes reads masturbares writes read masturbates until mom comes in and says it’s dinner bed or CATASTROPHE! lidija hopes that people think she’s nice obedient and good who wildly confesses her PROBLEMATIC FEMALE SEXUALITY. lidija complicates it a little extra so that nobody will think that she’s sexually banal. lidija cannot possibly believe that one writes better about sex when one isn’t actually having sex. lidija wants people to love her love her love her. lidija wants her male readers to be blinded by her sexual complexity and immediately want to have sex with her (contact her about this matter). lidija is pretty moronic but pretty good at fucking when she finally gets going. so: let us clear this up once and for all: in first place is body-writing in second place is body-dancing and only in third place is body-fucking why i never get around to this third and most important task that is people’s primary goal and meaning in life: REPRODUCTION OR (in modern and secularized societies like Sweden) SEXUAL PLEASURE. that’s my problem man. i get along so damned well with myself and feel totally GREAT by myself. i don’t need anybody to satisfy me sexually. learned to sublimate my drives as soon as i hit puberty. sad but a pretty good arrangement actually. but still: i’m constantly sort of leaking. in ballet in literature on you who happens to be sitting next to me.
so
now i’m going to go and eat some sauerkraut to cure yeast infection (my gynecologist says that it often affects over-ambitious young women but can quickly disappear as soon as you get into a good relationship start to feel safe and feel that you don’t have to achieve so much – i say: i prefer to achieve a lot and have yeast infections than have a man and not achieve)
then go clean the toilet which i’ve promised my mom (i am way too lazy when it comes to household chores – have to improve! elsa in my class says that there’s not neccessarily anything wrong with someone living with their parents when they’re this old – as long as you don’t act like a baby – i agree)
then sleep all night with a newly procured retainer (test: will it remain in all night or will it fall out of my mouth? they didn’t make it deep enough even the dentist admitted that so now i have to go back with it if it doesn’t fit - fuck)
and tomorrow: dance light-pink ballet-panties skin-colored nylon tights a little purple mini top that honestly speaking makes my breasts too pointy! (have to ask mom)
COWARD&BABYBUTTCOWARD&BABYBUTTCOWARD&BABYBUTTCOWARD
can someone please tell me why i repeat myself so often
kind of tell the same story about myself over and over again
nail myself down in the story that i’m writing about myself
the agreement was to break free from this narrative from all this create another
create another story from another life
the agreement was to do everything in my power to as soon as possible
GETCOCK&FUCK
yes
yes
yes
i simply say this: and i’ll stick to it
over my dead body
over my dead body
over my dead body
i’ll fuck before the winter’s out
Appearances do not deceive if there are enough of them.
The Slow Book, written by an anonymous author at the dawn of literacy, on a minor planet (otherwise notable only as the source of that exceptionally hardy, not very tasty grain called “shef” sowed on hostile planets as an early step to colonization), and encoded into a series of punctures on a strip of copper coiled inside a clever device, something between a player piano and an old-fashioned film projector, is being released into print, as was the author’s intention, at a rate of one word per century (local time). Each word is, across the Forty Galaxies, agreed to be uncannily apt for the century in which it appears—even “of,” in a century during which the highest value was attached to fidelity, whether to ideals, worlds, or romantic love; even “the,” which governed two centuries, one extraordinarily materialistic, during which advances in propulsion and navigation accelerated the exchange of exceptional objects between the remotest planets of the Forty, and one in which the central concern, both of philosophers and the common man, was whether, in an age of rapidly proliferating hypothetical worlds, anyone or anything concretely existed at all. Even those words published long before interstellar contact can be seen in retrospect to have transgalactic pertinence. As a result, attempts to abstract the machine from its publishers, Hobson & Hui, in order to “predict the future” for insight or gain by “fast- forwarding” the copper strip have been many and ingenious. While, in centuries of skepticism (“maybe”), or of unrest (“go”) the book has been nearly forgotten, in others it seems to haunt every thought, every deed, despite the fact that the subject of The Slow Book is still unclear. So far only a few sentences exist in print; everyone knows them, can quote them, offer the standard exegeses and assorted heresies; yet certainties are the stuff of adolescence; mature readers are forced to acknowledge that these sentences are probably only a preamble to the main argument. They contain no proper nouns, nor can we identify any definite theme. There is even disagreement about their tone, whether coolly ironic, as some insist, or ardent. The appearance of an unusual grammatical case, sometimes called the future pluperfect continuous, used to describe events that at some future point will have always been true (but are not yet)—hitherto known to appear only in the synthetic dogmas of the Thanatographical Society, and in certain highly circumscribed religious contexts—has suggested to some scholars that the Slow Book was originally intended for ritual use, but the proximity of the usage to a term designating a small hand plow that, as Pott and Mielcke have convincingly shown, would have borne a distinctly obscene double meaning in its culture of origin in the author’s time, argues otherwise. It is likewise unclear whether the situation that seems to be—with teasing incompleteness—sketched out in these few lines is intended as an illustration of general principles, a case study, a dramatic scene, or an extended metaphor. In short, we have no idea what The Slow Book is about. In our own time, we believe that it is almost certainly a work of fiction, but that may be because we live in the century of “if”. In each age, perhaps, we see the book we most need to read. Some have dared to suggest that the metal strip is blank until, with millennial fanfare, it advances into its new position, that no ur-text exists, that the book itself is brought into being—written—by our need. But that is exactly the sort of thing we would believe, in 7645.
Ill, my old ultimate prelude died monitoring the conditions climactic of the regular reports of rasping obscurantist. My hand systematically sued one for abandon, oh now, deciding, did child’s metrics furor cities? Ill, for oh, sit, rove, Ava, kneel, belle, muscle diurnal, discard riches, sully summit of cumulous deed, terror much chosen. I’ll ferry error a form, die trembling Rove sciatic, con. I mirror spin of invention, verse internally. Much did vex machines, per cock’s ire eh? Pain, oh forte, scandal quashed, circle on day, vain lad, discarded. I rag at seemly day’s postal salt, television on pain for the pity’s fortune quest, stand, I test stones, insecure day, canny she, above, I want to tell all to dear father, no rescue of sentries null mad, they don’t know. I recognize a lore, salty and canny, a second lore, false she, sap private cheat divan of day, scattered near man, oeuvre tell of abattoir.
Cone lapidary, advance at technology, die surveilling organza Amy, disposition era daffy seal rhyme and air concentrate easily conditions equally match each. A valve simper latent as Zion defer oh sir, service I own it, you team eco, cozy hole fate. Menstrual pearl, lustrous, avenue, lamb ambient Con Edison, untold scalp ochre institute, a basis I’m dispersing, flapping 53 contents you, in one day due. Element I obviate, lay me out tense venue, attract down fame glitch and even camp in pearl vacancy. Una Bomber explodes prop re: debt. Roll, lure auto. A trace, verso legacy, fiat perceptual regent in no rumor dell of radiation. She vagabond of base soil tear reign. Oil pad, real lag Ida, dais serve a valley new, Voila! A form ad if u want go dally specie. Eat to retro visor. Glee alter none, season of girl at al-anon, season accord deed null: la.
Awry facial camp egg Io, Bambini, Hannah Montana, latent. Ill paid reenter atoll eh? Ha! Choose sol Alamo pod, Ella port acerbic, rabbi, rhyme us to den, troll and go: “Hubris own no distant stars, Aloha.” Grid ought to. Glee all tree, I’m bronze, see? That is so … no said you, tin tore no alto vole, da picnic. Doll, attend a sight, sent evil paid, real minotaur ire, a dare laser, a lame mag, gore, hag agit type pug, nil fret tell lope, I, you, piccolo ham, must trot, oil, ditto media in dire ease, own dilettante. Llama dress, idol tail cap, parody page liar, lo, hap pest a tool? Or has a pellet opera pried a vain dial-up portal? I’ll pay dross entity, old agitated red, a petty deal, a mad rescue, shit, dally tend a coup and owes a court. Yodel cape load erratically: “Habit, sewn on, do parley right, man on the front, a bombing ill made, rehash his post. Per chain on voice, he assault in anxious lore?” Oh, vogue lie Amos, appear cozy face, even a Latin day. Cease state, one attack—new, clear—haggard toil paid wreck cool parole has Nuevo to sue the loon (no strange effete, he). I commence to a career in circular senses, a sauce tap, poised, and venal too. Imam and Sinatra: a tie. Kneel, late tender.
Air rivet owl-cam Peggy, Oh, Bambi, knee high anno, mount a toll, a ten dial pad, drain trait, toe he had chewed, so lay lamp yodel, airport, cerebral rim, ass to dent royal lung: “Ohio biz own Otis to rare solar grid, ate tog.” Loyal tree, I’m bronchi at tizzy, so no sedate intern owl, table the picnic. Dally, tend a sensitive ale quadrille, amen. Torso, I rider, eel laser llama gore I have agitated, impugned, ill frat, ill low pupil, cloy old ham ostrich, ditto media indirection, daily tent de la monde, dress aisle totally a cappella, diaper Anglo has sap pellits to prop, period avante, I all but portray. I’ll pay drowse in titular age, day pied, daily mad rescue, it’s too dally latent, aqua-tint does , eh, accord ode eel cap, pull oh terror, hated : “Hobbit is on dip, our lard inane on the front, I’ve a mean beany.”
Lamarckian hare is posted: “Perch, eh? No voice has colt in ranch lore? Oh, vague lame super coze face, even melting.” “Cease state, young tack on nucleus,” hatred, that oil-paired. Quell parole, hand a vote or sue, do Louis a strained effete. Hack a com, mince a core, rare encircle, olose and sass, to poison even you too. Iambic sonar entreaty, kneel ten day.
Simper, graze, y’all telescope yo’ harvest, oh, soap: ravish shoot each core revenant in circles low, edifice each, implode vain impasse, itty grand party, delirious, sore, dissolute, distorted.
Seer, young ancient senior, heavy favor in one apartment. I’ll sue apparatchik child, a cussed tick era, rot, to guard a vale scene, die of panic on television. Man on re-use skivvy, a cap irks, a dick is tut to quell a gent. Sis for save ‘em, anon, queer roost giver. Squat ever-late, test is forgiver’s forte Leon. I add one certain punk hose engine, cheater: he has commenced to a preggers. Leap (refer, explode vain doll of Bacchae, ere I cad vane a soul.) Tap Peter. Ha! Toss it to frame. Meant tea, Deus says, statue in his porch, edict sanguine, cartilaginous, hale. Lava too. Lay Viscera daily preggers. Kneel lave and in Noel happy, easy. I’ll understand: debunk her if you are dolphin estrogen.
All pie, a nod is a hope, rave, I’ve Eva on, seek oh, console, can guide a quest you mood, in consequence ail, ilk near rain, an aspect, I die ascetic, renunciate, airy, oh. Low state, a vivid old tattoo. Agni, a bit action, diurnal radio Oedipus: televise or dove, even, or rhyme a near seem, pray access, see, sip. O TV, vast, serial volume, my non-speak, nearly no one, a stunt eh Lou? Of moon known fossil, in grotto dive I dare late vision, eel so canny, detain to tantalize facile veil. Lieu omen, I never known computer neon telephone. Whoever vulnerable: tape petty in a different owl report to the case ion a corporate easel harvest. Chain does savage dope ass tea, frugal eel gore, no one pod aqua-cam. Naval avant indie trooper lacks a pure sissy diva per meaty tear. All can pick Everest arsenal suds, use them paid deviant Olaf. Fenestrate, meant soul dive on sale, muse or invent odd inverse volts-chasm. Guard a tin eagle, aye hawk-eye.
One journal of ache cheese; site a dick as easy. Second-rate cool can guide solo strata, piano rote lode, lapel laze oil. Can they see aficionado? They had datum, now pickle whole, lass, pint ache, come in, cheat. To add a bear, lay down a fish; have a lap rear seal, chewed or sidle. A book aporia indicate less you, or each eye has cause: so late stayed I. Sin; do: “Nonsense, too.” I’ll cane guard a kale, leave you ward of ail; cane, ill cane guide, aha! Come and show to all gear our lead eternal, sense a sauce, tie vested id. A lad on a less is so…nose fellate; did oh so Hanukah mince. I ought to allegory in one veto vertiginous. So prowl a swat EST; Humvee to generate total peregrination needle. “Can he guide a scapula?” “Sis, oh no.” (This page ought to avenge Leo.) Leap you ill dilettante Larry, Tina. Summers the inchoate is true Nero. I’ll cane; guide. No one smite vatic, here comes navigator. Lend a man to later know hokum instead of libraries’ ‘kneel aria’. Whatever, in one stretch of orbit a catatonic ache constitutes evil ass dire volition. Tempo, amp, yoke rich locution, limit pester. No era delineate doll Modoc: you are a colored red elk, an angry day.
Kneel frat temporal, campy geo oil pad rave, a vacuum in shot interrogatory if ugly: “Come Vic, comport arrest in case ode, all cause to nuclear?” Known era, known grade: odorous, ponderous. Hand numina matter late to dip protesters, so toil. Bank, oh die squalor, ma, ill pa, dray, lie haggard. At tea contrary, too.
Dope OK, lap art Ed, a lack on typical pitted a la bomb, a venue isolate, who divulge a tune, rapport tone coup, must revoke/chill radiation (nuclear) ere enough in no cue. Keel wrapper to sully bombardier of Zion nigh zero. Have you two vast diffusion? I owe ten a ton of promotion. Me have no mandate to owe tutor a finch, chem. Glo racy lame incapacity, dose o’ observation. Heir mast, old, far, own a sentiment, aim high, mien signet to lave vision remote, a door mires sense, a door mirrors eel telepathy. Ear must (to seduce, to sully) stress said diaper. One set—I, man, a man—is Yule leg in oak: I ache (is bear rat; I glyph to quell, shed domain, dapper sonar, my vulva parlor, solo delivery). “Observe, register, defunct, divulge,” rip it over. “No one stars, trope: pop answer.” My hands signal to a rhyme, an heir immobile, a serve, a rascal tear. Ho, fat, to practice con lair, gist raze ion in analogy. Cheeky lead digital equal tele-pastiche, ancy gutter, who impair a tour revision? I dare to.
I’m a datura: I deliver easy, give honor, a port, icon, data, authenticity. I owe glee. In vivid vogue lie original inane revision: a tie.
HOME
When I got back from the mall, everything in my room had been rotated almost a whole eighth of an inch to the right. I am taping it all back into place.
FEMALE VOICE ON PHONE: “NO MORE CONTACT”
I can't speak for myself, but a job does things to a person, deducts a person pretty brutally from life. Desks are terrible places, no matter how many wheels a chair might have. You can't do much about how drawers fill up.
NEIGHBORS
He slips a note under my door, says he has forgotten how to talk, so is there something that can be done? I meet him in the lobby. I bring my instruments in a wastebasket. "It's my first time," I warn. I go to work on him. His first words: "I've got something in my eye. A kingdom or something."
THE TROUBLE BETWEEN PEOPLE USUALLY GETS ITS START
The pastor kept saying, "Thy will be done," and all I could think was, "Thy what will be done?"
SHE WAS CARDIACALLY ALL OVER THE PLACE
What they told me is that when the doctors opened him up, they found lots of accordion files, jars full of wheat pennies, a glockenspiel, a couple of storm windows, and told him there was nothing they could do.
WORK
My humanity would have been misemployed no matter what direction I might have taken in life, but, no question, I have walked away cravenly from blocked-up photocopiers, paper jams of any kind. A lot of toner has gone into what I have done.
THERE WERE WIDER AND WIDER SLITS IN A DAY
She had a three-legged table. I always felt bad about that.
WOMAN
I keep seeing the phrase “a women” everywhere I look. It can’t be just a typo anymore.
FIRST WIFE
I don’t know which is finally sicker—specifics or engulfing abstractions. She said she was just looking for someone to ride out some sadness on.
MOTHER AND BANGED-UP SON
Looking back over everything I might have ever said, I see that I have never come down hard enough on any of the rooms I lived inside. I want there to be science behind it if and when I do.
HONOR MY WISH
I tried drinking, but it wasn’t extinctive of the parts of me most in need of extinction. Plus, I had a good umbrella, but it got blown inside out, and I couldn’t close the thing. I set it down on the sidewalk and watched it blow off into the storm. I welcome any drowsy and senseless sincerity.
WE HAD TO MOVE TWO TOWNS TO THE LEFT, WHICH WAS WEST, WESTISH, IN THIS CASE
A calendar was hung in the kitchen as if to say: Expect more of same.
MOST OF MY LIFE TAKES PLACE ON THE FLOOR
“Get over here!” I shouted into the phone. The woman came. She thought I had meant just her.
THIS IS NOT WHAT I WANTED TO SAY, BUT SO WHAT?
I wish I could inhabit my life instead of just trespassing on it.
I became an old couple one day and it did me proud—boxed, ragged thing that I was.
From my window I saw them take their time by my alley. Bearded and bald, he had on a white shirt. A frumpy body, but a body pleasing to him. In a fine red dress, she was taller. She wore glasses the color of her eyebrows and her eyes were blue and glowing with wisdom, compassion—how could I not throw myself in there? I did and I was boiled, and I went walking past the point where I once watched from the second floor. All of them now me.
I continued down the curved alley, meandering, as they seemed intent on before. I became, I filled, and soon did what I would never. Rustle in the plum tree for the bitter, wizened fruit, if only to touch. Guess the year of a penny I found. I almost rent, but I was two, shorn of hate and lust—ungossiping, tame, absolved.
The alley led to a street with motels and a vision center. Clouds then, with rain. Distant music rose up and I danced a two-step, careful no one recognized what I’d become, because I was unsure. Was this the life I wanted? Now half of me enjoyed Sudoku and the other half knew many recipes, tended her Schubert collection. I could go for Schubert, but contentedness, a strange new hurt, raged. The clouds’ gray went pink. I didn’t concern myself with anyone else, or what they were doing, or if they were mad—I didn’t have to. I was a happy couple.
A little more north and I saw my daughter from my first marriage. She had dyed her hair and was selling baskets made from hemp. Her favorite way to start a sentence: With a mother like you… That day she seemed untroubled, and I waved and she waved back and I went on.
There was the boy who broke my nose in high school. He made a bald joke, but I smiled and looked at my taller womanly self who exhaled a sweet, ripe scent into my ear. I could have fallen apart with happiness, sure the wind would right me. I continued directly to the home I enjoyed so much, my love in hand. Home to the paraffin lamps in the hall and in my bedroom. I had potpourri in the shower and a pair of nice leather gloves for winter. My house was solid, it had no leaks. Even so, I didn’t need it quiet. I was a gracious couple.
It took a few weeks in the house but I did succumb. The years went by and one of me died—the man, the lover of Russian history, the one who called his best friend Pete. I was now one, but I still felt like a couple. And though I cried in the early evenings, around when I used to eat supper with my man, I went on. The flowers smelt just as good. Every year a better, higher quality recording of the Unfinished Symphony to purchase. I wasn’t a ghost and I wasn’t a wreck. Walking the streets humbled me. I liked to smile at those I did not know.
When I died I felt the presence I had been born as there with me. I felt whole and had an inkling I was being welcomed into a very calm place, and though I couldn’t feel my body, the transition went without a bump in time. At the close I was delicate, untroubled and I thought of my years and what I would say to explain myself to those waiting above or below. It left me in many versions, but it always started the same - I’m so glad I left that young, gloomy man behind…
I built a fourth house underneath a mountain. The mountain was tall but I moved it stone by stone, tree by tree, displaced its bulk until there was a hole I could stand in. I stood in the mountain’s lack and built a house there. I went back to my axe, my saw, planks from trees and the mud for seams. I built a chimney for the first snow, gutters for the first rain. I built shelves where the jam I would make could be placed in jars atop it. I built a corner where I could stand. I built a chair where I could sit. I built a bed to cover in a quilt of pine needles and stone moss. I built my mother to rock me to sleep and my father to cook up our fish in the morning. I built a picture frame and a picture of my brother inside of it, to keep track of what I was missing.
My brother had been lost from the beginning. He was the first to see me in these woods, he was the first to enter into them and seek me out. He was the first to find me here. In his hand was a piece of paper. On the piece of paper was a black dot. Inside of the black dot were the times we had punched each other in the face and stood up laughing. Inside of those fists were pictures of us as kids.
In this fourth house I built, I made a doorway but did not fit it with a door. Instead I restacked what was left of the mountain, tree by tree, stone by stone, leaving open only a space between the mountain’s skin and my doorway, so that I was living inside of a cabin inside of a cave inside of a mountain inside of the dying that I was going through. The layers of that doorway were dark. And only once did a bear come in to find me there already, with no room left for hibernation, and my knife ready. The red on the walls from this bear was invisible in our darkness.
I remember that my brother’s hand was trembling when he handed me the paper with the blackness in it, my death. I remember when my brother and I were deer, the woods a home instead of a lost venture. And I want the tremble of his hand to mean that he was nervous, that he was sad, that my brother didn’t want to deliver my dying. I want my brother’s trembles to have been his fear at losing me in more than a lost woods. I want the sun to come up with other bears entering this cabin in this cave in this mountain. I want to slit them open, to swim in red, to paint myself in anger, to drip with a third and a fourth and a fifth bear.
But after a decade, the dark proved too much. On every wall was a sky. And on all the skies there were no stars. This was too much refinement. My brother never appeared, no other bears came, and the blood on the walls dried and could no longer paint words. I never had a daughter. I never loved a woman. I never saw my brother after I died, so there was no longer any secrecy to living in a cabin in a cave in a mountain. The burning was monotonous and bright. The mountain collapsed back down into itself when the structure deflated, one hollow bear within, and me walking back into these lost woods.
I once knew a girl who kept breaking bones. I once knew a girl who dreamed of breaking every bone in her body. I knew a girl who learned the names of each bone in her foot so she could break them one by one. I knew a girl who learned the names of the bones in her wrist, in her hand, in her arms, in her legs. I knew a girl who broke every bone in her body over a period of years. This is not possible, you say. She would die. She did not die. I knew a girl who I never knew without a cast on her body. Her bones were so small and so light. Everything about her seemed fragile. When we kissed, I found my tongue drawn to her teeth, testing their thickness. When we fucked I pictured her bones snapping beneath her skin.
We lived far away from each other and were happy, for a time. We sent each other packages. I sent her things I found, masks, beads, cuttings from magazines. She sent me pictures of herself in casts, and tapes containing coded instructions. I dreamed of us hardening and taking our places among the ossified oaks. She dreamed of hospitals, of people worrying over her. She wrote me long letters in code. If I held the letters up to certain kinds of light, the correct words would become illuminated. “Dear ONE: I wanted to speak to you earlier about the machines that have begun filling up my body. DO NOT BE ALARMED. They are the correct machines. They pump my heart. They keep my brain at the appropriate temperature. They are responsible for the flexing and unflexing of muscles, for the contraction and relaxation of the diaphragm. Previously I suspected that the doctors placed them in my body whenever I arrived, unconscious, at the hospital. Now I know that this is not the case. The last time I was brought to the hospital I pretended, you see. I’ve gotten quite good at feigning unconsciousness. I didn’t even gasp when they sliced open my leg.
“You will say that they nonetheless knew, that they understood I was testing them, that this time they held back. I don’t think so. I have other theories, now, about the origin of the machines.”I have never broken a bone. Because of this, I don’t often think of my bones as breakable, the way that those who have never experienced violence don’t think of it as something that happens, outside of movies.
Let me build you a house. Here, a nail. Here, a piece of wood. I have told you that this will all be gone soon: the ground is unstable, the ground is not solid. I would rebuild this city for you if I could—I would place long smooth stones into the silt and we would walk on them, your heels digging into the gaps from time to time so you would stumble. My feet are flat—they have no arch, all things structurally flawed. My bones, they are soft. My skin, stretched thin and translucent from years of abuse, years of not building anything, years of not walking. When I build you something, something will be built. When I build you something I will know the meaning of this—to put my back into something, to know what power is and what it might be. The building we are in is taller than both of us together, we cannot touch the lights. When I build you something, I want you to stretch your arms above your head like you are praying, like you are praising. I want you to lay your hands flat on the ceiling, to bend your wrists backwards, to cause your muscles to tense up. I want your hands to feel the acoustics, to rub your fingers over the bumps like when you used to put your hand on my face, cupping my jaw, telling me that you like it when I don’t shave. I will build you this because this will all be gone. We will have a housewarming party—we will tell our friends to bring red wine, to bring candles and cookware, to place oranges in a bowl and cover it with foil. You will wear a dress and I will wear a tie and we will answer the door: we will look through the small square windows—glass I broke into shards with my hands. When we open the door, no one will be standing there. When we open the door, the water will rush in.
Sometimes when small children scream they sound like small children. Last night, I squeezed my roommate's cat until it screamed. Then I gave it some spinach to eat, but it does not like spinach so it did not eat. I think that some people might think I am a bad person. Last fall, I was going to buy a pair of gloves, but then my friend bought the same pair of gloves so I decided not to buy any gloves. This morning my hands were cold. Mother is doing fine. We spoke on the telephone recently. I heard that a kid I went to high school with got his wife pregnant. Two years ago they got married. I went to the ceremony and danced a lot. When I turn forty-five maybe I will marry a twenty-eight-year-old woman and get her pregnant. If you are ten years old then there's a chance I might marry you some day and get you pregnant. Most ten year olds are in fourth grade.
Consider this list: guava, banana, papaya, etc.
You found it in your purse, scrawled on a scrap of paper in blue ink, in a handwriting that is not your own. Where did it come from? What does it mean? Is it a grocery list? A list of nouns that just happen to be edible ovaries of seed-bearing plants? Words that end in A? Maybe it’s a list of flavors of ice cream, or flavors of condoms? A list of first names of forgotten cartoon characters, or last names of hungry up-and-coming porn stars? Is kiwi on the list? Tomato? Etcetera is supposed to suggest continuation, but it’s distracting and confusing. Almost as bad as ellipses...
Throw the scrap of paper away.
Consider this list: kumquat, pinprick, chainsaw, cancerous, peanut, hummus, ponytail, tampon, bubblegum, electron, lava, planet, regret.
The list goes on.
Elevator, disappointment, shopping. Fellatio, pineapple, hope. Avocado, entropy.
The list is endless.
Torture, lettuce, testicle. Eczema, algebra, etc.
Etcetera is a scapegoat, a martyr. Upon this lonely word must fall the whole packed weight of an end.
Here is a list of people that have drowned in the river: apple, bear, crush, dime, eagle, fire, fire, ghost, ghost, ghost, hair, iron, jab, kite, loss, lost, lose, me. Here is a list of what it sounded like when they were drowning: the rolling up of a car window when you know it is going to rain later that day, a gas-powered stove turning on in order to boil water for noodles, a hand feeling around an empty pocket. I grew up near a river much like this one. I took the hand of someone like you and slid down the slope to where the water mixed with the silt, where it would stick to your ankles if you were not careful. We were not careful. Let me let you in on a secret: this town is falling into the river. Here is a list of everything that will be gone: the stadium where I saw you, the frozen yogurt shop where I saw you, the gym where I saw you, the bookstore where I saw you, the store where I saw you, the store where I saw you, the intersection where I saw you, the classroom where I saw you, the shopping center where I saw you, the parking deck where I saw you, the party you never came to, the church where I saw you, the road where I saw you. Where will that leave us? If you want to find me while we are drowning amidst the drowning, I will be there thinking about home. If you want to press your lips to mine and suck out the air from my lungs so that you may force air from your nose, to make child's sounds with your mouth, please, come. Do not refuse. Try and stop me. Try and stop me from giving you air like you are a balloon and I am drowning. Don't try to stop me. I am trying to tell you something but if I move my lips I will break the seal. I want to tell you that this is about you. You know who you are. You know where you have been. None of that is important now. Here is a list of people that will drown in the river:
Boots Walking in America thought of what it takes to be a man in a calm world. He looked at his penis and said, "I'm a dick." He did not touch his penis. His hands were dirty. He would be eating a sandwich soon. He could see a store up the road. He would be eating a sandwich in the store up the road. A woman named Cynthia would make his sandwich. He enjoyed the shape of her trimmed nails as she put her fingers on the vegetables he would set inside his mouth. She wore plastic gloves. Her earrings were made of a sort of whale bone. The people who worked at the store wouldn't make him wash his hands before he ate his sandwich but he would. He did not need anyone to tell him when he should wash his hands.
The floor was brown.
"Someone should wash the floor," thought Boots Walking in America. A mommy told her child not to babynoise the lunch hour. The baby was not a full grown man so it would have been wrong for Boots Walking in America to beat on the child. The woman named Cynthia wrapped up the sandwich and then Boots Walking in America unwrapped it. He was a big object and his dick did not concern him much at all while he ate lunch with his dirty hands. Boots Walking in America wasn't sure how he forgot to wash his hands. There was a good amount of mayonnaise leaking off the bread on to his chin and wrists. He looked at Cynthia. He was a little bitter that she put so much mayonnaise on his sandwich. Boots Walking in America smeared the mayonnaise on his shirt. He remembered napkins. He wiped his shirt with a napkin. He did not pout. A mommy was being nasty with her voice toward her baby object. She verbally diminished her own child's ability. Boots Walking in America sucked on mayonnaise and remained calm.
Stacks predicted fat holes of varying slant-path thickness would pop up everywhere. I wanted to get out of there is why I listened. It was the early 90s so we'd seen smaller fat dimples and Stacks said they would keep growing. I was five-months pregnant when he joined the task force. I couldn't sleep in our bed without him. I went to my mother's bed. She said my father chased fat holes like Stacks and she gave me a small bottle of Kentucky Gentleman. She brushed my hair and said, "Doesn't that feel good!" Stacks came back and his key observation was the lack of reliable historical (pre-fat hole) data. "You are being given night vision now, and you may need to use it," Stacks said. I drove us all night. "The way I'm thinking is pretty Cartesian," Stacks said. The baby was sleeping. Then Stacks was sleeping. It was our last vacation.
Here, have a drink. Look, I fixed your favorite, waffles. Don't leave.
I will pay off my credit cards. I will stop smoking. I will change the sheets. I will study for my realtor's license. I will cure cancer. I will practice the accordion. I will get a Hell's Angel tattoo. I will train my puppy. I will go to church. I will become a Franciscan nun. I will convert to Judaism. I will join AA. I will learn the Lindy. I will take my antioxidants. I will give to the Salvation Army. I will break off with Sidney.
Don't leave.
Smoking on the porch outside the secret orgy, we keep looking over at each other, hoping one of us will say what comes next, or that it's time to go inside and take off all our clothes. But then a deer moves down the street, tapping hooves on the asphalt so evenly, like the back of a head against a headboard.
We both wonder aloud, "Must be time, huh?" Then we giggle, a little, before the demonic laughter takes us over from the inside out. Our faces are lit only by the matches we scratch—one cigarette after the other, after the other, after the other. We laugh so hard our cigarettes look like little boiled noodles.
I say, "That deer walks like someone who's worn heels all their life." You howl as if you've just received bad news. I light another cigarette by making my cigarette kiss your cigarette. I say, "There's a name for that, you know."
You say, "What, frot?"
I laugh and cough at the same time. "Yeah," I say, "the tips of our cigarettes are 'frot' with longing for each other." I make our cigarettes kiss again and ashes fall to the porch like a cindered emission.
You love wordplay, so you howl until it transforms into a scissored cough, like your breath is caught in a rock tumbler. I realize this will be your last cigarette ever. You bleed your coughs onto the shoulder of your t-shirt in big, tacky blotches, and you say, "This is it, Case, my only chance to do something like this before I die. I'm dyeing, God, how I'm dyeing this shirt right in front of you."
And then you scream, but the people inside can't hear you—the music and the moaning are just that loud.
You startle the deer, though, and it leaps into the intersection, hitting a car full of orgygoers just back from a beer run. Some of them are already naked because they can't wait to taste a stranger, but the only thing they taste now is the blood and the glass and the shame that comes from being naked during a travesty.
The deer is dying too, so it keeps kicking someone in the face through the windshield. Teeth crack like vibrating dishes. I keep smoking on the front porch. You never know what you'll do when you don't know what the fuck to do.
Someone says, "Help. Me." So I pull out my phone like I'm easing a gun, like maybe someone else will make the call first, but I realize, between puffs, there's no one else around who isn't slowly dying.
i asked my dad if i could be his dad because i know that sometimes dads wish their father weren’t their dads
i am tired of only being capable of becoming a rich white male. my life goal is to become the only planet where human beings of a rich white male status live and then when i accomplish this i will give every person of a lower socioeconomic class the ability to pee on me and all the rich white male status living on my body planet. eventually someone will build pee machines to orbit this globe of rich white male status and every day will become a pee holiday full of poor people pissing on rich male people.
dad was invented by a box of cereal called reverend cocoa crunch pop crumble milk tit
even though the rape age is said to have dawned on october 4th, 1957, at the release of a russian sputnik into the free orbits around earth, rich white males and their metaphorical ponies have long spouted a creepy giddiness whose only goal is to probe whatever fresh spatial depths is considered the new meat of the solar system.
when dads turn twenty-five they stand in the dark and do grownup things like say the words mortgage equity over and over until they get an erection
our deep fucking of the fertile wounds in search of unearthed treasures in the name of exploration have numbed the gravitational chains set in place to bind us to this finite and plentiful world. these initial feeble attempts to search beyond the moon for the infinity solution have in part fucked our eat systems into believing in the idea that we are not fat until we eat our siblings.
my father caught me watching the movie sex in the city 2 and asked me what i was doing, but i was embarrassed to admit the truth so i told him i had shit myself and then i went in the bathroom and threw up in my underwear making what i had said only a partial lie.
somewhere i can feel someone taping their iphone to their dick and sticking it into every indigenous wombs’ heart pulse. it is not surprising that people praise new planetary discoveries even though the earth rich white males responsible for these discoveries are incapable of doing anything except releasing their astronomies into what they see as blank, uneducated, foreign spaces. to put this in as simple terms as possible, let me summarize the entire history of the american heterosexual white male:
[there is a white male object who is me. i am a heart shape carved into a school desk. someone named ‘dad’ carved this heart shape into the desk. inside the heart shape my father carved the words ‘me’. this is how i was born. i am a heart shape carved around the word ‘me’. this carving and the word ‘me’ represent a father’s love for his child, but more importantly, it is also a symbol of a father’s love for himself. the heart shape remained carved into this wooden desk for thousands of years, but this carving did not remain the only chimney on the prairie. soon, other carvings joined the heart shape of me. one of the carvings simply said, $everyone is a fava bean!$ another carving said, $i love fava beans!$ the prairies grew into towns. the towns grew into cities. the cities grew into suburbs. soon, everyone in the entire history of american white males was able to get a mortgage as long as they could show proof that they had once carved something mildly offensive into a wooden desk. there was a blossoming of interest in higher education. the mildly offensive carvings lead to discussion on whether freedom of speech was worth the bubbling of the american real estate market, but these discussions were ignored as more and more american families blindly carved their way to a variety of high-interest, long-term loans that netted them multiple properties that they would be incapable of ever repaying.]it was in these years of excess that the CEO got fat, stupid, careless, and bankrupt. i was ready to carve the obituaries for the CEO and the rape age into the dead heart shape of the iphone taped to my assistant manager’s dick, but then a magical thing happened. a beanstalk the shape of the federal government bailed out every CEO in such excess that CEOs were allowed to continue stuffing their ponies full of piles of junk loans and life in the normal path of the upper class grew distant from the other class levels as the rape age continued to expand thanks to the american financial collapse.
the last time i thought i was chinese was the winter after the city stopped mailing my father lanterns, but a few weeks before the internet was invented. we ate bread seeds and moth crumbs. my father told me i had been conceived after a circus egg hatched and the elephant inside shit on my brother until he got pneumonia and died.
yesterday, i sent out a memo to all my ringtones. in the memo i did not use quotation marks. i replaced all the quotation marks with money symbols because if you don’t tell people you are constantly thinking about money then they will never freely feed all their dollar bills to your pony. in the memo to all my dingtones i said,
[$the mountain hole i observed last night had trouble falling asleep because its lamp would not stop beeping and the sweat of its forehead was increasingly becoming a sign of plastic which had been chemically altering my dehydrated happiness.$]
i accidentally emailed this memo to all my coworkers as well as my ringtones. one of my coworkers did not like my attitude toward my ‘tones. he said,
[$in 1964 i met a christmas party inside of the house of a passionate galaxy. the christmas party was probably the saddest person i had ever met in the entire universe. the christmas party spent most of the evening drinking and standing awkwardly next to a house plant. the christmas party’s soft belly was a disappointment. i stared at this soft belly for most of the evening. near midnight people were throwing their empty wine glasses at the chandelier. i felt myself begin to blackout. i found a large bowl of salad. i began to scoop large handfuls of the salad into my face. a smell of an omelet began to grow in my ears. my legs got weak. i could feel myself stumbling towards the soft belly. i climbed inside. everything grew dark. in the morning i woke up to the sound of a frying pan sizzling my tomato. i opened my eyes and felt the soft belly of the christmas party rubbing itself into my face.$]
A patient feeling I heard you say
a patient mouth absorbs the spark of a secret train
moving into the birdhouse to abandon the actual
our secret tender and electric paper boat
The point is to remove the self from the emerging
of the lucky and the disbelieving who are the same
A shiny noise makes a happy landing
insisting that life be the one tree, the one
happy signatory, form of starling
+++++
Hello calculator hello lucent opposite
of human
I didn’t get lost when I went through
I gave away my salty velveteen when I divided
This was then and that was also
from inside this color bespoke
the paper bag over the theoretical head
of the living
My first syllable the wanted fox
of winter fall
+++++
In the end we will have the titanic the elevating and the harmonic
the rabbit quixotic as an imitation of a novel by Kafka
In this density of movable parts I can only love
the molecules I am about to become
when you are the maker of the fantastic
undressing a sunflower
implied sleeping iris
+++++
How lucky we are to have fingertips
how lucky the 1,000 verbs
will eat of the hand of their conductor
given the chance
Liminal workers in the underworld of the kind professor
the face of Aristotle also the conductor
of these colossal heads of sailors
I repeat
we are green whole zeros we are given the sleepiest glow worm quietly falling
in this almost human of trains
At last, terror has arrived.
Next door, the house has gone up in flames.
A woman runs from the burning wreck, her face smeared
with blood and ashes. She screams that her children are kidnapped.
It’s truly exciting, and what more would anyone ask?
For a rare and beautiful egg to present itself in the grass?
For sex with the liquor store owner to progress into something meaningful?
You don’t know what I’ve done in front of the mirror.
I’ve pulled my shorts up high like a thong. I’ve walked back and forth
doing little kicks and making faces. I’ve stopped, I’ve stared.
I try to get my mind around the sight of myself. I make a face.
Of great seriousness. I imagine that I’ve just received
a large and upsetting piece of news. Then I look into my eyes.
Can I guess what I am thinking? Can I tell you what it is?
And now in the window at the rear of the ambulance, as if in answer, appears a lone splayed hand at the glass, pressing and slapping at the glass, a hand reaching up from some sort of emergency stretcher or gurney and opening spiderishly out to stroke and slap and press whitely against the rear window's glass in full view of Jeni Roberts' Accord's retractable halogen headlights so that she sees the highly distinctive ring on the ring finger of the male hand splayed frantically against the emergency glass and screams (in the dream) in recognition and cuts hard left without signaling, cutting off various other emergency vehicles, to pull abreast of the ambulance and tell it to please stop because the stochastic husband she loves and must somehow catch up to is inside on a stretcher ceaselessly sneezing and slapping frantically at the window for someone he loves to catch up and help; but then (such is the dream's motive force that the wife actually wets the bed, she discovers on waking) and but then as she pulls abreast on the left of the ambulance and lowers her passenger window with the Accord's automatic feature in the rain and gesticulates for the ambulance driver to lower his own window so she can implore him to stop it's (in the dream) the husband driving the ambulance, it's his left profile at the wheel--which the wife has always somehow been able to tell he prefers to his right profile and customarily sleeps on his right side partly with this fact in mind, though they'd never spoken openly about the husband's possible insecurities about his right profile--and but then as the husband turns his face toward Jeni Roberts through the driver's window and lit-up rain as she gesticulates it seems to be both him and not him, her husband's familiar and much-loved face distorted and pulsed with red light and wearing a facial expression indescribable as anything other than: Obscene.
"It's impossible for me to think of fiction without a moral center. My work is an effort to expose the worst in us all, to cause us to face up to the enormities of our terrible potential for betrayal, disgrace, and criminal behavior."
His interests are: "idealism, innocence, and luminous, murderous impulse."
"Detachment is at the center of the novelist's experiment."
"All human beings are 'poor, forked, and corruptible.'"
"I'm not interested in reflection or representation; I'm only interested in creating a fictive world. The writing of each fiction is a taking of a psychic journey."
"Everything is dangerous, everything is tentative, nothing is certain."
"I want my fiction to destroy conventional morality and conventional attitudes."
A man and a woman fall in love and are married, and are happy in every single way.
Then one day a flying saucer lands in their backyard, and a door opens, and an alien comes out.
I’m going to have to take one of you away, it says.
What? say the man and woman. Why?
I don’t know, says the alien. That’s just how it is.
And in the end, the woman gets taken away.
Paul French’s Untitled (2011) is either his most brilliant or most obnoxious novel yet—probably, it seems, his most obnoxious. What’s brilliant about French’s novel is this: for Untitled French has invented, not just fictional characters (as you might get in a realist novel), not even just a fictional world (as you might get in a sci-fi novel), not even just a fictional universe (as you might get in a fantasy novel)—Untitled isn’t set in our universe, it isn’t even set in our dimension. For the novel French has invented fictional systems of mathematics, of physics; electromagnetism, nuclear forces, gravity, French has done away with them altogether. French’s characters aren’t made of cells, and within those cells atoms, and within those atoms protons and neutrons, and within those protons and neutrons quarks. French’s characters aren’t even length/width/height-type characters: whatever dimension Untitled is set in, it’s not the traditional dimension in which one would set a novel (the third).
In that sense Untitled may be the most fictional novel ever written: everything within the novel is fictional. French hasn’t relied upon even a single nonfictional fact to build his story. Capitalism doesn’t exist in Untitled, for example; economics doesn’t even exist; greed itself doesn’t exist. Untitled took French almost thirty years to write—his last book, Come Hither Ye Stockbrokers, he published in 1984—and it’s easy to see why. The novel French built in those years is, in a certain sense, a masterpiece.
What’s obnoxious about Untitled, however, is that it seems French felt the premise of the novel required him to write Untitled in a fictional language. The fictional language is named .: (the language itself is a dot-based language, like a visual Braille; “.:” translates to, in English, “Wary”). Unlike books like the Codex Seraphinianus and the Voynich manuscript, it is actually possible to read Untitled—but, as it turns out, that’s what’s so obnoxious. The first several hundred pages of Untitled are an English/.: textbook—French has made it possible for an English speaker to study and become fluent in .: before reading the novel itself. (Some of the language exercises French has invented are, admittedly, actually sort of fun.) .: takes the average student about seven months to learn, the textbook’s introduction tells (warns) readers, but even after those seven months, the next several hundred pages of Untitled are a kindergarten-level textbook, written in .:, that teaches readers about the physics within the novel and the place this novel is set. Untitled is, without question, the most laborious, exhausting, obnoxious novel ever written.
in the 20th century people used to have secrets
when people used to have secrets
they went to the grave with them
unless their secrets tormented them
then they took them to a priest
a psychoanalyst or a bartender
and if the police wanted to know your secrets
they tortured you until you spilled them
and then killed or blackmailed you
but now in the 21th century everyone is happy to share
in the 21st century people are only worried that their secrets will stay secret
people worry in the 21st century that that they have no secrets at all
self-exposure stripped them
exposure was insufficient
the closets are empty
or even worse
everyone is spilling their secrets simultaneously
so nobody can be overheard discreetly
there are too few vices and too much competition
manufacturing secrets is big business now
bigger than the technologies for overhearing them
spies are passe
fiction writers are in
we are forgetting what language secrets speak
or how to present a secret in just the right key
and how to pitch it in the whisper or the voice
that will draw the kind of attention only a secret does
secrets become quickly boring
the bigger the media that reveals them the more boring
because everyone can tell what kind of secrets they are
just by the way they go shhh shhh
to the dismay of agents
who know just how to sell a secret if you have one
or how to make one up if you don’t
but what avails an agent the art of PR if boredom overtakes it?
agents are losing their grip on the lubricious
nothing is viral enough because viruses mutate too fast
nobody knows what to hide anymore
the whole world is full of hiding places
no secret can even pretend to be a secret
because no one will believe it
but what else can a secret be but a secret?
oh my people of the 21st century
nobody cares about us
because why should anyone care for someone without secrets?
we don’t even know what is or should be secret
and what taboos still pertain with enough force
to make a secret effectively thrilling and anguished
even killers go on reality shows and nobody believes them
the priests shrinks and bartenders of yore
never listened that good anyway unless there was money in it
so we can’t go to them for advice
because they forgot us as soon as the money was spent
the radio, background to silence,
bristles with crises, box office revenues,
scandals in the voids between the stars.
silence bristles with arms, soft arms,
memories of eyes looking past long eyes,
rockin’ to the radio. not even the blues
of Blind Willie Johnson, Dark was the Night,
Cold was the Ground, starward on Voyager
blue enough to shake those charms.
Your mother sews you into a blanket. Your father adjusts his hat./ The town gathers to see you off.
Some rules are made to be followed. People need to follow traffic rules. However, there are lots of other rules that are meant to be smashed into pieces with a wrecking ball.
As far as my writing coming from a strange place I can tell you that you are undoubtedly correct. I’m writing from the planet Earth, and it’s a very strange place indeed! We’ve still got the nuclear bombs hanging over our heads which threatens our species with extinction, half the human race lives on less than two dollars a day, and of course there’s plenty of racial, class, gender, and homophobic oppression to make things mighty strange on this planet! So yes, I’m writing from a very strange place indeed! My creative writing is insane because the world I live in is insane. And while I’m certainly not normal I am definitely not as deranged as people like George Bush and Barack Obama whose ambition is to be the most person in the world and have their finger on the atomic button, besides presiding over a war machine that has killed countless innocent civilians and has treated many injured veterans with disrespect. I’m definitely not as deranged as the billionaires and large corporations who ruined our economy with their greedy derivatives schemes. I’m definitely not as deranged as intolerant people enslaved to tradition who want to impose their rules on avant-garde Writers, Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.
It’s important for creative Writers to smash the rules of grammar and tradition into pieces when it suits them. If you’re going to write a manual on used car repair or to discuss how capitalism is causing widespread oppression than you should write in the traditional manner with correct grammar. Or if you’re going to write an EXCITING narrative in the traditional manner that’s okay too, because at least you’re not going to bore the reader.
However, if you’re going to write something creative than why not write whatever you want to write? Rules have no place when it comes to creativity! Pablo Picasso mastered traditional painting at a young age and then moved on to better and bigger things. We should look at his example and learn from it! Writers need to have more balls and be last less enslaved to rules and tradition. While there have been many great Writers in the past I feel very strongly that the greatest literature of the human race has not been created yet. The greatest literature of our species will be written in the future by people who are not slaves to rules and tradition. Certainly, they should read the great Writers of the past, but frankly the literary world as we know it has become an ignorant stale backwater compared to the other arts. Look at how far painting has advanced in the past 130 years! And who has advanced painting in the past 130 years? The great innovators who broke tradition and rules—people like the Impressionists, Fauvists, Cubists, Expressionists, etc.! One of the reasons that the literately world is so relatively backward is that there is too much respect for rules and tradition amongst Writers. Writers need to have bigger balls! They need to be more creative! They need to break with tradition and rules!
I’m not very good at doing things
a husband or a father ought to do.
I am spoiled. A prima donna.
All I want to do is sit in my writing room
and write books. Not make a decent living, not keep
the place up, not do the dishes cheerfully, since
the dishwasher is broken and I can’t afford to fix it.
Not see friends and relatives, entertain guests. Not replace
the window air-conditioner in Brenda’s bedroom. I just
have ugly fits and show my tail, like a three-year old.
I am ill. Pronounced eel. So hateful I can’t stand myself.
I feel guilty about it but I don’t change. I get furious at
innocent bystanders. They are collateral damage.
In Trouble, a woman artist, a former addict,
goes back on dope and kills herself.
I’m not that bad. Yet.
It’s only rock-and-roll.
The paparazzi were after her.
The Disney channel is teaching kids
to want to be rock stars. To expect it.
When you wish upon a star. Just wish for it.
In A Christmas Story, the secret message
spelled out by the code ring was D-R-I-N-K
O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E. Warning to all. by C. M. Laster.
GRADUALLY BUT DETERMINEDLY AVOID BEING PRESENT AT OFFICIAL OR PUBLIC “UPTOWN” FUNCTIONS OR GATHERINGS RELATED TO THE “ART WORLD” IN ORDER TO PURSUE INVESTIGATIONS OF TOTAL PERSONAL AND PUBLIC REVOLUTION. EXHIBIT IN PUBLIC ONLY PIECES WHICH FURTHER SHARING OF IDEAS & INFORMATION RELATED TO TOTAL PERSONAL AND PUBLIC REVOLUTION
This is how you will go. Without applause. With a bump here and there. In relaxed turbulence. By finding meaning in a small thing which you weren’t aware of when it happened, and which you will forget a second later. This is how you will go. Addled, and all at once, but like a double-door,
and without a door-handle of doubt that it’s happening in-side too. And there. And this. This is how you will have to go to get through it. Head first without thinking so much. Flutter-kicking. Bellyaching. With things that make strong eggs, and endless. And heart. And it will be exactly the same as the last time
it worked, except with more memory and less remembering, and probably not in public. It won’t work exactly like a rope twisting an endless topology of impossible knots so easy. It could easily smell like a skunk, like life-like, like what might stink in the end. It will probably easily move you past the tiresome carnage of smiling it out with strangers you’ve known for a long time again. There could be phantom words left. You may be beguiled. And twice at once. Life will be space again. Cosmology for the taking. Instruments for seeing seeing. It could be bizarrely boring, maybe
end with a waker walking out more awake. It could require a long long reality spoon to reach a long long time ago, or a multidimensional long-reach-reality stapler, but then again, some of the parts might jelly, and it’s hard to staple together jelly parts. This is how you will know it’s time to go. Stretched into new shapes. Into the slow. Into the after life-saving convention collections of adding up all the un-geometric goodbyes. Like a landscape architect borrowing trees from the sites beyond, but with more leaving. This is how you will know it’s happening, but with the shoe-shine of pacing.
Like creeping happily a capillary action, the feeling of being sucked up again, or sucking, which is different than sucking-up. Again you could go without the gain of knowing that the first time you know is the last time it’s already too late. This is how you will disappear. Sincerely like a spill
which seeks out the shortest route downhill. In the bed usually, not the bath. Coughing up the insides of stars with all the last carbon copies. Worked-up but without footnotes or hyper-texts. This is how it will feel. Like licked pronto. Like creamed by it. Like a no-brainer, but more bird
song like, like more, like stiff-arming to safety, like this. Too any shore more safely, like this. This is how you will go, with a story stratum that looks like lava looks. Having absorbed all the dished out soaked up looks that silt your pond, as you persist in shade. This is how you’ll disappear. Outside
it is Berlin. Mumbai. The South Side of Chicago. You’ll be in rapture in Tokyo, or lost in, like last time, which you won’t find weird. Inside it will have been 1972, 1851, 2090 yesterday now, back then cat clawing its way into the lap of your next to last future. Somehow you’ll suddenly know
that you know exactly where Ethiopia is in relation to where you are facing. You’ll be able to stand in place and orrery your arms like a clock’s hands, index finger to figure out where the moon will next rise without being able to say why. You’ll be able to point to Croatia without trying, slow
dance Iceland important with a hip-flip, finger-tut Peru, the tip of your elbow directioning correctly Florida’s eastern most tip of the Keys by ducking. You may May a bit out of tune, but you’ll universe Saturn 3 o’clock, without dropping any of its 62 moons by moving a little nearer to me again,
and we’ll be moon practicing again. And while going out I’ll be falling in and up and you’ll go breaking-up, and the sun will light up: it’s just a phase the moon’s going through, but I’m burning up about it. Damn, you’ll say, what a way to go, and with the earth still turning me on so still.
When I was diagnosed with inoperable cancer, my first thought wasn’t what you might expect. My first thought wasn’t “Why me?”
My first thought was “Why not you?”
This is a serious thought, I think, a logical thought, and not at all unreasonable, insensitive or anything. Why don’t YOU have cancer seems to be a more logical thing to ask, more logical than why do I have cancer. At least it does to me, but maybe there’s a reason for this. Maybe it’s because this is about me, that it is me talking, and because I have cancer, inoperable cancer.
Maybe this is the cancer talking.
The cancer is in my brain.
You should have this cancer; it should be in your brain
These things are true and sad. A painter used to live here. Lives here still but it is complicated. Tonight I am alone but for the flowers the painter left for me to discover in the kitchen, the living room, my office, the bathroom. The years we were together the painter thought I did not like flowers. I am unsure why the painter ever came to this conclusion. In this month after our breakup we have learned so much about each other. We are like new people. Tonight the painter is in Philadelphia. Tomorrow the painter will be in New Jersey. There will be a show. Tonight I am at my desk where I will write for the first time in many months while listening to James Blake. I will drink seltzer water and check my phone. I will smoke cigarettes in the rain. Unable to sleep, I will try to read. I will sit uncomfortably while my fingers remember what it feels like to touch these keys. I will trim my nails because it is difficult to type when they are too long. When I do not write, my nails grow long. My nails are a reminder of difficult times. My fingers worry over their own disuse. My hands do not know what to do. My wrists feel tight. My forearms rest heavy. My elbows are bony knobs on this desk. My shoulders hunch. My neck hurts. My throat hurts. My eyes hurt. I read these words and yet I continue to write. I go on writing because what else is there to do but remember this poem about a painter, his flowers, and what used to be his walls.
Someone explains how to cook something.
Someone else does not listen. In the lake
look at how the fish are not cooking
anything. At the bottom and in other
places there is no cooking. It takes geography.
It eliminates it. When I am having toast
I keep not having toast. What would be
a liberation? A blue screw in the cement wall.
Orange. I’ve got my telephone. My telephone
does telephone calls. I was waiting again.
My heart beats fast fast fast. Is your heart
beating fast? A pattern of frequent worry.
Pick up geography. Wanting a new big easier.
Take me out. When the glass shatters,
it shatters too far. I have will. Where has it gone.
How you might want to show what you know.
Sometimes you go out there. At least as far as
your window can see. Or rather, no farther than
a window your window can see. Why not
want your own window? Want water. Want
water where you are. You want get struck
with a change. I go I go I go. But come back
come back come back.
I drove my Corolla down the high road; silver fields beside it; darkness ahead; oh fire behind; like niceness unfastened; I bent my head; in intricate dawn; the fields brimming; some dark remained; or was lit up; perhaps I did it; from my sphere; fantastic and pronged; I sat with my head; bowed; it is how I have gone through my country; like the road; which cannot believe its own height; I have felt warm in my car; unable to turn my music down; night wind rushing words from my mouth; for it is dumb to be right; even as trees grow with darkness; complicit; turning the earth as I have been turned; turning myself; from its labor; blame cleans my brow; so smoothly the road spills like a lie; through somebody; a girl was; through my face; I roll the windows up; down; and when I take a curve; I take it away; into my mind; I open my mouth; thinking I’ll speak; but dim houses stream faster; like painting; or a puddle of chilled water; I put my hand in; the autumn is thick; like everyone else; am I incredible; or inside of it.
Because we are mammals
we illuminate glasses of milk
We make wine and play the triangle
whose corners ring through us to the night
We are mammals in the kitchen
and on the stairs
And half the house is the emptiness
they built to make room
for an audience of mammals
We cannot record the distance
between us and the forest
but we imagine
when our characters imagine
it’s probably not too far
What is being related.
Your eyes have shutters. Your lips open to an elevator.
I step into a room, the room steps out into rain
shaped like a square that falls.
A person becomes a place,
a place becomes an ornament on a flammable wall.
You were mother's baby. You were my baby too. Red on the day you dropped like a fish, my pet already. I watched the kettle boiling.
Played nurse and mother by dials and switches, arm a lever
connected to the soft door.
You said, Baby, time for a nap
(but you were the baby, adam). I kissed you on the head. I kissed you on my sister. I kissed you in parts where the world vestibuled into darkness.
Cities on the coast are all tongue and trees and sister.
I watch the tongue swallow sisters, brick and arms and knees.
You said, Go back, Go back. Into what.
You point to a picture.
I directed us toward the room inside the highway, where the fast lights form a river and the river forms a plane, a wall, a curve, a blade.
We turned around. We watched movies backwards.
Trails on the windshield swept up.
Time alone has not made me
understand space.
Adopting it has not made me a mother.
Your place in it does not give it balance.
My solitude displaces no water.
Dissociating has not made me powerful.
Bridges do not take me.
Light bends. Space is something else altogether.
The geometry of coupling closes and opens unseen space.
Space does not see.
Smiles grimace. The space of your mouth. Subtle holes.
We have preached this landscape
where everything is incorporated
and telephoned. This is the machine gun villa.
A million models are priced, tagged,
and ready to ship
from the warehouse of our machine gun villa.
Maple syrup, moccasins, Mount Rushmore key chains,
potato guns a-ratatatatting in the machine gun villa.
As for the rising of ideas, I love your tan
little miss river rat. Go further and it is further
into the machine
gun villa. A rose on a slab of bloodbath?
& not a tidbit of hostility for the machine gun
villa. I love the river of your solar burn.
Yizzerd! What beautiful country the machine gun villa.
If you take off Vladimir's dress, you will find that Vladimir's fur is not red. If you donate the dress to an unreasonable charity, you will discover that giving is not always better than receiving a day or two off from the detective squad. And if stroking Vladimir does not appeal to you, well then you probably never really understood your father's beard.
And what do you suppose Helmut thinks of the carefully selected toys a mischievous mind might toss across the room when the playbell rings? Is the most useful dictionary under the circumstances Russian, German, English or the more desperate one deeply buried in Vladimir?
Let's ask all the Vladimirs to recite Mayakovsky. Let's ask the dancing dress to select a new partner. Stand back. Give yourself room. Don't expect the toys to predict the government's downfall. Reunification escapes the dictionaries of great revolutionaries by refusing to function horizontally. How can we predict any oatmeal cookies when the baker's gender is insufficiently prepared for ethnic behavior?
And if Helmut doesn't know Rilke, how can we even imagine viewing a line-up of guilty chin stubble without diving for the scissors in the purse. The last stop before nose trimming is evasive and seems to have no alibi.
Yes, Helmut's got photographs.
Helmut's got art.
With this in mind, we can enter an altered gender plea and begin selecting the jury. But the political inclinations are likely to influence the charity and what Vladimir ever shaved a broken country for a purseful of seasonal relationships?
Air pressure, distance, landscape formations, pre-existing thought structures, unconscious impulses, emotional drag, red shift, passage of time: no two yee haws can be identical. Even though they towered sixty feet over my head, the thing's baggy knees tipped me off it was just a normal-sized guy in a monster suit. Ten tons of smoldering rubble later, we discovered the Eskimo word for watchamacallit had been mistranslated as thingamajig. She bought the country a dream catcher to make up for everything, and then we photoshopped the breeze to get it to look right. We told Pluto it wasn't a planet, so there. I can't feel my left arm, so I must be larger than life.
Photographic, in a way, healthy as black ash. Sabotage, tonguelessness. A book of matches. Miriam buried to her neck, irretrievable, and James crawling across the yellow mud on his belly. I did not burn this one.
Sockets, her gums, a fashion much the same as memory. A buck knife or what he called a Bowie knife.
Cussing and behind them, a speck in the fields. Up to his haunches in water turned to steam. At my chest, tantalizing. In their usual fashion, sometimes Miriam was James, sometimes a blowtorch, the sour poison crusted to their cheeks. I carried a loaf of white bread, James managed to scrounge canned goods, extra sackfuls of corn, beans, peas, rice, tomato sauce. Like Donald Trump the blood cooling and opening and closing to the sky.
The blood photographic in memory, much the same as a buck knife or what he called Miriam. My chest, healthy as a blowtorch, cooling and opening. Tonguelessness turned to steam in their usual fashion: irretrievable, tantalizing, poison.
I bled when i bled there was no sound. When i bled the cause of my bleeding sucked out the sound. As i bled i remembered how we had been bleeding. As we had been bleeding there was no way to speak about it but bleed. But bleed. But bleed. But then the bleeding stopped. I was still alive to see the blood bore itself on my pale skin. I was bored too and i felt bad about my own blood being bored. I realized as i bled i knew i was bleeding and it was something i knew. I realized as i was bleeding it was good because i saw color. This color was color and it was good. I knew all the things i thought were good had no color but my eyes crashing. I whispered this to myself. You are good blood i said. You are really good i said. My heart happened as it were and it throbbed and made me good all over again. But i complain i said to the blood. Now you've stopped and i complain i said. The blood said good and bled more but by then the night was bored. I lay there bleeding without blood speaking to me and telling me when it would end. I could not move but the blood looked at me as it hissed down my collar and started circling the mud.
As i bled the blood working another face shifted. I called a friend who had lost his head. When i told him about how i bled he told me to hold it. Hold it. Don't speak he said. This is my time he said. You don't know how i bleed he said. Let me be he said and hung up. The blood working another face breathed ash and made me imagine: another blood running away and pumping air every time it fails. The failure of blood is in the horizon. The blood fails as another blood pretends to succeed. The blood overcomes as the silent blood warms the skin. Both bloods don't matter because it is inside and bright. As i came down the stairs it was impossible to bleed. So the blood held out a palm but the other palm got scared and the whole house bled. When a house bleeds nothing can be seen.
I hope you know this is real blood. I hope you taste it when no one's looking. This blood took long to breathe. This blood loved but couldn't soak its letters. This blood knew everything but couldn't pull the plug. This blood came in to the blood that made this blood think and asked what were you thinking. This blood knows nothing and knows that is all but it knows night is the blood of all: The tide of blood crashing against each other and the blood lifting the faces to the sky and asking with invisible blood how we are tied.
Even though I agree with you, it hit the spectator like a bullet, it happened to him, I don't really agree with you. Appears straight forward but is it. Used to have a name but now is it. So, not to the same state but to the same flow. Signposts, wrong ones or right ones. The pupil is making a choice and you have told it this. The scene is broken for evidence. Today does so in the film, they should know what will happen and that's accomplished by habit rather than attention. It can't be arrested. It's already changed. Point to a place, for example a note on your desk, where you wrote down the original instruction. Thus a jump from a window is taken as a jump from a scaffold. He knows structure rather than significance. Characters in multiple parts which require assembly. Always follow through, even on a minor infraction, so that they know there is.
Departure, so where it is present it is easy to locate, while contrasting traits of character lead to denouement. Surely it is too early for this. Permission paved with read bricks. Because of the rotation of the earth, an object can be thrown farther if it is thrown west. I, too, am a father, but there are no more eggs, no more bread. When I take history I am listening on one level and observing on another. People who remember it and people who don't, that's the line, there's a difference. Redstart implicit in wives and dead branches. A sequence, she said, in no particular order. I understand the thread but not the pattern on the other side. I would like them to be the end of my own but of course.
Soon, I could leave my body without prompts. The artist's concept of the birth of a star, or I broke my name until the fibres separated and lost their coats. My thirst for windows kept me indoors. My gaze wandered across the suburbs of childhood, faces stammering with shyness, bodies masquerading as furniture. Initial mass and luminosity determine duration, but my sensibility comes to require an object. Here, the word "system" implies a level of certainty that is unwarranted. Some of those memories were not written by me, so they are memos, at home on my desk, but still authoritative. Now, instead of a pupil, there's a screensaver. It was late. The room was empty. A lifetime of sentences which at first glance seem superfluous, but whose value is later understood. One thing leads to a mother. Soon enough, a flock of children came running and tapped on the glass. When I reached the bottom of the stares, I looked up.
I was a girl I did not fight: I fought the others. I wore a sweater and when the weather pressed me to the river I went under. Things were better. It was a fine brown box. It was a thing for what it was. Every pea in place and stacked beside a thousand rounded dried-up shapes; its sisters. I want a bed to measure. I want a stock to simmer. And in the oil on the surface of the broth I want a mirror.
I want a mirror. I want to be a wall. I want a light and with the light I want a fixture. I did not fight myself but split my knuckles on the canines of a lady, and she bit me. She was pretty. At a party. In my sweater. Stop me if you've heard this: it was better. For a box – for a box I would be better. I would be good. I swear to god I would be good. Made to measure.
I would be good. I would be on my best behavior. For a box that fits my body. For a river. In place a shape – the stocks – a simmer. For a pea. For a box. Forever.
When I thought it was time to have a child, I went to the hospital. The doctor said that he had to give me cesarian. “Does Doctor think I want a big scar on my belly,” I said. “Then I’d rather be without it.” He looked surprised but let me leave after some complaints.
After a few days I started feeling something that must have been a pain, even though it didn’t hurt very much. I went to another hospital, where everyone was very friendly. I got to sit on a bed in the corridor and look at the horror. I had no more pains, but nobody thought that was strange. “Maybe I’ve fooled you,” I said. “Maybe I’m not going to have a baby. Though I am pretty fat.”
Without any considerable pains I then gave birth to four children. The first one was of normal size, and there has never been a more beautiful newborn. It actually looked like it was a couple of years old. The others were of descending size, the last one being the size of a finger. They were all red and ugly. – I immediately understood that the two smallest ones would not survive. I didn’t have high hopes for the second baby, but the beautiful child made me happy with his dark-blue eyes and his long black locks.
The next day when I woke I asked for my children, but from everybody’s faces I could tell that something was wrong. “They weren’t fed for several hours,” said my mother apologetically.
I went in to my children. There they lay all four in a row, dead. The largest had never been alive. It was a doll.
But none of this was very strange, since I had never been with a man.
Diana didn’t know love but she knew Faulkner. From Alabama to Mississippi, Lena Grove walked so she could be with Lucas Burch. Until Emily Grierson died, she slept with Homer Barron’s corpse. Sacrifices to the extreme. Diana had never met a man who made her want to give up much of anything. Her marriage in training to the CPA was convenient. He was the right age, her age of twenty-eight. He was the right family, the Schilles of Birmingham. They had owned a department store by the same name for four generations up to the day Macy’s bought it. But she grew tired of his sticky yellow demands on the bathroom mirror, refrigerator, and front door. You will have the clothes washed by tomorrow, you will come in before 7 p.m., you will eat Sunday dinner with my family . . . you will, you will. His manner of insistence evoked the Ten Commandments on Post-it notes. After five years and untold paper trails, she felt herself fading. On a late afternoon in August when an eerie copper light covers Alabama, Diana walked out on the CPA.
When you love what “you” think “you” are
Not supposed to “love,” “you” learn how
“To” do research. Until something
“You” would “not” let
Yourself want suddenly offers
Itself “to” “you.”
I loved the body “and” “the” voice.
“I loved” three voices actually.
One was a small “voice,” another
“Was” sarcastic
“The” third “was” declamatory.
“Then” “the” sadness
“I” brought from “the” north mingled with
“The sadness” of “the” previous
Tenant “and” became my own like
“The” shoulder bag
That declares “my” class background. “I”
Have two “of” them.
“One was a” gift “from” “my” mother.
Another “I” got at school. “You”
Might say “that” “the” “school” gave it “to”
Me. Because “I”
Belong “to” “a” “class” “of” people
Who never think
“Of” buying things for themselves. If
“You” were “to” remove “my” “body”
“From” “the” picture “and” concentrate
Just “on” “the” “bag”
“You” could learn “a” lot about her
Aspirations
“For” “me,” “the” position she thought
“I” should occupy. “Her” sense “of”
Smell “and” figures “of” speech. Fear “and”
Sadness “in” “her”
Breast entered “my body” through “her”
Milk “and” “I” died.
It’s nice “to” be “nice.” Don’t “you” know
“That”? “I” reply (“because I” make
Up “my own” lines “like” “a” singer-
Songwriter) “that”
Your wishes “for” “my” happiness
“Are” oppressive.
The buddhist said he loved me when we were fighting as much as when we were purring to one another, he said he loved all parts of me, all moods of our interaction. And I believed him. I could tell him anything, I could be any way with him and he would still love me. My therapist’s response to this: when things seem too good to be true, they are too good to be true. Anals of official philosophy are fucked by bureaucrats of pure reason. The buddhist’s attention was so dazzling I felt like the star of a reality TV show, the fat woman who has an extreme makeover—ugly parts are cut away, new parts are stitched on, then she’s coached into fitness and retooled by a team of beauty experts—for the grand finale all her friends and family gather to witness the unveiling of the gussied up version—she is stunning, a bride to her dream self. Then the cameras and support staff vanish, leaving her to deal with the profound loneliness of ordinary life. Standing in line at Safeway I vacantly stare at a magazine cover featuring three former contestants from a series about pregnant teens, now that the show is over their lives are falling apart—depression, drug addiction, boob jobs. I look at Kevin beside me, peacefully sleeping in the navy cashmere cap I bought him for his birthday—I get a hit of his otherness and his sweetness and it pangs my heart—with this incredible love, right here, that slaps me in the face on a daily basis, what was the point of the buddhist? He made me feel sexy special exciting—traits I don’t particularly try to convey, like I’m over such staginess—but I must still crave it, must still long to be that dazzling woman beneath the klieg lights—all eyes turning to watch, to delight in Her/Me. For women, God is always about the gaze. Little ones to him belong, for they are weak and he is strong. Jesus loves our weaknesses, but God loves our glamour.
Our lane leader is blue and we cry to him in books
Cool she's back from the unicorns I thought &
I saw her in the hillside heel-deep in a gore slough
Puzzled beside the car in Germany cursing at the light
As I tried to hold 3 umbrellas above (Aliens crackle)
The star-maker stable-master who pours a 2-liter bottle
The restaurant check-out wheels spin out alienation
Spies sulk nearby trying out their acting gigs
The cadre's oncoming lights & Spanish horses
The vampire girls are everywhere in the gore slough
They are everywhere the ponies bristle at their food
They are on the nation in soaring clusters around
Our lane leader blue like the pills lazy mommies take
Glhao up fa the dark leader 1/2 roared get to work
& all of his UZI followers flickered in and out of wanting
Those three cinnamon things flickering out there
In front of the cables with the bittersweet cool
We will sacrifice questions like
Is it the same
To radiation's light
With love's air anguish
You know where
Gorgeous dolphins will thrash &
Radioactive wagons burn
Dollops of cinnamon sugar
Will flow in jets 2 vases
They will flee as the waters surge
The books will float awhile
Away from their private heat
Of TVs & space stations
Hot light will tramp down traces &
Tumble handfuls of camouflage
Into the cover where they will wait for you
The egrets
I mean
The radioactive shack will be gone
Its concrete will have tumbled
Under a chorus of storms
The Stupefying Flashbulbs plays like symbolist fantasy, or mad monologue, or a diary of personal and farfetched dramas surfacing into ordinary life. New words demand invention to describe moments missing from language.
In America, I stopped to listen for God.
What about these men with their wolf tongues
and the war with its quick deaths and how vast
death is and how nothing fits in it.
Let the blood wet the ashes,
let the semen wet the mouth.
This man tonight is going inside
himself and let him stay there because
I could kill faster than any war would, God.
"The machine said—" I paused, certain I'd programmed the Creature's machine incorrectly. In the control room's wizardly light, very blue, and not an angstrom from the smoldering remains of the pilot, whose world until now had believed thought and things to be of the same species, in a brilliant readout like my own mind stammering, I had seen the screen, had seen it clearly and definitely fulgurate like lightning in a few fibrous seconds It's the Self and There is no cure.
Finally there's the basement where your body lies. It is intact. From what I've been told, your skull hasn't exploded. You're like a young tennis player resting on the lawn after a match. You could be sleeping. You are twenty-five years old. You now know more about death than I do.
You did not hesitate. You prepared the shotgun. You put in a shell. You fired into your mouth. You knew that suicide by shotgun could fail when aiming for the temple, the forehead, or the heart, because the recoil throws the gun off its target.
Lust, addiction, being / in the wrong place at the wrong/ time? That’s not the whole / story. Absolute fidelity / to the truth of what I felt, open / to the moment, and in every case / a kind of love: all of the above /brought me to this tottering / self-conscious state—pneumonia, / emaciation, grisly cancer, / no future, heart of gold, / passionate engagement with a great /B film, a glorious summer / afternoon in which to pick up / the ripest plum tomatoes of the year / and prosciutto for the feast I’ll cook / tonight for the man I love, / phone calls from my friends / and a walk to the park, ignoring / stares, to clear my head. A day / like any, like no other. Not so bad / for the dead.
I tossed more than slept. Blind musicians played hymns the whole time. You never
knew where you might encounter a god splattered with blood and men’s brains. The
most terrible dreams blew about the streets. I wanted to say something, but only the
reckless were permitted to talk. The sun had barely come up when the fort would fire
the sunset gun.
So many people, everywhere, who wouldn’t mind waiting, disappear into the tunnel,
and more coming, innocent or not, because the road climbs, sticky-wet all over, with
such passion, toward the commotion.
The clouds were very close. One had the shape of a struggling farmer, another of his
Mexican farmhand. The corn they had scattered for the chickens had been eaten by
crows. I could guess what might happen next. Leaves had been falling from the sky all
day. A drunk was peeing off the dock, hunched in the garments of the hanged. I would
be glad to see less, I told myself, if it helped me love more. Something cried that had
no name.
I was a sorcerer today—it’s true,
I used my dowsing rod on you.
I came with sticks to extract you
from me.
Am I a twisted cherub, face
half-skeleton, half-laced ribbon?
I glisten at times, but.
I am more than my skin suggests,
more than a body of sin. I have scriptures
in my lips.
If only my anger were the apocrypha,
hidden beneath beautiful cities where
cloaked things ghost in to practice denial.
I am that passage, the real 11:3,
where God shook his penis out in the sun
and measured it against a water lily’s stem.
Moses met me at the Church Street
willow tree, where we gossiped
about Jesus Christ and stale bread.
And we talked about that sermon,
that sermon when the sun came in
as white as those ghosts outside.
I thought I heard sleds and snow angels
bounce off of the stained glass windows.
Moses, you mentioned forgiveness.
How could we allow a set of texts that
break entire empires to pieces? How
could he ever see me as radiant again?
I want to be Rome,
I want to be Venice, I want to be the sea-side.
I’ll call in for a re-written Atlas.
At the very surface of a misty sea,
that’s where I will be. I will float
on the poles, looking so like glass
that he will see through me, see that I
have been absolved,
forgive the pale foxes that ate
his blood in the night. See me
as the righteous sun of a new day.
Kirlian photography is a lie.
Even if you catch my aura when I walk away,
you are just marveling at my potential
gradient.
There’s Tesla crouching in the corner
of the room with the cement floor,
behind the electric chair, pulling plugs
from the wall. He’s dismantling the camera.
He’s happy for me, and so is Semyon Kirlian.
We pile the daguerreotypes,
the outlines of my being,
the snot-nosed ghosts that
came from my snotty-ghosted nose,
and set them to fire,
all ablaze in wild fire.
Listen: the important poets of my generation have been singled out and recognized and honored, and obviously I’m not among them. I can’t believe you’re serious in questioning that. If you are serious, then you’re either being obtuse or cruel.
One must create an established coherent poetic personality to be successful. And one must stick to that chosen persona or edifice. I don’t see Larkin ever deviating from his. As you read his Collected [Poems] you never suddenly find him trying to write something like [Ted] Hughes’ “Crow.” But turn my pages and you’ll find me trying to be [Karl] Krolow on one and Parra on the next. That’s why I’m a failure, and why I have come to the elephants’ graveyard of failure, the Web, to publish my poems. I’m posting all my poetry to my blog because ipso facto I have failed as a print poet.
So what fucking “identity as a poet”? I don’t have an identity as a human being, much less a poet.
I know I can’t write a poem. I have no right to write a poem. Mark Strand has the right to write a poem, not me. He went to Yale; he lives on the yacht of his youth. Me, I grew up in an orphanage, no family, no money, no “educational opportunities.” No background, no breeding. Scum like me can’t write poems. After his Ivy League education, C. K. Williams lived in Paris on a trust fund for ten years while he wrote his first book; me, after high school and two years in the army I worked as a hospital orderly while I wrote my first book. Lower-class scum, menials like me have no right to write poetry. The occasion of a poem? You wanna know the fucking occasion? There is none for me. Strand and Williams and Pinsky et al. have “occasion.” I have no occasion.
Maybe I could be thankful to have survived the unhappiness of the past if the unhappiness of the present wasn’t overwhelming me.
I’d be happy to pay the price of the experience if the resulting poems were worth it, but they aren’t.
This is the Story of O. O is a good letter. When we are surprised in a visceral way, like an orgasm when we are suckling our babies, our mouths go O. We O when someone we love touches us in a place no one has before. When our tight jeans rub our clits in the right way we O. This is what Brooke Shields meant about nothing between her and her Calvins.
Women have a lot of Os. Some of these Os come from us, and some Os happen to other people because of us. If we are wise we will love our Os because they mean that we are here on this earth in a body and we are alive.
There are innumerable Os, as many Os as there are women.
When Oprah put her skinny, tall poet models in ugly, repressive clothes they did not own from Dress Barn, with letters floating around them but not touching them, she forgot that fashion is really about being naked. The letters in the Oprah spread were repelled by the women poets’ Os, when really the letters should have been crawling all over them because they couldn’t help but be lured like insatiable lovers to the O.
This doesn’t mean we are not scared of the O. Obviously Oprah, or her editors, were scared of the O. The O is death.
Alexander McQueen said: “I want people to be afraid of the woman I dress.”
Fashion is terror. When women in certain places in the Middle East paint their toenails they are terrors with their tOes. When men lift their burquas and see the women’s gunmetal gray tOes both the men and the women say O.
The men in the Middle East know the power the O holds. That is why these women’s bodies are shrouded in fabric that is not fashion but its opposite, shame. There are ways to bring burquas to the O, though. Cut them short, douse them in glitter, attach razor blades to the eye mask, write CUNT across the back in lipstick like Squid from the Lunachicks, cut Os in the chest so tits spill out like money. Do what these hot girls did on the streets of Paris. These girls got the O and took it for a strut.
Fabric is fabric on a mannequin. Fabric isn’t fashion until it finds, until it fucks, the O.
Roland Barthes believed the text came before fashion. He said: “It is not the object but the name that creates desire; it is not the dream but the meaning that sells.” If it is the name that sells, for the name to ever be fashion it must first fuck the O. The O is the site of fashion’s conception. The O is the plus sign in this equation, a positive pregnancy test.
Fashion is not a dream but a thing you touch with your hands and your sex and your text and your tongue. It is physical, but unlike fabric, it is not something you can buy or sell.
Fashion, like architecture, is the body.
Fashion is hope. After the war, a rose on a corpse.
You don’t need clothes to be fashion. Lady Godiva was the most fashionable creature who ever rode the earth’s face.
Fashion is desire.
So is poetry.
This, Oprah, is FASHIONPOETRY.
I was pregnant with a military hoard. It was not air. It was something that grew and pricked and puffed. Small small spearheads against the inside of my belly. It was gases from gunpowder. It was winding chains and small pricks. I opened up my belly; let out the Bear Tumor. It already had sores. Still it grew. I released the Bear Tumor in the Garden which was the first military force, in its very own Lilliput Land where the Animals rule. Where the Wolf parts its own legs and allows itself to be wounded, where the Puppies have small cunts with sores, where the screams are fragile and high and lovely. In Lilliput Land where the flowers are buried. There the motif is colored by the tormented Bear Tumor and the burial soil.
The Bear Tumor is my Lap Girl. I gave birth to my own maid. She is tortured from tear-wounds that give her pleasure. It is the pleasure of having been bred out. The air to be inhaled can be found beneath the soil, inside the warm belly. The red colors in the wind that blow through holes and auditory canals are dizzying and spiral-like.
In the Ladies’ dressing room the undressing is taking place. My Lap Girl is always the cleverest at taking off her clothes compared to the other Ladies. There is also a Bear Tumor in my Lap Girl. Above the Ladies’ desert the sun shines red and fervent. My Lap Girl inside the Bear Tumor is also a Lap Girl to the Ladies.
I am the Twin Girl who breeds new degenerate species. I happen to be the Siamese Girl who consists of different parts that come loose. The Puzzle Animals escape from me. I am the Twin Girl or the Siamese Girl. It is impossible to magnify me. I am two girls or many. I have been doubled in all eternity, been polished aglow. I have a necklace around my own throat. I am We.
In our visible breastcage hides the Rabbit. We do not want to release her. We do not want to allow her to wander along the horizon, on the skin-sky; on the path to the fence. Not over the mountain nor up-and-down on the golden frame. We do not want to bury her in the blackest blackness, behind the cloth, at the lookout place or anywhere else for that matter.
The Rabbit that lives in our breastcage is our brand; the symbol of the Siamese. The Rabbit is our epidemic, the nest of the coal-burning. Above our joined Girl Body fly vulture birds, screaming for food that our mother dropped somewhere along the way.
The Rabbit that hides in our breastcage is the hole into our joined Girl Body. It is the black glowing, staring, gazing, the inward peephole. There is the nest with the bird bones and children’s bones in the bed of body parts. Our Rabbit flirts with the escapee who is the White Rabbit. It is the white one who has escaped from us, who runs outside our body and teases the imprisoned Breastcage Rabbit. The gape opens in our open breastcage. Our narrow tongues move inwards, into the Rabbit’s throat and answer the harangues with a gurgle.
We scream in each other’s Twin-Ears: Stop the attacks! Stop the flow! Stuff the finger into the nothing-hole. Plug up that which hears, which travels in air-drownings. Plug it up! Kill that which is astray in the breastcage! Our Breastcage Rabbit is mute. The Rabbit is the concentrated point in our joined Twin Body. It is the fixating strangle, our lonely destiny.
A new era of black magic clown school Kajaso. I’ll adopt one clown from every continent and laugh myself to death.
… I am not girl material, not even material, much less woman, I’m a stoned witch from the middle ages. I should start doing drugs.
And aren’t you starting to hate the word performance now? People throw that word around all the time these days. Like “show your tits” kind of.
Hi I’m going to do a performance..
Show your tits!
Like theater kind of.
Theater is a skanky ass hoe.
Woke up with Lady Gaga straddling me. Soaking long yellow purple pink hair that dropped into my mouth. Ah, the taste of wet dog.
She shouted in my ear JU DA JUDA AH AH! JU DA JUDA AH AH!
And I try to silence her with my hands, but it wasn’t enough, couldn’t reach in? I said: you know, I don’t even like that song, fact is that the only song I really find tolerable is paparazzi, I think you dance pretty badly too, but I like you as a human being, can we be friends? Then she started washing my feet with her hair. I mean people can do what they want…
An esophagus is more confined than a riot, but you are more erotic. The new torture operations are largely aesthetic. This involves shells, a pretty new torso and my eyes smeared in the mascara made from fish scales. It is an acrid secretion. The riots will be exhibited. We are not near the revolver. To show how secretly feverish we are I turn on the subtitles. The natives have small mouths and full, but not thick, lips.
The riots have been stripped of artifice. I give the visitors a treacherous surface that is colored red. The natives are as comely as they are savage. They have high foreheads, large lips and high cheek bones. The Colonel is full of duplicity and rapacity. An eel-like species is the only thing that matters to him right now. I have sunstrokes. Mother is surrounded by 3000 troops. She is selling intricate figurines.
The landscape sweeps majestically from one tropical scenery to another. I am too hungry to be a ringleader. Too captured to be royal. When we had reassembled all the children, they brought forth nothing more fantastic than this kind of architecture: sluggish, mute, diminutive, spoils of organisms, colossal sphinxs, perished thousands, impregnated shores, and tiny shells mingled with seaweed.
I’m too sensitive I can’t stand to have his cock in my cunt against my cunt, I can’t stop coming, I keep moving. Barely so I can feel his desire. We fall to the left; his arm moves under me; his middle finger slips into my ass: that’s the center of my brain! That’s where all my thoughts are located! We swing against each other deep into the freezing then fiery center of the earth around, now it’s working, I want to come to, I want to get mine in I can feel his muscles move beyond his will, tense some then more, we’re still moving in curves only faster, faster and harder; his finger leaves my asshole: rays of light shoot inside me from by ass to my belly button to my clit: the Holy Trinity O it’s coming I don’t give a shit anymore where he’s at or what he’s doing; my clit and my mind are one being light shoots through my body clit to legs! Clit to nape of the neck and outwards! Heat shoots through my body! Sound supersonic fluorescent waves.
Language is a living being. I think that language came before humans, not the other way around. The cells of language hovered above earth looking for a host body. it tried to take over dinosaurs and fishes, but that didn’t work, they were stupid or the muscles in their speech organs were not developed enough. Then came humans. The invisible, potential words attacked her, like mosquitoes who know that they need blood and have waited for thousands of years for the first mammal to evolve.
It might not have been a particularly logical language; more likely, it was paradisical and timeless, a kind of happy babbling for the sake of babbling, a kind of music. But with time it became more descriptive instead of creative. It became an aid. It began to strive toward developing the future instead of standing with both feet in the joy (or angst) over the fact that the now can be expressed and come into existence through words. For some reason, language became both more stupid than it really is and more self conscious and anticipatory than was good for it. I don’t think it was the whole of humanity that was to blame for this development, but rather a very specific segment of humanity: those who benefitted most from the patriarchy, that is to say, the men. Since the patriarchy is all about power, they took control over language made language a means to maintain power. That is how the first war came to be and the first colonies, chronology and narrative structure, the social order we still have today.
But it’s not my intention to paint up a binary of evil and good here. Perhaps language needed to be tamed in order for us to become more than mayflies. It’s too bad language had to be transformed into a market-economical power apparatus for pleasure-opposed morons.
A murder mystery novel/poem/notebook about Images and infection, atrocity kitsch and The Law. A Starlet has been murdered, terrorist attacks happen, children are born and get pregnant in mysterious fashion (constantly multiplying), the son is locked in a tower with his favorite horse toy, the penis is a death prong through which – on the ouiji board – the murdered children of the Vietnam War finally gets to “speak,” they talk about the mall and the law, there are twitter feeds about motorcyclists who come from the castle outside of town, terror suspects who are given rubber gloves and led through the mirror, “Kingdom of Rats” it says above the mirror, it’s all about photography, hares, the body in snow, the body covered by a plastic bag, Art as Death. Etc. It’s always a staging, a pageantry, a b-movie.
FINGERYOURSELF WHAT IS WITH FINGERING FINGER YOU WHY SHOULD YOU FINGER WHAT IS FINGERING IS FINGERING GOOD DOES FINGERING FEEL NICE FINGER FINGERING TOUCH INSIDES WITH FINGERS WHO LIKES FINGERING FINGERYOURSELF WHAT IS WITH FINGERING FINGER YOU WHY SHOULD YOU FINGER WHAT IS FINGERING IS FINGERING GOOD DOES FINGERING FEEL NICE FINGER FINGERING TOUCH INSIDES WITH FINGERS WHO LIKES FINGERING FINGERYOURSELF WHAT IS WITH FINGERING FINGER YOU WHY SHOULD YOU FINGER WHAT IS FINGERING IS FINGERING GOOD DOES FINGERING FEEL NICE FINGER FINGERING TOUCH INSIDES WITH FINGERS WHO LIKES FINGERING FINGERYOURSELF WHAT IS WITH FINGERING FINGER YOU WHY SHOULD YOU FINGER WHAT IS FINGERING IS FINGERING GOOD DOES FINGERING FEEL NICE FINGER FINGERING TOUCH INSIDES WITH FINGERS WHO LIKES FINGERING FINGERYOURSELF WHAT IS WITH FINGERING FINGER YOU WHY SHOULD YOU FINGER WHAT IS FINGERING IS FINGERING GOOD DOES FINGERING FEEL NICE FINGER FINGERING TOUCH INSIDES WITH FINGERS WHO LIKES FINGERING FINGERYOURSELF WHAT IS WITH FINGERING FINGER YOU WHY SHOULD YOU FINGER WHAT IS FINGERING IS FINGERING GOOD DOES FINGERING FEEL NICE FINGER FINGERING TOUCH INSIDES WITH FINGERS WHO LIKES FINGERING
Load and cock and release. See the fins cut the air like knives. See the fins in the air and rising. See the children underneath and playing. See the boys on the ground and screaming, smiling. Load and cock and release. See the parents praying. See the sprinklers, their summer spitting. See the fire behind the fins and roaring. Load and cock and release. See the flags in the wind and blowing. See the grandparents looking up and pointing. See the fins still rising. Load and cock and release. See the loading-man over there reloading. See the water from the sprinkler arcing. See the television, the radio tuning. Listen for the men recocking. Load and cock and release. Listen to the talkers talking. Watch the girls in the sprinkler soaking. See again the loading and releasing. Load and cock and release. See more fins, smoking sky, more firing. See again the sprinkler spitting. Watch and remember the children playing. Load and cock. Release, release. Look, there, the grandparents remembering, the wheels spinning. Load and cock, release. See and hear the parents screaming. Load and cock. Load and cock. See and hear the children laughing. Load and cock and release. See and hear them splashing and pointing. See and hear that one crying. Load, release. Cock, reload. See and hear and listen, remember. Loading, recocking. Loading, releasing. Watching television, stealing televisions, waiting for what’s coming. Loading and cocking, release. No news is coming so load and cock and release. No news is helping so load and cock, aim and wait. Now you’re singing, you’re writing.
Cartoon logic liberally applies itself to the technicolored characters of its reign.
The cult phenomenon's ghost-writer is a snow flake in the avalanche.
Hey, Nonny Nonny—the woman shaves her legs. That's weird. And a super total turn on.
In a world where a bipedal dog wears a turtleneck and trousers, another, nakeder dog is the property of an anthropomorphized mouse.
You've been bamboozled. Hoodwinked. Lied to.
The planet is really a dwarf. And the dwarf is really a little person.
The bright implants turn on the very artist who hand drew them.
The subdivision architects model their design after a theme park's.
I walked outside with my shirt off today. I bleached my most intimate essence.
The rules evolve with each passing season.
The game is a commercial rap artist.
A rabbit waxed its special purpose.
A narrative dominated its lover.
My master mentality first starred in “Chain Gang; the afterbirth of a nation.”
I am the largest body in the Kuiper Belt, which is a belt of asteroids that encircles the entire solar system.
Your implants, your cochlear implants. Your coke off an augmented glute.
I can see. I'm free. I'm happy as a pup.
My love has come home. His boat on mine shore.
I'm going to feel complete.
He holds his fingers up to the sky and they blend with the clouds. His lips go to say to her, to speak the words, to make the sound of I know that between us we have lost everything we had but today is a new day and different from yesterday and maybe with this kind of sun there will be something left but the words go to smoke along with his eyes and his nose and his teeth, all the haze exhaled. Going like this until the world is full of more confusion than it was and the people they look through a gauze like cotton stretched tight over the sky and her not knowing anything different other than how fog and smoke and clouds and words are all another way to be hollowed.
Sand is a collection of rocks. Sand is pebbles. Sand is sun. Sand is a reflection. Sand is what goes between words. He places a grain of sand between I and love and then the sand is gone and he cannot finish. He cannot repeat as he wants to you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you.
And he knows that glass is something that he looks through. He knows that glass is a shield. He knows that glass is what we make when we boil down sand to just its reflections. Like letting loose his shadows on the sidewalk and taking them around town. A tour. This is where I used to eat. This is where I used to live. This is where there was something called me and then I peeled that skin off and what was underneath was this glass. Was this sand. Was this man that sometimes I wake to in the morning and say What the fuck is it that you are doing here?
Glass is a jaded sharp edge. His fingers tilled sidewalk soil, the earth between the slabs, the sprouts that will weed there. The living he is trying to complete.
Will you still tell me your dreams he asks but to a woman with a dog, not the woman in the apartment above the street looking down on the street and not seeing him there.
Sleeping outside of her apartment, the sidewalk a blanket, he waits out winter. He waits. He shouts to her window I see you undressing and you are as beautiful as ever but she doesn’t wave or look in his direction. She sees a cardboard box and a distilled summer turning.
Go ahead, pretend he screams, his lungs filled with anger and unsaid conversations and the pictures of her waiting for him in bed, her opened up hand a wink, a code, a gesture. Flowers as they bloom for one last instant.
This, before the air was made wetted and sick, before the words stopped making sense, before he grew camouflaged with the rest of the world.
Come out he said and she washed her hair in his words. Cherry shampoo and fingers through skin, weaving white on a palette. Hot water and steam, a pirate ship boarding. She walked the plank, she fell to the water, she treaded one two and then the world swallowed her, the giant gulp of seaweed teeth, a scratch scrape of peach colored coral.
She did not scream his name.
The palimpsest of desire opens her body like a corridor. Time, the Gentleman, walks in first. I stay outside the pages, studying the text written in black ink. I hope he doesn’t age you with his sweet, succulent lips. Strands of words hang loosely. Around--
The strands
--of desire.
The gentleman takes too long. I am walking to and fro. Anxious.
You cease talking about the university. The dinner. The writer with her notebook. I do not know what to say to you. I am in a bath of reverence. The large dark maroon handbound book stares back at me. My drawings and paintings are still in there. Waiting. You have only glanced at the preliminaries. I have derailed. The train of the conversation descends into the bosom of fog. I wonder where we are in the interview. The diaphanous window of the conference room glows with light. Drowning it in innocence. The afternoon sun throws in his yellow halo hat. It lands on the hooks of the curtain. On the table. On the floor. The room slits open.
You are so quiet and I am so quiet.
Must I enter you? You in your blue blouse. I am in my red sweater. Flowers of Shanghai. I wonder if you have seen the movie called Red. Called Blue. We are making a movie called White. You smile because you have not seen Flowers or Shanghai in the same sentence. You think this is beautiful. Because you are so quiet and I am so quiet. Hsiao-hsien. I innocently gaze at you. I do not think I am very innocent. Thinking, contemplating walking into the Cathedral.
Without votives. Just wearing a white dress. Perhaps not wearing anything at all. Drowning in blue. My red. Your blue. Four elegant brothels. A courtesan in her prime.
The opium pipe of ink runs through the river of your breath. You inhale. I exhale. A trail of reddish brown, the drug, unravels the air. I am still outside the corridor. Time, the Gentleman, still inspects the palimpsest of desire. He takes his time. He looks carefully at the torn pages. The slit. The mark of passion. The pipe of ink. The opium floats through his nose.
I sit with you in intoxication.
For three years I have not had the pleasure of this moment. For three years I have not had a minute of intoxication with you. In the conference room, I experience two minutes. Two folds. The window. The door. I walk into you.
Descending the aluminum stairs to show you my drawings. My paintings.
I open the kitchen cabinet looking for something to feast upon with the Blue Fruit. A jar of honey sits among the clear canisters of peppercorn, aniseeds, cardamom, capers, flour, rock sugar, mung beans. The assorted scents of spices float out of the cabinet.
The beauty of a kitchen.
The Blue Fruit on the table. The pale amber color of the honey jar. Something is missing, I think, as I sit down at the dining table.
You are still very quiet. This is a sacred time, holding you as I undress the interview in the kitchen. The Blue Fruit dancing in my eyes. I am watching Shanghai wake up on the television screen. Flowers are blooming out of the brothel floors.
Jasmine.
Jade.
Pearl.
Emerald.
Women fading in and out of dark paneled walls. Foods leaving and entering Asian men’s mouths.
If you take off Vladimir's dress, you will find that Vladimir's fur is not red. If you donate the dress to an unreasonable charity, you will discover that giving is not always better than receiving a day or two off from the detective squad. And if stroking Vladimir does not appeal to you, well then you probably never really understood your father's beard.
And what do you suppose Helmut thinks of the carefully selected toys a mischievous mind might toss across the room when the playbell rings? Is the most useful dictionary under the circumstances Russian, German, English or the more desperate one deeply buried in Vladimir?
Let's ask all the Vladimirs to recite Mayakovsky. Let's ask the dancing dress to select a new partner. Stand back. Give yourself room. Don't expect the toys to predict the government's downfall. Reunification escapes the dictionaries of great revolutionaries by refusing to function horizontally. How can we predict any oatmeal cookies when the baker's gender is insufficiently prepared for ethnic behavior?
And if Helmut doesn't know Rilke, how can we even imagine viewing a line-up of guilty chin stubble without diving for the scissors in the purse. The last stop before nose trimming is evasive and seems to have no alibi.
Yes, Helmut's got photographs.
Helmut's got art.
With this in mind, we can enter an altered gender plea and begin selecting the jury. But the political inclinations are likely to influence the charity and what Vladimir ever shaved a broken country for a purseful of seasonal relationships?
Air pressure, distance, landscape formations, pre-existing thought structures, unconscious impulses, emotional drag, red shift, passage of time: no two yee haws can be identical. Even though they towered sixty feet over my head, the thing's baggy knees tipped me off it was just a normal-sized guy in a monster suit. Ten tons of smoldering rubble later, we discovered the Eskimo word for watchamacallit had been mistranslated as thingamajig. She bought the country a dream catcher to make up for everything, and then we photoshopped the breeze to get it to look right. We told Pluto it wasn't a planet, so there. I can't feel my left arm, so I must be larger than life.
I was the cleaner, the feeder, the shielder, the spokesperson for the home. Claire was, if anyone asked, which they had mostly stopped doing, resting. She’d had a bad night, she’d had a bad morning, she’d had a bad day. Esther said, in her bitter little way, she’s having a bad life. Call or come back later, was what we said, if we said anything. We did not need to tiptoe around her if she fell asleep on the couch, because her sleep was rigid and cold and stubborn. It was a great struggle for her to fight off such a state and wake up again. I couldn’t watch it. It looked as if she was rising from the dead, but only halfheartedly.
Leave dead enough alone, I hadn’t heard.
Sometimes I picked up Claire’s arm when she slept and checked her wrist for a pulse. Sometimes I even felt one.
Children, with their chemically thick speech that antagonizes one’s very body, are the ultimate death of the imagination. This information should prove useful to the people who come after us.
I have chosen not to embellish my account in any way or to add details that I am now unsure of, but in those last few days at home my faculties were extraordinarily compromised and I functioned at a very low level. The word ‘function’ would seem to glorify just what kind of behavior one might have seen at our house during those times. I must assume, even though I cannot recall it, that I moved through the house in some basic way, such as this night I am recounting when I saw the figure pushing in at Esther’s door, but my noticing apparatus was essentially disengaged, my attention was damaged, and I warrant I may be filling in some blanks.
A Walking Toxic was the term that would issue from Rochester, once they finally named the various stages of decline, leaving out anyone who might have artificially built up a resistance, or the non-Jews who seemed immune. Walking Toxics. Such were we in our town in November of that year. The speech-saturated civilians with membrane-thin immune systems, a cortex that had shrunk and turned black, a spoiling in the joints. Full up on the poison and yet moving through the world, walking, talking, and breathing, as if we weren’t about to die.
The mind runs poorly but is still sweet.
Self-ignorance is my house. A shell.
To wear masks put them off.
My work never comes quite to be.
As I get fatter I will sing more.
I believe in error, an aesthetics of error. Error is Arrow I’ve sd.
Maybe the bow tie swims in curled water.
I found in the flats my face.
There’s an occult meaning in initials.
What happens is not what matters. What matters is what’s here.
The planet is a hummingbird.
Reveal amber, the color of time, & the happiness of glue.
Sad men fail art relentlessly.
Space brighter even than Queens—I sit in the center of it like a rabbit smelling the grass.
Don’t write my house a bird sd in the water.
The eye steams in a beautiful flower.
What goes by not me.
We are an 18 plus a 19. (1819 was a “Panic Year.”)
Ruth sees Saints, Sol sd.
I like animals & dirt.
I’ll invent who I am, against what is. My name & time: a Queens of the mind.
Walking to Utopia Parkway is like shipping out to sea.
A dictionary will follow me, leaping like a hare.
Schmutz is my sign.
I rearrange time. It’s confused in me.
This envelope contains stars. Hoops & diadems; heads.
As my hair dries my mind goes.
The impossible air of feathers.
I’m perverse & green in my middle days.
If a bird can use the wind I can use the brown Queens smut.
Art is a mannered & cold thing.
In a quiet nudist dream, marks of apropos.
But white ripostes, not art, come to me at noon.
I woke from a dream with the word “pledge” on my tongue.
A whole day recognizes the day. A picture organizes itself in the same way.
A pox on the family- less.
Radiant therapy, my foot!
Mine is a wisdom that limps.
Imagination is foolish. Mine hops like a rabbit.
I suck my finger after tea like a pasha in his robe.
The mind practicing a strange, white cloud.
Where the horizon lifts, a girl’s skirt also. Motions on the edge of sleep. Fluttering eyelids in the place between.
I’d walk a mile in a canary blue bathing suit just to get a Coke for you.
Your head resides in the constellations, Mary-blue. All is sublimation with you.
Dreams of a houseboat, a stolen letter, a manuscript in a puddle.
Failures surround us, Joseph. Sol is their sign.
But I am a selfish woman.
Maybe simply because the air is fair, my eye is not.
The smell of the lindens in spring.
Mind’s a warble but by no stretch a bird.
Then again as needles go, still a book, the full.
I walk with a library at my ear.
A peach cream soda fountain pleasure.
& the brittle girls on Flatbush Ave. & the boys with holes in their heads.
The galleries are made for fashion. Nothing I make is.
Only Imagination counts.
I pretend I understand the sky.
& when I bleed the world goes brown. It looks like something in my dirty pictures.
Now in the water perhaps a little floating vellum sheet.
Very little as the mind goes holds.
I’m both spry & limping, beautiful under my umbrella.
Sol has big ears.
Blake saw angels in the trees.
Me, I’d sit in the snow, cold as a rabbit.
Words make me itch.
A picture is a ripeness.
So much is asleep in the kitchen & the bank.
When I slip in the mud the sky opens up.
Legs twitch in glue, print. We are nuns of it, none of it, a priestess & a bird at heart.
In a sum of signs my head, rocking.
This is made of nerves.
I’m green the wind sd to a Studebaker.
Today I wrote my nose into place.
Everything makes figure.
My pictures have no shadows.
Now whose air is whose, Whose hair whose?
Listen: five times five bells ring.
Glue was made from rabbit-skin.
You’re always a wandering possibility.
The number 18: a fat woman beside an elegant man.
The “dust bunnies” are in my head, not under my bed.
I may not be thinking of me now.
Nobody makes potato latkes / like I make potato latkes.
I travel when I do by wind.
The day bends gently over fountains.
Shaping is sidereal & unaccomplished.
I make hat, toe, eye, belly.
If the house dream the mind falls, aware & a horse.
My thighs hum when I work.
I remain in practically all things a beginner.
There’s always something more to paste in.
A bottle cap is a summons.
I tune myself toward dying.
Art go ding in my tired room.
Green as the color of a shoe in the grass.
Burdens mesmerize me.
As I age I see more.
The honeybee is out today.
The mind is a toe.
I make & unmake figures as a pageantry I see.
Gobblers Knob Club is the Club for me.
In lateness is sourness.
The Indictments: a broken eye.
Art is mesmerism.
I can only make a word stick with glue.
My book is a running bet with time. My resources are staked on it.
Lulu snores, Lulu snores. Ha ha Lulu snores.
Pictures are Emblems.
In Queens I know how the grit Sits & who I love & all my dead.
My heart is what is weakest in me.
The world is very far. My eyes are not.
Feet to the ground—What’s found.
I brought a seasoned goat to the bath mat.
I follow a line that isn’t mine.
Stem the head on its shaking course.
Spots of color on the image: stars upon its body.
An unclear heart laughs.
My mind is wrong. The little not enough.
I have invited an owl into my barn.
Sol is a black sun.
Demesne of green stays brightest Queens.
The head is a wheel.
My gift is fear.
What is ripe is also weak.
I have a zoo in my mind.
Every animal dances.
When the racket halts my heart beats again.
In the house my head swerves.
Burnt studious sweet wondering.
The carriage too (my typewriter) goes thru the lagoon.
The moon’s rancid tonight, like my foot.
Dust is stars in turmoil.
It is all a cobble-ment.
It’s the windows are white every even day. What we manage is what is.
Whatever has a wheel / is real.
Sol is not the sun.
My name is magnified at the margin of the page.
I was given the word Rue, Ruah, Ruth, Wroth. In the desert I carry a parasol like a wheel.
Every scrap is drawn to every picture.
Art has a hole in it the size of Queens.
A picture always wants to be something else.
Time’s my only matter.
My dreams have a rope-ish quality.
Not even at the market the right colors or smell.
What I determine is not what is. Even the sky is frugal.
I have no imagination for what is.
I am always a little visible behind my mask.
Teeny scares me.
I’m naïve in my navy pants.
The small thing sings. Hummingbird matter. (An envelope in the air.)
What you mark is soon.
The stain is beautiful, beyond any order.
Thought wields a siphon.
I love the possibility I am still possible.
The page is operatic.
Beyond what I am is what I wld make.
A picture is always a book.
Morning rain is happy mind.
The girl sings a new ding.
I’m a written thing.
Duct tape the dumb mind.
Even the stars in my sleep empty.
A trembling animal at the edge of thought.
We fold up lost men in our wings, our arms’ robes.
My art is a damaged thing, made of damaged things.
Let complaint rise into beauty: a curmudgeon’s bell.
I will not hope a lawn foursquare in the noon & ripe with mules in the distance.
Genius never arrives.
I hear how the distance is.
Patch the word with tape.
Birds elope in my hair.
Fake fur attracts the gapers of Ithaca.
A banana is not a door wedge.
Melancholy inspires form. Depression empties it.
I write my life. I make me up.
Blake drew his brother Robert with a star at his foot.
Roussel had one stuck to his forehead.
The bachelor is light; the maid heavy.
Unrequited affection is ugly.
What the sky can’t say the stone is.
There is sun in my preserves. It lights up every jar.
I am every bit a towel.
What is green is always first.
Sol is an “Oont” (Mole).
“Goop Joe,” of the “Loyal Order of Moose,” is the man for me.
Time opens fountains in every thing.
A slug in the bath is worse than two in the hand.
The sky leaked saffron, the picture was wet.
Half my moves are moves to cancel.
Saul has a shoe like art has time. Both are muddy.
Collage is nerve art.
Here’s a lark in the bedroom.
& the outsize name of animal.
Gentle dogs prowl beside their friends the fleas.
In my bag was a horse.
Shall I wear a chair I sd.
If I honk, standing center, with Sol & my hares around me, will anybody notice?
I climb memory of image & make the possible; all one moment.
Imagination, my flounder—
I drip honey-paste, slick fluid. & draw with it. & paste.
In the sweet finalities (by & by) rose & pink holes.
Sky is touch. Green & red.
Still the morning reading the upside down, which is a flower.
What poetry comes out of it goes into.
The eye in matter— Looking at me.
Shower with spiders, sleep with flies.
It is so much to one, & so much to two.
In the hold of myself myself, locked as in a ship hold.
My nose. The rock. A wheel.
My desk’s beautiful & wood, a tree (house) for art.
Banking murders mind.
The rabbits are the stars.
Rigidity accompanies & shapes my end.
I am thinking you are hoping I am not.
I’d run thru town hopeful as a mongoose.
Sometimes the bone is white; more often it is yellow.
Secondary meanings swale, as in a dovecote a cat.
Art begins in admiration.
My biography: a slow moving north into cold.
I am jealous of Henrietta Sontag, Hadley, Ondine, Lauren Bacall, sylphs of all stripes, Emily Dickinson, Mary Moore (of Trenton), Mary Moore’s mother, Marie Taglioni, Marilyn Monroe, Fanny Cerrito, Carolee Schneeman…
I am notating the sky.
What we see—word sees.
Sludge go by, little roam, clouds my noodle in the pot.
The ship & the sea. The sky above the cabin.
Sound dies in a goblet. The man goes away. Awry.
I am sick of sleeping.
What’s in yr mouth, rabbit?
Where’s your ear, now Rome is here?
I see creatures in my urine.
The imagination is luminous, mad & nervous.
I am such vision as white is, a laughing bone in my room.
Let the ants know, this house is not hospitable.
The hand opens time, drawing it.
Distress makes a picture.
I shower with the moths.
All art is collage.
From rough to the sun in a boat “not brilliant.” Going is the only event.
I used to be a bubble.
My mind’s not mine.
When I cry I think.
My navel is between my legs.
Only the healing imagination has animals in it.
Stars sit like stones on my shoulders.
A rabbi is nearly a rabbit.
A mole has long toes.
My tongue a patter, marmalade sky.
The grave’s stink’s on me.
This vehicle is not prescient.
Imagination resides in the rocks.
I am the house I glue in.
My nephew is a nut.
With a sad eyebrow hidden beneath my cape.
The worm & the rabbit & the star.
“Every day your relationship with death changes.”
“You’ve got to be oblivious to other people-the push and pull of other people’s opinions, the way other people measure success. It’s then that you realize you are 100 percent who you are and you have to use that who-you-are 100 percent in order to create great things. And that’s very difficult because everyone wants to be better than they are. You’ve really got to get down on the floor with yourself and get low in order to make great art. I think you’ve just got to accept who you are and do the most unbelievable things.”
“I sometimes feel that I have nothing to say and I want to communicate this.”
“Artists are like everybody else.”
“And I think, you know, I like it, so I can’t understand it, I think if you’re gonna have this stuff going in your ears, you might as well have some stuff going in your eyes.”
“I wanted a shark that’s big enough to eat you, and in a large enough amount of liquid so that you could imagine you were in there with it.”
“There’s always something you missed or something you didn’t notice or somehow you got wrong… I don’t really have a beginning.”
“Architects don’t build their own houses.”
“I always feel like the art’s there and I just see it, so it’s not really a lot of work.”
“I’m more interested in why people are frightened by Jaws and why Jaws was such a hit than saying Spielberg’s my main influence.”
“Sometimes when you’re drunk you can see better.”
“I always liked the fact that you get these totally unacceptable images, but they’re taken by a really expensive photographer, with great light, and in terms of the quality of the photograph it’s a great photograph, but in terms of imagery it’s unacceptable, and I like that contradiction.”
“People say to me that my work’s sensational. And I go, “What’s wrong with sensation? It’s like touching skin.” Sensation is an element of what I do, and why not? It’s not sensational for the sake of being sensational, but it’s sensational art.”
“I don’t think I invented anything. It’s like I just saw it, just because I did it first. The road was there. It was going to happen.”
“It’s good to have a title that’s not just one word. If you’re gonna title it, you might as well try and say something.”
“There’s no possible way you can get what you want.”
“The great thing about painting now is that I’ve gotten to the point where I can forget everything just by doing it. And I never used to be able to do that.”
“I just wanted to find out where the boundaries were. I’ve found out there aren’t any. I wanted to be stopped but no one will stop me.”
“I don’t mind if it falls over… if you break the glass you replace the glass, if the sheep falls out you can always get a new sheep.”
“Warhol said a brilliant thing. He said if anybody slags anything off, make more.”
I would rather be bored alone than with someone else. I roam empty places and eat in deserted restaurants. I do not say “A is better than B” but “I prefer A to B.” I never stop comparing. When I am returning from a trip, the best part is not going through the airport or getting home, but the taxi ride in between: you’re still traveling, but not really. I sing badly, so I don’t sing. I had an idea for a Dream Museum. I do not believe the wisdom of the sages will be lost. I once tried to make a book-museum of vernacular writing, it reproduced handwritten messages from unknown people, classed by type: flyers about lost animals, justifications left on windshields for parking cops to avoid paying the meter, desperate pleas for witnesses, announcements of a change in management, office messages, home messages, messages to oneself. I cannot sleep beside someone who moves around, snores, breathes heavily, or steals the covers. I can sleep with my arms around someone who doesn’t move. I have attempted suicide once, I’ve been tempted four times to attempt it. The distant sound of a lawn mower in summer brings back happy childhood memories. I am bad at throwing. I have read less of the Bible than of Marcel Proust. Roberto Juarroz makes me laugh more than Andy Warhol. Jack Kerouac makes me want to live more than Charles Baudelaire. La Rochefoucauld depresses me less than Bret Easton Ellis. Joe Brainard is less affirmative than Walt Whitman. I know Jacques Roubaud less well than Georges Perec. Gherasim Luca is the most full of despair. I don’t see the connection between Alain Robbe-Grillet and Antonio Tabucchi. When I make lists of names, I dread the ones I forget. From certain angles, tanned and wearing a black shirt, I can find myself handsome. I find myself ugly more often than handsome. I like my voice after a night out or when I have a cold. I am unacquainted with hunger. I was never in the army. I have never pulled a knife on anyone. I have never used a machine gun. I have fired a revolver. I have fired a rifle. I have shot an arrow. I have netted butterflies. I have observed rabbits. I have eaten pheasants. I recognize the scent of a tiger. I have touched the dry head of a tortoise and an elephant’s hard skin. I have caught sight of a herd of wild boar in a forest in Normandy. I ride. I do not explain. I do not excuse. I do not classify. I go fast. I am drawn to the brevity of English, shorter than French. I do not name the people I talk about to someone who doesn’t know them, I use, despite the trouble of it, abstract descriptions like “that friend whose parachute got tangled up with another parachute the time he jumped.” I prefer going to bed to getting up, but I prefer living to dying. I look more closely at old photographs than contemporary ones, they are smaller, and their details are more precise. I have noticed that, on the keypads of Parisian front doors, the 1 wears out the fastest. I’m not ashamed of my family, but I do not invite them to my openings. I have often been in love. I love myself less than I have been loved. I am surprised when someone loves me. I do not consider myself handsome just because a woman thinks so. My intelligence is uneven. My amorous states resemble one another, and those of other people, more than my works resemble one another, or those of other people. I have never shared a bank account. A friend once remarked that I seem glad when guests show up at my house but also when they leave. I do not know how to interrupt an interlocutor who bores me. I have good digestion. I love summer rain. I have trouble understanding why people give stupid presents. Presents make me feel awkward, whether I am the giver or the receiver, unless they are the right ones, which is rare. Although I am self-employed, I observe the weekend. I have never kissed a lover in front of my parents. I do not have a weekend place because I do not like to open and then shut a whole lot of shutters over the course of two days. I have not hugged a male friend tight. I have not seen the dead body of a friend. I have seen the dead bodies of my grandmother and my uncle. I have not kissed a boy. I used to have sex with women my own age, but as I got older they got younger. I do not buy used shoes. I have made love on the roof of the thirtieth floor of a building in Hong Kong. I have made love in the daytime in a public garden in Hong Kong. I have made love in the toilet of the Paris–Lyon TGV. I have made love in front of some friends at the end of a very drunken dinner. I have made love in a staircase on the avenue Georges-Mandel. I have made love to a girl at a party at six in the morning, five minutes after asking, without any preamble, if she wanted to. I have made love standing up, sitting down, lying down, on my knees, stretched out on one side or the other. I have made love to one person at a time, to two, to three, to more. I have smoked hashish and opium, I have done poppers, I have snorted cocaine. I find fresh air more intoxicating than drugs. I smoked my first joint at age fourteen in Segovia, a friend and I had bought some “chocolate” from a guard in the military police, I couldn’t stop laughing and I ate the leaves of an olive tree. I smoked several joints in the bosom of my grammar school, the Collège Stanislas, at the age of fifteen. The girl whom I loved the most left me. At ten I cut my finger in a flour mill. At six I broke my nose getting hit by a car. At fifteen I skinned my hip and -elbow falling off a moped, I had decided to defy the street, riding with no hands, looking backward. I broke my thumb skiing, after flying ten meters and landing on my head, I got up and saw, as in a cartoon, circles of birthday candles turning in the air and then I fainted. I have not made love to the wife of a friend. I do not love the sound of a family on the train. I am uneasy in rooms with small windows. Sometimes I realize that what I’m in the middle of saying is boring, so I just stop talking. Art that unfolds over time gives me less pleasure than art that stops it. Even if it is an odd sort of present, I thank my father and mother for having given me life.
I believe the people who make the world are the ones who do not believe in reality, for example, for centuries, the Christians. There are times in my life when I overuse the phrase “it all sounds pretty complicated.” I wonder how the obese make love. Not wanting to change things does not mean I am conservative, I like for things to change, just not having to do it. I connect easily with women, it takes longer with men. My best male friends have something feminine about them. I ride a motorcycle but I don’t have the “biker spirit.” I am an egoist despite myself, I cannot even conceive of being altruistic. Until the age of twelve I thought I was gifted with the power to shape the future, but this power was a crushing burden, it manifested itself in the form of threats, I had to take just so many steps before I got to the end of the sidewalk or else my parents would die in a car accident, I had to close the door thinking of some favorable outcome, for example passing a test, or else I’d fail, I had to turn off the light not thinking about my mother getting raped, or that would happen, one day I couldn’t stand having to close the door a hundred times before I could think of something good, or to spend fifteen minutes turning off the light the right way, I decided enough was enough, the world could fall apart, I didn’t want to spend my life saving other people, that night I went to bed sure the next day would bring the apocalypse, nothing happened, I was relieved but a little bit disappointed to discover I had no power.
Dropped toddlers, attempted drownings, juvenile promiscuity, road trips, and inappropriate therapy sessions compose the multi-voiced family portrait in Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake. Yoga stalkers, guns and gold, babies with iron stomachs, drunkards with t-shirt cannons, and warlocks are the stuff of Do Not Touch Me Not Now Not Ever. Dominatrixes and fetishists, face paint and goo, fierce parental love and perverse longings cohabitate in Evan's House and the Other Boys Who Live There Leukemia, meteorites, Wal-Mart, bocce ball, Charlie Brown's clinical depression, the language of talking crows and of Che Guevara's omelets fill the eggs in How Some People Like Their Eggs. And smallstories about pretty girls who sit quietly and behave themselves (or not) populate the pages of Paper and Tassels.
Her heart swells like someone turned a faucet on. It is enormous. A fast-moving cloud of blackbirds dissipates into the trees. Or are they bats? They’re at the zoo. It is the same as the bowling alley or the skating rink only there are animals. They sky looks like snow. The thirty-year-old woman doesn’t know what the twenty-two-year-old girl was like. She only knows this: the girl spent a lot of time in the mirror but she never saw herself. The boy asks if she wants a Coke, she says she doesn’t, he gets one and she drinks most of it. They watch a couple of rhinos on a mound of dirt, just standing there. It looks boring, she says. It must be boring to be a rhinoceros. He agrees. She says the same thing about the spider monkeys and the elephants and the giraffes and he agrees, but at the manatees he says: you’re boring. They marry, live like old people.
We swept the leaves and piled them high. The pile didn’t block the sun or anything, but it took a half minute to circumnavigate. We used a battery-powered soup blender to reduce the leaves to chips, then granulate, then powder. We added water from the lake and two sacks of cement. Other stuff got mixed in: bugs, hair, dirt, cigarette butts and at least one dead field mouse. We used a shoebox as a mould, slapped in the pulp with a rusted trowel. It took three days for the bricks to dry. Winter at the door, we started laying brick. With a little imagination, the pile that had been leaves started to resemble a leafy yurt, vaguely. Things hadn’t worked out at our previous addresses. There’d been a squat in Camden Town, a flat-share in Berlin and a Christmas on the streets. There’d been a neurotic great aunt on Rhode Island. Don’t know what we were thinking. There was the bivouac in The Adirondacks. We’d liked it there, until the weather changed and some bears moved us on. So we walked south, into Fall. Winter never far behind. We traveled light, apart from carrying our yearbooks, my mother’s cookbook, and the twelve hundred page printout of the family tree. This was stuff we burned to keep us warm. We watched my ancestors rise in the smoke. Comes a time to let go. The paper gone, we spooned to stay warm. The bricks rise with the days. The sky says snow. On a Wednesday, a fat man with square glasses stops by from the Buildings and Planning Authority. He gets out of his car, says “The hell are you kids doing?” His voice is octaves above where he’d probably want it to be. He places his briefcase on a stack of bricks, sits on it and crosses his legs; tries to cross his legs, it doesn’t work and they fall apart. He is too fat to cross anything. His hands haven’t seen each other since he was a lad. But he’s beautiful like a Botero is beautiful. We tell him so, “You’re beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.” We could go on but he waves for us to stop. We quiet down. “So,” he says. He lights a long thin cigarette, blows out the match and drops it at his feet. “Let’s take a look at this baby.”
“Our fathers are correct, Roddy, though neither one knows how right they are. There is a pattern. But it isn’t one of myth or science. I caught a glimpse of it in the air. Something beyond our fathers’ imaginings, a glittering and navigable geometry that covers everything and passes through everything. Cords of light, braces of gold. I learned to make use of them last night. I actually flew, Roddy… And the faster I flew, the brighter the pattern appeared to me, until I realized there were animals with me in the sky, making use of the pattern… Beings who’d recognized the great geometry.”
I’ve tried to come up with a comparable experience to describe what I witnessed…and the only event that comes close to seeing Amon Garrick levitate is seeing my father in his coffin, his body impossibly stiff and painted among the silken folds. The lack of motion in my father’s normally animated face was so unbelievable that my mind attempted an adjustment. I actually saw his brow lift, his lips purse because I knew they must move. Likewise, seeing Amon step off the ground and stand in midair, my mind attempted a correction…I imagined the shadow of his boots had taken on some unknown weight and become part of his foot, that the shadow was, in fact, pushing him off the ground.
When Madame is allowed to return to her museum, which was only partially destroyed by fire, she will make a secret figure in wax that will never be displayed, a copy of herself as she looked in prison, head shaved and without eyeglasses. She deepens the eyeholes until they are caverns, elongates the jaw into a wolflike muzzle. And when she is finished with the monster—while the wax is still warm—she pounds her fist against the thing, weeping and wishing more than anything else that she had taught the queen to make the foolish dolls for her children.
People remember the day we met as the day frogs and other small amphibians, also squirrels, rats, and at least one mutt—a mongrel pup called Spitz—fell from the sky. When I saw the racoon hit you in the head I pulled over and rolled down the window. I don’t normally stop for hitch-hikers, you can never be sure. “You okay?” I called, and held up a questioning thumb. In hindsight, okay, this was dumb. You were clutching a tree in a storm and a racoon had just hit you in the head. The forecast had promised rain, increasing in the afternoon, maybe a little snow on high ground, but nothing like this. The twister had sucked up the smaller life-forms of the region, spat them out all over, and moved on. And how. It moved across the horizon like a coked-up Cohiba on a mission. But here, the worst was over. A toad splayed across the windscreen, dead. The worst was mostly over. The racoon slipped into a corn field.
Once you realize that your writing isn't as important as some other people's writing, you won't kick yourself anymore. And you'll quit distancing yourself and craving "alone time". You'll read more, too, I wager. Once in a while get up in the midst of the crowd and tell them all what you think of them, or explode against the unfairness you've encountered, to which they all seem blind, and were they to take off their blinders or quit acquiescing to the unfairness, that unfairness would be cut down and compensated. I guarantee that performing this act, with regularity but not in excess, will rid you of nervous habits forever. A particularly good antidote for nail & finger biting.
Kirk Pinho is made in Kirk Pinho’s image. On the fifth & sixth days, he created the chameleon & its stereoscopic vision. He told the dinosaurs to piss off. He created the porous ribs, the thorax, the anterior, the bicuspid valve of the muscle Kirk Pinho once called the heart. Kirk Pinho is a good substitute for angioplasty. His heart is wide for you like a nail bomb. His heart is wide for you like a nail bomb. His heart is wide for you like a nail bomb. His heart is wide for you like a nail bomb. His heart is wide for you like a nail bomb. His heart is wide for you like a nail bomb. His heart is wide for you like a nail bomb. His heart is wide for you like a nail bomb. He would love to shove his tongue between the gaps in your teeth. He would love to pull your pants down to your knees & fuck you in an alley, syncopated to a soundtrack of cats yowling. The carrion stuck to their gums. He would love to have the memory of math. He would love to be the thumbprint of himself on a loaded semiautomatic. He would love to snort coke from the stretch marks on your stomach, baby. He would love to see how much light the stars can rain. Kirk Pinho speaks for no one but himself. He would love you in an alley. He would love you like artillery. He would create you, & you would create him back.
A room is 10 x 10. The space seems small, relatively, once there is a bed and a table and things like clothing and stuffed animals and books and people and other things that you put inside of a room to make it seem as if you are alive; you are a person that lives; you are a person that lives in that space. If you laid some people down on the floor, you could not lay multiple people, not even two people, along each wall, unless they were excessively short, unless they were each shorter than five feet tall, unless they curled their knees up and scrunched themselves down to sizes that they are usually not. These people you laid down against the walls, they could not stretch out, the eight of them. This is how you know that a room that is 10 x 10 is a small room, relatively. It is a small room until something gets lost, like a key, or like a note, or like a cellular phone, and then the object you lost, which never seemed particularly small, even if you did have to occasionally dig in your pocket or your purse for it, even if it did not always present itself immediately from a space, this object like the phone or like the key, it becomes smaller, and the room becomes larger, and you wonder how it is that you never noticed how large the space is, relatively, to the other things, to the things that are not people, to these things that you could lay end to end against the walls, in multiples greater than two. These things, like hamsters and bunny rabbits and cats and children, these things could be laid end to end without bending knees, and these things could get lost inside of a room, in a way like a key or note or a phone, in a way that a person never could. And the size of a room, which can expand or contract, relative to the situation, even though this expansion and contraction is a psychological effect, and not a physiological effect of the elasticity of the walls, this expansion and contraction of space is what we compare to a vagina, when we talk about lost things and the vagaries of space, although the things we talk about losing in a vagina are not keys or cell phones or children, are instead tampons and condoms, although those different types of things, I suppose, are not exclusive to those spaces. We have lost condoms in rooms and I'm sure someone I know has lost a key in a vagina, even if I have not heard the story of it yet. What we are surprised by, when we discuss it, is the relative space of the vagina, and the similarities of experience, and the realization that a thing can, in fact, be lost inside of a vagina, a thing that was deliberately placed there for a specific function can be lost, and the confusion and disease that is associated with an object being lost inside of a body, and that yes, this is a space that can expand and can create room roughly the size of a newborn but, Really? I have lost an object? Has it disappeared? To what extent can I use my fingernails as a grappling hook? How many places can a condom hide inside of a vagina? How much can a tampon actually condense if I am drunk and forget that it's there and have sex anyway? Will I have to go to a hospital if I cannot find the object? How long do I wait until I visit the hospital, and then, there it is, between the clutching talons of fingernail, and using the fingernails like that hurts a little bit, sure, but it is so much better than a visit to the hospital, and so you shout from behind the closed bathroom door "I've found it! I feel like Indiana Jones!" and it's funny in a way that a lost key in a bedroom is never ever funny, and you pretend that you are not bewildered, although you are bewildered by it for the rest of the day, and when you finally mention it to a girlfriend a few days later, she expresses a similar story with a similar sense of bewilderment, and on and on and on until you all wonder why you are so bewildered by something that happens so often.
What you have heard is true: there is nothing left here but salamanders and movement. There is the sight of wind if you could see wind, if you could see it sprawling out from our backs like tails, like turning your head too fast, like too much perfume. Above the cats and above the library and above the folly is an airplane spewing smoke as it crashes: an airplane with a banner trailing its body. It is telling you and I to eat something, it is telling us to call someone. All of the letters and numbers are reversed: here is an eight, here is a zero, here is a child's S curled like a lizard, unraveled like a snake. I am watching you watch the water roll in and it is beautiful—you with the beginnings of a freckle and me with beginnings of little to be proud of, of sand not yet made into castles, places to live, a gazebo, an elsewhere. In the airplane is a man who knows nothing about these things—a man who sees horizons from anywhere but through glass: a plastic tree, a hollowed rock. Here is where we put the water in. In the airplane are lights. We know this. We know this but choose not to look at what is left—there is something here; there is something here, too. We choose not to leave. We imagine being in a body inside of an airplane inside of a body—his body perhaps, watching his blood drift towards us, white and red cells, walls of stomach, a kidney here, romance and remembrance of the inside of eyes, what has been seen. We see things floating like orphans, like our brain reaching out to touch us, like an impossible wall. What you have heard is true: this happens when staring at too much blue or too much white or too much you—it all dances—snakes and liars, centipedes and rotting logs, hellbenders from torrents and sirens, viruses, maybe, with their fat heads and little legs speeding slowly like a child, like us when we were children, looking up at the sky like a lost limb at night or like me and you on an evening where we went east to just sit, nothing left but sitting—not moving—our blood the temperature of water: Asiatic and lungless. What you have heard is true: we do not follow the lights. I asked what we are looking for. I asked what we are looking for and you said nothing. Your body is leaving you. There is a chip there, there is a vessel—there is something inside of you that causes you to take your hair out, piece by piece, to leave patterns on your scalp, to pluck your eyebrows from out of your face, to take your eyelashes and hold them between your freckled fingers and blow them out into the river that has become the sea, to make a wish you say, you tell me to make a wish, make a wish, you say, make a wish you say again, make a wish for each punctuation mark, each comma, apostrophe, pause, possession, to make a wish because they always grow back—these pieces of self lost in the red clay that is left, that we cannot make wishes while they are still attached to our bodies, that we must speed up, we must double our wishes, we must double our options. I wish I could say a part of you floated in the air towards the propeller of something, a ceiling fan moving forward. I wish I could tell you these things, I wish what you have heard is true, that you are beautiful bald, that there are reasons for anything beyond living, that each piece of hair is actually something to hold onto after it has become detached from what you are and what is left. There is nothing here but rocks, you say, and things couldn't be further from the truth—here is a pulse, here is a piece of glass. They will make statues of us from these rocks, I say. Our ears will be pressed to the ground. Our mouths will be open.
How our temple brightens these young hills. We of Saxon strain. We of the Lord. We learn of heathens only when gunfire clatters the house. Out our window homes are burning in the snow. Our neighbor runs into the woods grabbing his organs in. The snow is loud with fire. They are so many strong even our dogs do not rise up. Still I wait on the Lord’s will in the kitchen with my child and my knife. Still the heathens shoot through the glass through my arm. I get dark with hate and pain. They come to us. They walk us gory through the rocks and ice. They walk most of us dead. They leave us in drifts where we drop. Still the angels feel thick around us in the half-light. My child fouls herself astride the pinto. She growls at me. The smell of us. Still I trust the Lord might set His hand to heal my wound. What they call their village but a strew of twigs. What they call their homes but errata. The swollen hole in me that leaches white. They guard us in a muddy hut. Still our nights and days full of the peace of the Lord. Overnight my child expires in the filth without a noise. Still the Lord says not to weep but keep an eye to His relief. Still the Lord says justice is mine. The pale horse. They wrap my bluing arm in oaken leaves. They grouse around their fire. They smoke a weed. I watch the hills for English steeds. I want their heads to break. I want the snow to dark. I want the Lord.
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The revolution is coming, Rhys says so, and it’ll be just like we always dreamed: blood, streets. First day in Yangon, time- lagged and tongue-tied from my trip across the Atlantic. “Things will be changing soon,” Rhys says. “The situation is not stable.” His accent is hard to figure. The words rise liquid from his quivering paunch. “What part of Australia is he from?” I ask an Aussie. “The drunk part,” the Aussie says. So the boss comes to work legless every day and talks revolution, though no one ever says revolution, they say, “situation” and “the lady” and “change,” eyebrows hovering around the hairline. It’s very subtle. Subtlety is Rhys’s thing, really. When one of his prostitutes arrives at the office he stops looking at porn in his glass cubicle and retreats, sly as a fox, to a concrete-walled conference room. The middle-aged front-office secretary, taught damelike etiquette back when the Brits were in charge, has the girls write Guest in angled script. This is before an American we’ll call The Veteran glides into town, frictionless, swimwear smooshed flat against some biblical literature in his backpack. The Veteran will want to speak to Suu Kyi, which we will know to be impossible, and he will attempt this in the direct manner of children and the insane. He will have a message for her, something about a vision, and we won’t be there to warn him that he’ll die before he gets close. We’re not the vision-having, message-delivering kind, we being me and Chris and Kat, the white-skinned staff Rhys handpicked from our tepid e-mail inquiries. We’ve been in Myanmar a year now and we’ve seen postcard Myanmar, coffee-table-book Myanmar, memoir Myanmar. Brown boys jumping off buffalo backs into clean blue lake, monks all ribboned up in a tight little line along the shore. We got bombed with some wizened, cigar- smoking sages and met those long-necked ladies with rings caterpillared from collarbone to jawline. We’ve seen unblemished beaches and distended bellies, but mostly we see the inside of this office, from which we publish what passes for a newspaper. People read it because what else are they going to read? Everything else is banned. We aren’t banned because before we print a word, the government man, Wey Lin, reads the copy and faxes it back with thick black Xs across paragraphs he finds displeasing. Fluff’s all you can shove through Wey Lin’s filter. I pretend to know something about real estate and cook up a column called “House of the Week.” Half my Burmese colleagues have had family members disappeared. My friend Phyo had her father and brother dragged screaming from their kitchen when she was nine. “The second-floor dining room,” I write, “is perfect for entertaining.”
An unlicensed suicide hotline operator was charged with reckless endangerment. She was accused of encouraging a distraught man to shoot himself, based on the fact that she had hung up on him the moment before he pulled the trigger of his gun. This was only after she had counseled him and encouraged him to live for several hours. In court, the operator explained that she had been seized by an unexpected whim and that she no longer believed in the glimpses of hope that she had offered the man. Furthermore, she felt that is was her responsibility, at that moment, to share with him what she thought was the truth, to validate his desperation. She then felt that continuing to coerce the man from his will would taint the truth that she had spoken, so she hung up and, a moment later, the man (a divorced attorney) pulled the trigger of his pistol held at such an angle as to destroy his brain and the back of his skull. The fellow hotline operators who sat in the call center that afternoon testified that their unlicensed colleague simply set the phone down and walked out of the center, without saying a word. The members of the jury who heard the case all agreed that the operator's decision was reprehensible and surely contributed to the man's death. Yet, when asked by the judge, their foreman pronounced a decision of 'not guilty.' They could not find a way to understand her moral reprehensibility as criminal. The hotline that the operator worked for had the highest success rate in the city for aiding callers, despite its dubious licensing and hiring practices.
Those two dogs are going to kill each other and no one is going to see it. It's why there's a carnival in the center of the city. No one likes animal violence and everyone likes cotton candy. There's a Tilt-A-Whirl and a Gravitron. We're all holding hands and winning big stuffed pandas for each other. Who wants to microwave a corn dog and eat it in front of a dog fight? Here is where it's bright and from the Ferris wheel we can see our whole city. There are our houses, we say as we rest our sticky fingers in each others' belt loops and shiver a little in a way that's pleasant, and there, look, Mr. Edison's doing some digging in the garden. Who gardens at night? Where do shivers come from? But we aren't cold because it's a carnival, it's just that the air up here is so unlike the air down on the ground where the dogs are. It's just that all the sounds are whoops and gasps and quick kisses like water hitting our metal seats as it starts to drizzle. The rain's just for us because we're so high up our city council members and sports referees should make all official rulings from where we are. But they're not here, they're in their houses and we're watching as they one by one turn off their lights, so we pass legislation and call holding on each other until we're tired and then we say I love you because there isn't a thing we can think of that we're missing.
Swinging from the dangling spine of God I play with my fantastic breasts in front of my worst enemies & their moms & dads thank you all for coming I’ll be here all day pull open your blinds in the morning I don’t need a day off I feel so incredible in the wind I pee on underage girls my whole naked body an ecstasy node a little bird called me a dick he thought it would save my life it did I throw all my weight until my knees cramp & I let go a long howl long after everyone has left before I dismount into the blackest flowers
Death pole-dances to Nelly Furtado, dimpled hemispheres, rocket nipples, psychedelic light-bath, cinnamon candy lips, Death’s G- strap cuts her vagina, money—crisp laundry—folds over string, Death flips stiletto into crowd, men tongue it or stick in sweaty knuckle, kaboom, kaboom, boom-boom, boom-boom, boom- boom, Death fucks air, air moans, love love love, upside down, nobody firmer, higher, creamier, or slicker, not Vicki nor Bri- anna, amber honey coats her creases, above God I worship her, above riches, Bugatti, I crave only her tight rigid clasp, locked woman rider, she’s not ocean, begonia, forest, nor tide but heavy intestine, muscle, saliva, and lash, flexed ridges, immortality’s crack hit, addicted addicted addicted addicted, none else do I crave, I am desiccation, clavicle, cracked glue without her, scalp-fleck on sofa, cat hair, styptic stick, bathroom cleaning implement without her wet slurp slip baby-breath, Death my cataleptic acrobat who rope- dangles from my teeth to hers, naked, spinning to primitive drum, I eat, I bliss, I suck, I flip, I gaze, I drown, I dance, I slash, she loves me afresh deck after deck, wild vanilla scent, Pantene Blonde Expressions, acrid jungle musk, and then with kidneys or lymph or brain she gets down to business.
My wife’s mouth and teeth remind me of mouth and teeth of hyena, boar, hammerhead, rat, porcupine, bat, aardvark, also beetle, mantis, and water bug mandibles; reminiscent of chimpanzee, snapping turtle, wildebeest, steenbok, skunk, pigeon, and frog is her neck; hands and arms mirror appendages of starfish, Rottweiler, sea urchin, meerkat, grizzly, octopus, brown recluse; breasts recall images of hog, opossum, humpback whale, dromedary, elephant, titmouse, sloth, teats mammaries nipples heft; hair mi- mics hair of loris, tamarind, mountain beaver, tarantula, bird of paradise, blow fly, dik-dik, armadillo, warming, attracting, protecting, marking; her hips, those curvaceous globes, those dune-smooth hills have no truck with donkey-baboon-capybara-woodchuck-kangaroo hips and the hippopotamus’s swaying ponderously, poundingly, playfully, aromatically across fields of pods and crushed weeds pungent as paradise-ground cumin, cardamom, peppercorn, nutmeg in nature’s natural black pumice stone mortar & pestle; oh her genitals one wants to com- pare with apricot, mango, fig, red plum but these mindless rotters pale beside genitalia of the buffalo, duiker, polecat, wild ass, pronghorn, tapir, and common dog, prominent, glorious, folded, pulchritudinous; her ass— incomparable—but let’s whirl, scorpion, mayfly, walking stick, mud dauber, red ant, blue duck, greater flamingo, manta ray, Sumatran rhinoceroses, emperor penguin; my love’s taut, veined-wrapped, anticipatory ankles, who but I dare analogize, blue-footed booby, nanny goat, pileated woodpecker, reticulated giraffe, Komodo dragon, hundred-booted centipede, funnel weaver, American quarter horse, frog, cricket, tick, and the Cir- cumducta satyr, irresistible, erotic, narcotizing; and I being sucker of toes, toe connoisseur polished or nude, dominant middle, excruciatingly stepped, stub- by or slender must only mention thick black mud squeezed upward between downward trudging over- burdened yak, suck and squish, beads tearing off and splatting, sheet rising between toes, licking hooves, folding back into sludge slowly, torpidly, a languid slop as she plods in the putty river; finally, that cumulative coordination of the whole: posture, my love’s com- pilation of Athenian bones floating in muscle, anchored in grace, with the spine-centered balance of ballerina, my love’s clavicle, shoulders, and wishbone, supple but erect, thumbs forward, unparalleled yogi master quality of comfort with self and bilateral symmetry, like amoeba, paramecium, nucleotide, protozoa, sea jelly, wooly caterpillar, backward propelling prawn, vole, lemming, fat tailed lemur; all these she, and Galapagos tortoise, great frigate bird; she lumbers in beauty like the Polar bear, rump ascendant, snout downward, fountain pen quills, udders jolting, slash- ing blubber, cracking skulls, rearing occasionally on massive pads to crimson berries, dabbing at icy table with God-forged claws nectar, blood, or gravies.
Maybe I need my own medicine pouch. Let’s not idolize other people’s misery. Even if I give up art I’m still nightblooming. Rent a room in the pleasure zone & read unhealthy mysteries possessed by holes. Everyone lives jacked in the fleshless realm. Feed some crocodiles young mutated boys. Renew a long lost relationship with sensual abandon. My house wallpapered in werewolf fur. To throw money away on a ten piece orchestra. The erotic melancholy of what the fuck was I thinking. Maybe one day I’ll join a zombie cult. Trumpet is my instrument. I’ll demonstrate my total celebration of everything.
God, if you exist you owe it all to me. Alphabetically living devoid of breath. Not all fruit trees hate you just this one. Do not be so moved by everything. The latter designs the winds tuned to a harmonica unrehearsed. I had a baby once but I also had a cucumber. Perhaps the sum of damaged engenderment. The universe drugs me in its calculated orbit to rebuff my neural galactic core. The fuck you going to do? Bury me? Sunday morning, I can’t ignore the sun. Wherever I stand on the sidewalk, I melt. Do not joke that you are ugly because you are not ugly.
I returned, and saw that the garden Had not moved from me but that some illness Of the garden carried it away From me regardless.
Lance always had an open sore. Grew up with horse farming and sugar diabetes. Strict and you better measure up. From what others have said or would have said, a huge stupid ego was drafted into service. One of the most over used words in horse training and traveling is Goddamn—this indicates it was not an experiment shaped like a cowboy. It says it was meant to be a trip to be forgotten in our lifetime. amateurballetsilliness. jonna tanja mia me and a dozen other stuffed panties. we lift our legs all the way to the ceiling. heaven is ours and we are its glowing stars. use the pole for all kinds of stuff: PENETRATION. many here seem incredibly relationship-scared. jonna hasn’t had a relationship (has never even dated) since the end of the millennium. tanja has long been a divorced single mom. mia is anemic&anorexic (in addition she’s on medication right now which causes a number of side effects such as incredibly strong B.O….). in other words: WATCH OUT! these are fragile ballet dancers. bend our backs apart&intopieces! twist and tear our legs apart! partner oh partner! russian partner swedish or turk. SCREAM. leotardtight stiff-necked garden rakes. unfucked against their wills. soon retired from the hobby classes at the ballet academy. ugly distorted and cramped by stunted shrivelled desire. the studio is full of girls women and ladies of all kinds of tight body types (most of the bodies are very nice because most of them train several times a week (I train four days)). you can just come here and have your pick and wreck! plus two faggots. bonus. look at her the zealous and spazzy one. in the middle of the floor. work it baby work it HARD push it real good. totally sweaty and panting. LIDIJA is her name but her dear mother and father call her lila or the little cat or mommy’s son or my gold or my eyes or our everything. when she has been a nice obedient overachiever. lidijas parents worship their daughter. when she has been nice obedient and good. that’s why lidija always works as hard as she can to behave nice and proper. toward all all all. unfortunately only parents teachers and sadists are attracted to such behavior. hardly intellectual equal men who find lidija old-fashioned and corny. but that’s irrelevant. for even lidija’s emotional life is like her parents’ totally intra-family-based that is to say totally focused on her parents – from habit laziness cowardice loyalty pathology… - you can choose. but what i want to get at is: LIDIJA WANTS COCK! LIDIJA WILL GO CRAZY IF SHE DOESN’T GET ANY COCK NOW! she just can’t deal any longer! it’s been far too long! after velja she chose to be celibate (lidija even wanted to – i swear – join a convent but her parents advised her not to because they want grandchildren to carry on the family genes and serbian heritage in the diaspora) but over the years she has gotten into what is often called a VICIOUS CYCLE. and now she can’t like break free. it’s not easy for lidija to again get close to cock. as if it ever was. lidija gets close to mom dada book and ballet pole but there it stops. lidija has always been terrible bad at cock and now it’s worse than ever. as you know lidija is big in words small in the world. as you know lidija is all talk and no action. as you know lidija is a reflective-head and reflective language. after the velja dis lidija decided that she would write in this life not fuck. the more lidija writes the less she fucks. since she now basically writes and reads all day and night she doesn’t fuck at all. the more lidija writes and reads the more all the cocks around her wither. when lidija fastens her gaze on a cock to analyze abstract criticize the cock slackens in front of her cunt. pulls away from her. at those moments when lidija takes a break from literary creation she takes ballet classes with the other well-behaved girls. but even there she is incapable of taking the step from thought to action (at least not attractive action). this results in a failed pirouette a couple of unextended leaps manyconfused questions (but she does as well as she can!) then quickly back to mamma book and pen. on the subway she hides behind the culture section of the daily papers. sometimes she finds in those pages some historical female author who also lived without cock and that she can imagine identifying with while the subway rushes along the red line and lidija’s heart beats home sweet home! snowed-in asocial anal hole which socially winks through its asocial anal hole. hey hey do you want me? pretends that she prefers body-dancing to body-fucking. pretends that most of all she prefers body-writing. kind of like this: i prefer to write my body my sex my sexuality my feminity instead of becoming your victim. so says lidija the lying or the truthful (she doesn’t know herself anymore– she’s said it so much) and slams the door in the face of the small group of brave but dorky admirers that don’t care about her and care even less about actually knocking on her door. lidija in her room: writes reads masturbates writes reads masturbares writes read masturbates until mom comes in and says it’s dinner bed or CATASTROPHE! lidija hopes that people think she’s nice obedient and good who wildly confesses her PROBLEMATIC FEMALE SEXUALITY. lidija complicates it a little extra so that nobody will think that she’s sexually banal. lidija cannot possibly believe that one writes better about sex when one isn’t actually having sex. lidija wants people to love her love her love her. lidija wants her male readers to be blinded by her sexual complexity and immediately want to have sex with her (contact her about this matter). lidija is pretty moronic but pretty good at fucking when she finally gets going. so: let us clear this up once and for all: in first place is body-writing in second place is body-dancing and only in third place is body-fucking why i never get around to this third and most important task that is people’s primary goal and meaning in life: REPRODUCTION OR (in modern and secularized societies like Sweden) SEXUAL PLEASURE. that’s my problem man. i get along so damned well with myself and feel totally GREAT by myself. i don’t need anybody to satisfy me sexually. learned to sublimate my drives as soon as i hit puberty. sad but a pretty good arrangement actually. but still: i’m constantly sort of leaking. in ballet in literature on you who happens to be sitting next to me. so
now i’m going to go and eat some sauerkraut to cure yeast infection (my gynecologist says that it often affects over-ambitious young women but can quickly disappear as soon as you get into a good relationship start to feel safe and feel that you don’t have to achieve so much – i say: i prefer to achieve a lot and have yeast infections than have a man and not achieve)
then go clean the toilet which i’ve promised my mom (i am way too lazy when it comes to household chores – have to improve! elsa in my class says that there’s not neccessarily anything wrong with someone living with their parents when they’re this old – as long as you don’t act like a baby – i agree)
then sleep all night with a newly procured retainer (test: will it remain in all night or will it fall out of my mouth? they didn’t make it deep enough even the dentist admitted that so now i have to go back with it if it doesn’t fit - fuck)
and tomorrow: dance light-pink ballet-panties skin-colored nylon tights a little purple mini top that honestly speaking makes my breasts too pointy! (have to ask mom)
COWARD&BABYBUTTCOWARD&BABYBUTTCOWARD&BABYBUTTCOWARD
can someone please tell me why i repeat myself so often
kind of tell the same story about myself over and over again
nail myself down in the story that i’m writing about myself
the agreement was to break free from this narrative from all this create another
create another story from another life
the agreement was to do everything in my power to as soon as possible
GETCOCK&FUCK
yes
yes
yes
i simply say this: and i’ll stick to it
over my dead body
over my dead body
over my dead body
i’ll fuck before the winter’s out
Appearances do not deceive if there are enough of them.
The Slow Book, written by an anonymous author at the dawn of literacy, on a minor planet (otherwise notable only as the source of that exceptionally hardy, not very tasty grain called “shef” sowed on hostile planets as an early step to colonization), and encoded into a series of punctures on a strip of copper coiled inside a clever device, something between a player piano and an old-fashioned film projector, is being released into print, as was the author’s intention, at a rate of one word per century (local time). Each word is, across the Forty Galaxies, agreed to be uncannily apt for the century in which it appears—even “of,” in a century during which the highest value was attached to fidelity, whether to ideals, worlds, or romantic love; even “the,” which governed two centuries, one extraordinarily materialistic, during which advances in propulsion and navigation accelerated the exchange of exceptional objects between the remotest planets of the Forty, and one in which the central concern, both of philosophers and the common man, was whether, in an age of rapidly proliferating hypothetical worlds, anyone or anything concretely existed at all. Even those words published long before interstellar contact can be seen in retrospect to have transgalactic pertinence. As a result, attempts to abstract the machine from its publishers, Hobson & Hui, in order to “predict the future” for insight or gain by “fast- forwarding” the copper strip have been many and ingenious. While, in centuries of skepticism (“maybe”), or of unrest (“go”) the book has been nearly forgotten, in others it seems to haunt every thought, every deed, despite the fact that the subject of The Slow Book is still unclear. So far only a few sentences exist in print; everyone knows them, can quote them, offer the standard exegeses and assorted heresies; yet certainties are the stuff of adolescence; mature readers are forced to acknowledge that these sentences are probably only a preamble to the main argument. They contain no proper nouns, nor can we identify any definite theme. There is even disagreement about their tone, whether coolly ironic, as some insist, or ardent. The appearance of an unusual grammatical case, sometimes called the future pluperfect continuous, used to describe events that at some future point will have always been true (but are not yet)—hitherto known to appear only in the synthetic dogmas of the Thanatographical Society, and in certain highly circumscribed religious contexts—has suggested to some scholars that the Slow Book was originally intended for ritual use, but the proximity of the usage to a term designating a small hand plow that, as Pott and Mielcke have convincingly shown, would have borne a distinctly obscene double meaning in its culture of origin in the author’s time, argues otherwise. It is likewise unclear whether the situation that seems to be—with teasing incompleteness—sketched out in these few lines is intended as an illustration of general principles, a case study, a dramatic scene, or an extended metaphor. In short, we have no idea what The Slow Book is about. In our own time, we believe that it is almost certainly a work of fiction, but that may be because we live in the century of “if”. In each age, perhaps, we see the book we most need to read. Some have dared to suggest that the metal strip is blank until, with millennial fanfare, it advances into its new position, that no ur-text exists, that the book itself is brought into being—written—by our need. But that is exactly the sort of thing we would believe, in 7645.
Ill, my old ultimate prelude died monitoring the conditions climactic of the regular reports of rasping obscurantist. My hand systematically sued one for abandon, oh now, deciding, did child’s metrics furor cities? Ill, for oh, sit, rove, Ava, kneel, belle, muscle diurnal, discard riches, sully summit of cumulous deed, terror much chosen. I’ll ferry error a form, die trembling Rove sciatic, con. I mirror spin of invention, verse internally. Much did vex machines, per cock’s ire eh? Pain, oh forte, scandal quashed, circle on day, vain lad, discarded. I rag at seemly day’s postal salt, television on pain for the pity’s fortune quest, stand, I test stones, insecure day, canny she, above, I want to tell all to dear father, no rescue of sentries null mad, they don’t know. I recognize a lore, salty and canny, a second lore, false she, sap private cheat divan of day, scattered near man, oeuvre tell of abattoir.
Cone lapidary, advance at technology, die surveilling organza Amy, disposition era daffy seal rhyme and air concentrate easily conditions equally match each. A valve simper latent as Zion defer oh sir, service I own it, you team eco, cozy hole fate. Menstrual pearl, lustrous, avenue, lamb ambient Con Edison, untold scalp ochre institute, a basis I’m dispersing, flapping 53 contents you, in one day due. Element I obviate, lay me out tense venue, attract down fame glitch and even camp in pearl vacancy. Una Bomber explodes prop re: debt. Roll, lure auto. A trace, verso legacy, fiat perceptual regent in no rumor dell of radiation. She vagabond of base soil tear reign. Oil pad, real lag Ida, dais serve a valley new, Voila! A form ad if u want go dally specie. Eat to retro visor. Glee alter none, season of girl at al-anon, season accord deed null: la.
Awry facial camp egg Io, Bambini, Hannah Montana, latent. Ill paid reenter atoll eh? Ha! Choose sol Alamo pod, Ella port acerbic, rabbi, rhyme us to den, troll and go: “Hubris own no distant stars, Aloha.” Grid ought to. Glee all tree, I’m bronze, see? That is so … no said you, tin tore no alto vole, da picnic. Doll, attend a sight, sent evil paid, real minotaur ire, a dare laser, a lame mag, gore, hag agit type pug, nil fret tell lope, I, you, piccolo ham, must trot, oil, ditto media in dire ease, own dilettante. Llama dress, idol tail cap, parody page liar, lo, hap pest a tool? Or has a pellet opera pried a vain dial-up portal? I’ll pay dross entity, old agitated red, a petty deal, a mad rescue, shit, dally tend a coup and owes a court. Yodel cape load erratically: “Habit, sewn on, do parley right, man on the front, a bombing ill made, rehash his post. Per chain on voice, he assault in anxious lore?” Oh, vogue lie Amos, appear cozy face, even a Latin day. Cease state, one attack—new, clear—haggard toil paid wreck cool parole has Nuevo to sue the loon (no strange effete, he). I commence to a career in circular senses, a sauce tap, poised, and venal too. Imam and Sinatra: a tie. Kneel, late tender.
Air rivet owl-cam Peggy, Oh, Bambi, knee high anno, mount a toll, a ten dial pad, drain trait, toe he had chewed, so lay lamp yodel, airport, cerebral rim, ass to dent royal lung: “Ohio biz own Otis to rare solar grid, ate tog.” Loyal tree, I’m bronchi at tizzy, so no sedate intern owl, table the picnic. Dally, tend a sensitive ale quadrille, amen. Torso, I rider, eel laser llama gore I have agitated, impugned, ill frat, ill low pupil, cloy old ham ostrich, ditto media indirection, daily tent de la monde, dress aisle totally a cappella, diaper Anglo has sap pellits to prop, period avante, I all but portray. I’ll pay drowse in titular age, day pied, daily mad rescue, it’s too dally latent, aqua-tint does , eh, accord ode eel cap, pull oh terror, hated : “Hobbit is on dip, our lard inane on the front, I’ve a mean beany.”
Lamarckian hare is posted: “Perch, eh? No voice has colt in ranch lore? Oh, vague lame super coze face, even melting.” “Cease state, young tack on nucleus,” hatred, that oil-paired. Quell parole, hand a vote or sue, do Louis a strained effete. Hack a com, mince a core, rare encircle, olose and sass, to poison even you too. Iambic sonar entreaty, kneel ten day.
Simper, graze, y’all telescope yo’ harvest, oh, soap: ravish shoot each core revenant in circles low, edifice each, implode vain impasse, itty grand party, delirious, sore, dissolute, distorted.
Seer, young ancient senior, heavy favor in one apartment. I’ll sue apparatchik child, a cussed tick era, rot, to guard a vale scene, die of panic on television. Man on re-use skivvy, a cap irks, a dick is tut to quell a gent. Sis for save ‘em, anon, queer roost giver. Squat ever-late, test is forgiver’s forte Leon. I add one certain punk hose engine, cheater: he has commenced to a preggers. Leap (refer, explode vain doll of Bacchae, ere I cad vane a soul.) Tap Peter. Ha! Toss it to frame. Meant tea, Deus says, statue in his porch, edict sanguine, cartilaginous, hale. Lava too. Lay Viscera daily preggers. Kneel lave and in Noel happy, easy. I’ll understand: debunk her if you are dolphin estrogen.
All pie, a nod is a hope, rave, I’ve Eva on, seek oh, console, can guide a quest you mood, in consequence ail, ilk near rain, an aspect, I die ascetic, renunciate, airy, oh. Low state, a vivid old tattoo. Agni, a bit action, diurnal radio Oedipus: televise or dove, even, or rhyme a near seem, pray access, see, sip. O TV, vast, serial volume, my non-speak, nearly no one, a stunt eh Lou? Of moon known fossil, in grotto dive I dare late vision, eel so canny, detain to tantalize facile veil. Lieu omen, I never known computer neon telephone. Whoever vulnerable: tape petty in a different owl report to the case ion a corporate easel harvest. Chain does savage dope ass tea, frugal eel gore, no one pod aqua-cam. Naval avant indie trooper lacks a pure sissy diva per meaty tear. All can pick Everest arsenal suds, use them paid deviant Olaf. Fenestrate, meant soul dive on sale, muse or invent odd inverse volts-chasm. Guard a tin eagle, aye hawk-eye.
One journal of ache cheese; site a dick as easy. Second-rate cool can guide solo strata, piano rote lode, lapel laze oil. Can they see aficionado? They had datum, now pickle whole, lass, pint ache, come in, cheat. To add a bear, lay down a fish; have a lap rear seal, chewed or sidle. A book aporia indicate less you, or each eye has cause: so late stayed I. Sin; do: “Nonsense, too.” I’ll cane guard a kale, leave you ward of ail; cane, ill cane guide, aha! Come and show to all gear our lead eternal, sense a sauce, tie vested id. A lad on a less is so…nose fellate; did oh so Hanukah mince. I ought to allegory in one veto vertiginous. So prowl a swat EST; Humvee to generate total peregrination needle. “Can he guide a scapula?” “Sis, oh no.” (This page ought to avenge Leo.) Leap you ill dilettante Larry, Tina. Summers the inchoate is true Nero. I’ll cane; guide. No one smite vatic, here comes navigator. Lend a man to later know hokum instead of libraries’ ‘kneel aria’. Whatever, in one stretch of orbit a catatonic ache constitutes evil ass dire volition. Tempo, amp, yoke rich locution, limit pester. No era delineate doll Modoc: you are a colored red elk, an angry day.
Kneel frat temporal, campy geo oil pad rave, a vacuum in shot interrogatory if ugly: “Come Vic, comport arrest in case ode, all cause to nuclear?” Known era, known grade: odorous, ponderous. Hand numina matter late to dip protesters, so toil. Bank, oh die squalor, ma, ill pa, dray, lie haggard. At tea contrary, too.
Dope OK, lap art Ed, a lack on typical pitted a la bomb, a venue isolate, who divulge a tune, rapport tone coup, must revoke/chill radiation (nuclear) ere enough in no cue. Keel wrapper to sully bombardier of Zion nigh zero. Have you two vast diffusion? I owe ten a ton of promotion. Me have no mandate to owe tutor a finch, chem. Glo racy lame incapacity, dose o’ observation. Heir mast, old, far, own a sentiment, aim high, mien signet to lave vision remote, a door mires sense, a door mirrors eel telepathy. Ear must (to seduce, to sully) stress said diaper. One set—I, man, a man—is Yule leg in oak: I ache (is bear rat; I glyph to quell, shed domain, dapper sonar, my vulva parlor, solo delivery). “Observe, register, defunct, divulge,” rip it over. “No one stars, trope: pop answer.” My hands signal to a rhyme, an heir immobile, a serve, a rascal tear. Ho, fat, to practice con lair, gist raze ion in analogy. Cheeky lead digital equal tele-pastiche, ancy gutter, who impair a tour revision? I dare to.
I’m a datura: I deliver easy, give honor, a port, icon, data, authenticity. I owe glee. In vivid vogue lie original inane revision: a tie.
HOME When I got back from the mall, everything in my room had been rotated almost a whole eighth of an inch to the right. I am taping it all back into place.
FEMALE VOICE ON PHONE: “NO MORE CONTACT”
I can't speak for myself, but a job does things to a person, deducts a person pretty brutally from life. Desks are terrible places, no matter how many wheels a chair might have. You can't do much about how drawers fill up.
NEIGHBORS
He slips a note under my door, says he has forgotten how to talk, so is there something that can be done? I meet him in the lobby. I bring my instruments in a wastebasket. "It's my first time," I warn. I go to work on him. His first words: "I've got something in my eye. A kingdom or something."
THE TROUBLE BETWEEN PEOPLE USUALLY GETS ITS START
The pastor kept saying, "Thy will be done," and all I could think was, "Thy what will be done?"
SHE WAS CARDIACALLY ALL OVER THE PLACE
What they told me is that when the doctors opened him up, they found lots of accordion files, jars full of wheat pennies, a glockenspiel, a couple of storm windows, and told him there was nothing they could do.
WORK
My humanity would have been misemployed no matter what direction I might have taken in life, but, no question, I have walked away cravenly from blocked-up photocopiers, paper jams of any kind. A lot of toner has gone into what I have done.
THERE WERE WIDER AND WIDER SLITS IN A DAY
She had a three-legged table. I always felt bad about that.
WOMAN
I keep seeing the phrase “a women” everywhere I look. It can’t be just a typo anymore.
FIRST WIFE
I don’t know which is finally sicker—specifics or engulfing abstractions. She said she was just looking for someone to ride out some sadness on.
MOTHER AND BANGED-UP SON
Looking back over everything I might have ever said, I see that I have never come down hard enough on any of the rooms I lived inside. I want there to be science behind it if and when I do.
HONOR MY WISH
I tried drinking, but it wasn’t extinctive of the parts of me most in need of extinction. Plus, I had a good umbrella, but it got blown inside out, and I couldn’t close the thing. I set it down on the sidewalk and watched it blow off into the storm. I welcome any drowsy and senseless sincerity.
WE HAD TO MOVE TWO TOWNS TO THE LEFT, WHICH WAS WEST, WESTISH, IN THIS CASE
A calendar was hung in the kitchen as if to say: Expect more of same.
MOST OF MY LIFE TAKES PLACE ON THE FLOOR
“Get over here!” I shouted into the phone. The woman came. She thought I had meant just her.
THIS IS NOT WHAT I WANTED TO SAY, BUT SO WHAT?
I wish I could inhabit my life instead of just trespassing on it.
I became an old couple one day and it did me proud—boxed, ragged thing that I was.
From my window I saw them take their time by my alley. Bearded and bald, he had on a white shirt. A frumpy body, but a body pleasing to him. In a fine red dress, she was taller. She wore glasses the color of her eyebrows and her eyes were blue and glowing with wisdom, compassion—how could I not throw myself in there? I did and I was boiled, and I went walking past the point where I once watched from the second floor. All of them now me.
I continued down the curved alley, meandering, as they seemed intent on before. I became, I filled, and soon did what I would never. Rustle in the plum tree for the bitter, wizened fruit, if only to touch. Guess the year of a penny I found. I almost rent, but I was two, shorn of hate and lust—ungossiping, tame, absolved.
The alley led to a street with motels and a vision center. Clouds then, with rain. Distant music rose up and I danced a two-step, careful no one recognized what I’d become, because I was unsure. Was this the life I wanted? Now half of me enjoyed Sudoku and the other half knew many recipes, tended her Schubert collection. I could go for Schubert, but contentedness, a strange new hurt, raged. The clouds’ gray went pink. I didn’t concern myself with anyone else, or what they were doing, or if they were mad—I didn’t have to. I was a happy couple.
A little more north and I saw my daughter from my first marriage. She had dyed her hair and was selling baskets made from hemp. Her favorite way to start a sentence: With a mother like you… That day she seemed untroubled, and I waved and she waved back and I went on.
There was the boy who broke my nose in high school. He made a bald joke, but I smiled and looked at my taller womanly self who exhaled a sweet, ripe scent into my ear. I could have fallen apart with happiness, sure the wind would right me. I continued directly to the home I enjoyed so much, my love in hand. Home to the paraffin lamps in the hall and in my bedroom. I had potpourri in the shower and a pair of nice leather gloves for winter. My house was solid, it had no leaks. Even so, I didn’t need it quiet. I was a gracious couple.
It took a few weeks in the house but I did succumb. The years went by and one of me died—the man, the lover of Russian history, the one who called his best friend Pete. I was now one, but I still felt like a couple. And though I cried in the early evenings, around when I used to eat supper with my man, I went on. The flowers smelt just as good. Every year a better, higher quality recording of the Unfinished Symphony to purchase. I wasn’t a ghost and I wasn’t a wreck. Walking the streets humbled me. I liked to smile at those I did not know.
When I died I felt the presence I had been born as there with me. I felt whole and had an inkling I was being welcomed into a very calm place, and though I couldn’t feel my body, the transition went without a bump in time. At the close I was delicate, untroubled and I thought of my years and what I would say to explain myself to those waiting above or below. It left me in many versions, but it always started the same - I’m so glad I left that young, gloomy man behind…
I built a fourth house underneath a mountain. The mountain was tall but I moved it stone by stone, tree by tree, displaced its bulk until there was a hole I could stand in. I stood in the mountain’s lack and built a house there. I went back to my axe, my saw, planks from trees and the mud for seams. I built a chimney for the first snow, gutters for the first rain. I built shelves where the jam I would make could be placed in jars atop it. I built a corner where I could stand. I built a chair where I could sit. I built a bed to cover in a quilt of pine needles and stone moss. I built my mother to rock me to sleep and my father to cook up our fish in the morning. I built a picture frame and a picture of my brother inside of it, to keep track of what I was missing.
My brother had been lost from the beginning. He was the first to see me in these woods, he was the first to enter into them and seek me out. He was the first to find me here. In his hand was a piece of paper. On the piece of paper was a black dot. Inside of the black dot were the times we had punched each other in the face and stood up laughing. Inside of those fists were pictures of us as kids.
In this fourth house I built, I made a doorway but did not fit it with a door. Instead I restacked what was left of the mountain, tree by tree, stone by stone, leaving open only a space between the mountain’s skin and my doorway, so that I was living inside of a cabin inside of a cave inside of a mountain inside of the dying that I was going through. The layers of that doorway were dark. And only once did a bear come in to find me there already, with no room left for hibernation, and my knife ready. The red on the walls from this bear was invisible in our darkness.
I remember that my brother’s hand was trembling when he handed me the paper with the blackness in it, my death. I remember when my brother and I were deer, the woods a home instead of a lost venture. And I want the tremble of his hand to mean that he was nervous, that he was sad, that my brother didn’t want to deliver my dying. I want my brother’s trembles to have been his fear at losing me in more than a lost woods. I want the sun to come up with other bears entering this cabin in this cave in this mountain. I want to slit them open, to swim in red, to paint myself in anger, to drip with a third and a fourth and a fifth bear.
But after a decade, the dark proved too much. On every wall was a sky. And on all the skies there were no stars. This was too much refinement. My brother never appeared, no other bears came, and the blood on the walls dried and could no longer paint words. I never had a daughter. I never loved a woman. I never saw my brother after I died, so there was no longer any secrecy to living in a cabin in a cave in a mountain. The burning was monotonous and bright. The mountain collapsed back down into itself when the structure deflated, one hollow bear within, and me walking back into these lost woods.
I once knew a girl who kept breaking bones. I once knew a girl who dreamed of breaking every bone in her body. I knew a girl who learned the names of each bone in her foot so she could break them one by one. I knew a girl who learned the names of the bones in her wrist, in her hand, in her arms, in her legs. I knew a girl who broke every bone in her body over a period of years. This is not possible, you say. She would die. She did not die. I knew a girl who I never knew without a cast on her body. Her bones were so small and so light. Everything about her seemed fragile. When we kissed, I found my tongue drawn to her teeth, testing their thickness. When we fucked I pictured her bones snapping beneath her skin.
We lived far away from each other and were happy, for a time. We sent each other packages. I sent her things I found, masks, beads, cuttings from magazines. She sent me pictures of herself in casts, and tapes containing coded instructions. I dreamed of us hardening and taking our places among the ossified oaks. She dreamed of hospitals, of people worrying over her. She wrote me long letters in code. If I held the letters up to certain kinds of light, the correct words would become illuminated. “Dear ONE: I wanted to speak to you earlier about the machines that have begun filling up my body. DO NOT BE ALARMED. They are the correct machines. They pump my heart. They keep my brain at the appropriate temperature. They are responsible for the flexing and unflexing of muscles, for the contraction and relaxation of the diaphragm. Previously I suspected that the doctors placed them in my body whenever I arrived, unconscious, at the hospital. Now I know that this is not the case. The last time I was brought to the hospital I pretended, you see. I’ve gotten quite good at feigning unconsciousness. I didn’t even gasp when they sliced open my leg.
“You will say that they nonetheless knew, that they understood I was testing them, that this time they held back. I don’t think so. I have other theories, now, about the origin of the machines.”I have never broken a bone. Because of this, I don’t often think of my bones as breakable, the way that those who have never experienced violence don’t think of it as something that happens, outside of movies.
Let me build you a house. Here, a nail. Here, a piece of wood. I have told you that this will all be gone soon: the ground is unstable, the ground is not solid. I would rebuild this city for you if I could—I would place long smooth stones into the silt and we would walk on them, your heels digging into the gaps from time to time so you would stumble. My feet are flat—they have no arch, all things structurally flawed. My bones, they are soft. My skin, stretched thin and translucent from years of abuse, years of not building anything, years of not walking. When I build you something, something will be built. When I build you something I will know the meaning of this—to put my back into something, to know what power is and what it might be. The building we are in is taller than both of us together, we cannot touch the lights. When I build you something, I want you to stretch your arms above your head like you are praying, like you are praising. I want you to lay your hands flat on the ceiling, to bend your wrists backwards, to cause your muscles to tense up. I want your hands to feel the acoustics, to rub your fingers over the bumps like when you used to put your hand on my face, cupping my jaw, telling me that you like it when I don’t shave. I will build you this because this will all be gone. We will have a housewarming party—we will tell our friends to bring red wine, to bring candles and cookware, to place oranges in a bowl and cover it with foil. You will wear a dress and I will wear a tie and we will answer the door: we will look through the small square windows—glass I broke into shards with my hands. When we open the door, no one will be standing there. When we open the door, the water will rush in. 
Sometimes when small children scream they sound like small children. Last night, I squeezed my roommate's cat until it screamed. Then I gave it some spinach to eat, but it does not like spinach so it did not eat. I think that some people might think I am a bad person. Last fall, I was going to buy a pair of gloves, but then my friend bought the same pair of gloves so I decided not to buy any gloves. This morning my hands were cold. Mother is doing fine. We spoke on the telephone recently. I heard that a kid I went to high school with got his wife pregnant. Two years ago they got married. I went to the ceremony and danced a lot. When I turn forty-five maybe I will marry a twenty-eight-year-old woman and get her pregnant. If you are ten years old then there's a chance I might marry you some day and get you pregnant. Most ten year olds are in fourth grade. 
Consider this list: guava, banana, papaya, etc. You found it in your purse, scrawled on a scrap of paper in blue ink, in a handwriting that is not your own. Where did it come from? What does it mean? Is it a grocery list? A list of nouns that just happen to be edible ovaries of seed-bearing plants? Words that end in A? Maybe it’s a list of flavors of ice cream, or flavors of condoms? A list of first names of forgotten cartoon characters, or last names of hungry up-and-coming porn stars? Is kiwi on the list? Tomato? Etcetera is supposed to suggest continuation, but it’s distracting and confusing. Almost as bad as ellipses...
Throw the scrap of paper away.
Consider this list: kumquat, pinprick, chainsaw, cancerous, peanut, hummus, ponytail, tampon, bubblegum, electron, lava, planet, regret.
The list goes on.
Elevator, disappointment, shopping. Fellatio, pineapple, hope. Avocado, entropy.
The list is endless.
Torture, lettuce, testicle. Eczema, algebra, etc.
Etcetera is a scapegoat, a martyr. Upon this lonely word must fall the whole packed weight of an end.
Here is a list of people that have drowned in the river: apple, bear, crush, dime, eagle, fire, fire, ghost, ghost, ghost, hair, iron, jab, kite, loss, lost, lose, me. Here is a list of what it sounded like when they were drowning: the rolling up of a car window when you know it is going to rain later that day, a gas-powered stove turning on in order to boil water for noodles, a hand feeling around an empty pocket. I grew up near a river much like this one. I took the hand of someone like you and slid down the slope to where the water mixed with the silt, where it would stick to your ankles if you were not careful. We were not careful. Let me let you in on a secret: this town is falling into the river. Here is a list of everything that will be gone: the stadium where I saw you, the frozen yogurt shop where I saw you, the gym where I saw you, the bookstore where I saw you, the store where I saw you, the store where I saw you, the intersection where I saw you, the classroom where I saw you, the shopping center where I saw you, the parking deck where I saw you, the party you never came to, the church where I saw you, the road where I saw you. Where will that leave us? If you want to find me while we are drowning amidst the drowning, I will be there thinking about home. If you want to press your lips to mine and suck out the air from my lungs so that you may force air from your nose, to make child's sounds with your mouth, please, come. Do not refuse. Try and stop me. Try and stop me from giving you air like you are a balloon and I am drowning. Don't try to stop me. I am trying to tell you something but if I move my lips I will break the seal. I want to tell you that this is about you. You know who you are. You know where you have been. None of that is important now. Here is a list of people that will drown in the river:
Boots Walking in America thought of what it takes to be a man in a calm world. He looked at his penis and said, "I'm a dick." He did not touch his penis. His hands were dirty. He would be eating a sandwich soon. He could see a store up the road. He would be eating a sandwich in the store up the road. A woman named Cynthia would make his sandwich. He enjoyed the shape of her trimmed nails as she put her fingers on the vegetables he would set inside his mouth. She wore plastic gloves. Her earrings were made of a sort of whale bone. The people who worked at the store wouldn't make him wash his hands before he ate his sandwich but he would. He did not need anyone to tell him when he should wash his hands.
The floor was brown.
"Someone should wash the floor," thought Boots Walking in America. A mommy told her child not to babynoise the lunch hour. The baby was not a full grown man so it would have been wrong for Boots Walking in America to beat on the child. The woman named Cynthia wrapped up the sandwich and then Boots Walking in America unwrapped it. He was a big object and his dick did not concern him much at all while he ate lunch with his dirty hands. Boots Walking in America wasn't sure how he forgot to wash his hands. There was a good amount of mayonnaise leaking off the bread on to his chin and wrists. He looked at Cynthia. He was a little bitter that she put so much mayonnaise on his sandwich. Boots Walking in America smeared the mayonnaise on his shirt. He remembered napkins. He wiped his shirt with a napkin. He did not pout. A mommy was being nasty with her voice toward her baby object. She verbally diminished her own child's ability. Boots Walking in America sucked on mayonnaise and remained calm.
Stacks predicted fat holes of varying slant-path thickness would pop up everywhere. I wanted to get out of there is why I listened. It was the early 90s so we'd seen smaller fat dimples and Stacks said they would keep growing. I was five-months pregnant when he joined the task force. I couldn't sleep in our bed without him. I went to my mother's bed. She said my father chased fat holes like Stacks and she gave me a small bottle of Kentucky Gentleman. She brushed my hair and said, "Doesn't that feel good!" Stacks came back and his key observation was the lack of reliable historical (pre-fat hole) data. "You are being given night vision now, and you may need to use it," Stacks said. I drove us all night. "The way I'm thinking is pretty Cartesian," Stacks said. The baby was sleeping. Then Stacks was sleeping. It was our last vacation.
Here, have a drink. Look, I fixed your favorite, waffles. Don't leave.
I will pay off my credit cards. I will stop smoking. I will change the sheets. I will study for my realtor's license. I will cure cancer. I will practice the accordion. I will get a Hell's Angel tattoo. I will train my puppy. I will go to church. I will become a Franciscan nun. I will convert to Judaism. I will join AA. I will learn the Lindy. I will take my antioxidants. I will give to the Salvation Army. I will break off with Sidney.
Don't leave.
Smoking on the porch outside the secret orgy, we keep looking over at each other, hoping one of us will say what comes next, or that it's time to go inside and take off all our clothes. But then a deer moves down the street, tapping hooves on the asphalt so evenly, like the back of a head against a headboard.
We both wonder aloud, "Must be time, huh?" Then we giggle, a little, before the demonic laughter takes us over from the inside out. Our faces are lit only by the matches we scratch—one cigarette after the other, after the other, after the other. We laugh so hard our cigarettes look like little boiled noodles.
I say, "That deer walks like someone who's worn heels all their life." You howl as if you've just received bad news. I light another cigarette by making my cigarette kiss your cigarette. I say, "There's a name for that, you know."
You say, "What, frot?"
I laugh and cough at the same time. "Yeah," I say, "the tips of our cigarettes are 'frot' with longing for each other." I make our cigarettes kiss again and ashes fall to the porch like a cindered emission.
You love wordplay, so you howl until it transforms into a scissored cough, like your breath is caught in a rock tumbler. I realize this will be your last cigarette ever. You bleed your coughs onto the shoulder of your t-shirt in big, tacky blotches, and you say, "This is it, Case, my only chance to do something like this before I die. I'm dyeing, God, how I'm dyeing this shirt right in front of you."
And then you scream, but the people inside can't hear you—the music and the moaning are just that loud.
You startle the deer, though, and it leaps into the intersection, hitting a car full of orgygoers just back from a beer run. Some of them are already naked because they can't wait to taste a stranger, but the only thing they taste now is the blood and the glass and the shame that comes from being naked during a travesty.
The deer is dying too, so it keeps kicking someone in the face through the windshield. Teeth crack like vibrating dishes. I keep smoking on the front porch. You never know what you'll do when you don't know what the fuck to do.
Someone says, "Help. Me." So I pull out my phone like I'm easing a gun, like maybe someone else will make the call first, but I realize, between puffs, there's no one else around who isn't slowly dying.
i asked my dad if i could be his dad because i know that sometimes dads wish their father weren’t their dads
i am tired of only being capable of becoming a rich white male. my life goal is to become the only planet where human beings of a rich white male status live and then when i accomplish this i will give every person of a lower socioeconomic class the ability to pee on me and all the rich white male status living on my body planet. eventually someone will build pee machines to orbit this globe of rich white male status and every day will become a pee holiday full of poor people pissing on rich male people.
dad was invented by a box of cereal called reverend cocoa crunch pop crumble milk tit
even though the rape age is said to have dawned on october 4th, 1957, at the release of a russian sputnik into the free orbits around earth, rich white males and their metaphorical ponies have long spouted a creepy giddiness whose only goal is to probe whatever fresh spatial depths is considered the new meat of the solar system.
when dads turn twenty-five they stand in the dark and do grownup things like say the words mortgage equity over and over until they get an erection
our deep fucking of the fertile wounds in search of unearthed treasures in the name of exploration have numbed the gravitational chains set in place to bind us to this finite and plentiful world. these initial feeble attempts to search beyond the moon for the infinity solution have in part fucked our eat systems into believing in the idea that we are not fat until we eat our siblings.
my father caught me watching the movie sex in the city 2 and asked me what i was doing, but i was embarrassed to admit the truth so i told him i had shit myself and then i went in the bathroom and threw up in my underwear making what i had said only a partial lie. somewhere i can feel someone taping their iphone to their dick and sticking it into every indigenous wombs’ heart pulse. it is not surprising that people praise new planetary discoveries even though the earth rich white males responsible for these discoveries are incapable of doing anything except releasing their astronomies into what they see as blank, uneducated, foreign spaces. to put this in as simple terms as possible, let me summarize the entire history of the american heterosexual white male:
[there is a white male object who is me. i am a heart shape carved into a school desk. someone named ‘dad’ carved this heart shape into the desk. inside the heart shape my father carved the words ‘me’. this is how i was born. i am a heart shape carved around the word ‘me’. this carving and the word ‘me’ represent a father’s love for his child, but more importantly, it is also a symbol of a father’s love for himself. the heart shape remained carved into this wooden desk for thousands of years, but this carving did not remain the only chimney on the prairie. soon, other carvings joined the heart shape of me. one of the carvings simply said, $everyone is a fava bean!$ another carving said, $i love fava beans!$ the prairies grew into towns. the towns grew into cities. the cities grew into suburbs. soon, everyone in the entire history of american white males was able to get a mortgage as long as they could show proof that they had once carved something mildly offensive into a wooden desk. there was a blossoming of interest in higher education. the mildly offensive carvings lead to discussion on whether freedom of speech was worth the bubbling of the american real estate market, but these discussions were ignored as more and more american families blindly carved their way to a variety of high-interest, long-term loans that netted them multiple properties that they would be incapable of ever repaying.]it was in these years of excess that the CEO got fat, stupid, careless, and bankrupt. i was ready to carve the obituaries for the CEO and the rape age into the dead heart shape of the iphone taped to my assistant manager’s dick, but then a magical thing happened. a beanstalk the shape of the federal government bailed out every CEO in such excess that CEOs were allowed to continue stuffing their ponies full of piles of junk loans and life in the normal path of the upper class grew distant from the other class levels as the rape age continued to expand thanks to the american financial collapse.
the last time i thought i was chinese was the winter after the city stopped mailing my father lanterns, but a few weeks before the internet was invented. we ate bread seeds and moth crumbs. my father told me i had been conceived after a circus egg hatched and the elephant inside shit on my brother until he got pneumonia and died. yesterday, i sent out a memo to all my ringtones. in the memo i did not use quotation marks. i replaced all the quotation marks with money symbols because if you don’t tell people you are constantly thinking about money then they will never freely feed all their dollar bills to your pony. in the memo to all my dingtones i said,
[$the mountain hole i observed last night had trouble falling asleep because its lamp would not stop beeping and the sweat of its forehead was increasingly becoming a sign of plastic which had been chemically altering my dehydrated happiness.$]
i accidentally emailed this memo to all my coworkers as well as my ringtones. one of my coworkers did not like my attitude toward my ‘tones. he said,
[$in 1964 i met a christmas party inside of the house of a passionate galaxy. the christmas party was probably the saddest person i had ever met in the entire universe. the christmas party spent most of the evening drinking and standing awkwardly next to a house plant. the christmas party’s soft belly was a disappointment. i stared at this soft belly for most of the evening. near midnight people were throwing their empty wine glasses at the chandelier. i felt myself begin to blackout. i found a large bowl of salad. i began to scoop large handfuls of the salad into my face. a smell of an omelet began to grow in my ears. my legs got weak. i could feel myself stumbling towards the soft belly. i climbed inside. everything grew dark. in the morning i woke up to the sound of a frying pan sizzling my tomato. i opened my eyes and felt the soft belly of the christmas party rubbing itself into my face.$]
A patient feeling I heard you say
a patient mouth absorbs the spark of a secret train
moving into the birdhouse to abandon the actual
our secret tender and electric paper boat
The point is to remove the self from the emerging
of the lucky and the disbelieving who are the same
A shiny noise makes a happy landing
insisting that life be the one tree, the one
happy signatory, form of starling
+++++
Hello calculator hello lucent opposite
of human
I didn’t get lost when I went through
I gave away my salty velveteen when I divided
This was then and that was also
from inside this color bespoke
the paper bag over the theoretical head
of the living
My first syllable the wanted fox
of winter fall
+++++
In the end we will have the titanic the elevating and the harmonic
the rabbit quixotic as an imitation of a novel by Kafka
In this density of movable parts I can only love
the molecules I am about to become
when you are the maker of the fantastic
undressing a sunflower
implied sleeping iris
+++++
How lucky we are to have fingertips
how lucky the 1,000 verbs
will eat of the hand of their conductor
given the chance
Liminal workers in the underworld of the kind professor
the face of Aristotle also the conductor
of these colossal heads of sailors
I repeat
we are green whole zeros we are given the sleepiest glow worm quietly falling
in this almost human of trains
At last, terror has arrived.
Next door, the house has gone up in flames.
A woman runs from the burning wreck, her face smeared
with blood and ashes. She screams that her children are kidnapped.
It’s truly exciting, and what more would anyone ask?
For a rare and beautiful egg to present itself in the grass?
For sex with the liquor store owner to progress into something meaningful?
You don’t know what I’ve done in front of the mirror.
I’ve pulled my shorts up high like a thong. I’ve walked back and forth
doing little kicks and making faces. I’ve stopped, I’ve stared.
I try to get my mind around the sight of myself. I make a face.
Of great seriousness. I imagine that I’ve just received
a large and upsetting piece of news. Then I look into my eyes.
Can I guess what I am thinking? Can I tell you what it is?
And now in the window at the rear of the ambulance, as if in answer, appears a lone splayed hand at the glass, pressing and slapping at the glass, a hand reaching up from some sort of emergency stretcher or gurney and opening spiderishly out to stroke and slap and press whitely against the rear window's glass in full view of Jeni Roberts' Accord's retractable halogen headlights so that she sees the highly distinctive ring on the ring finger of the male hand splayed frantically against the emergency glass and screams (in the dream) in recognition and cuts hard left without signaling, cutting off various other emergency vehicles, to pull abreast of the ambulance and tell it to please stop because the stochastic husband she loves and must somehow catch up to is inside on a stretcher ceaselessly sneezing and slapping frantically at the window for someone he loves to catch up and help; but then (such is the dream's motive force that the wife actually wets the bed, she discovers on waking) and but then as she pulls abreast on the left of the ambulance and lowers her passenger window with the Accord's automatic feature in the rain and gesticulates for the ambulance driver to lower his own window so she can implore him to stop it's (in the dream) the husband driving the ambulance, it's his left profile at the wheel--which the wife has always somehow been able to tell he prefers to his right profile and customarily sleeps on his right side partly with this fact in mind, though they'd never spoken openly about the husband's possible insecurities about his right profile--and but then as the husband turns his face toward Jeni Roberts through the driver's window and lit-up rain as she gesticulates it seems to be both him and not him, her husband's familiar and much-loved face distorted and pulsed with red light and wearing a facial expression indescribable as anything other than: Obscene.
"It's impossible for me to think of fiction without a moral center. My work is an effort to expose the worst in us all, to cause us to face up to the enormities of our terrible potential for betrayal, disgrace, and criminal behavior."
His interests are: "idealism, innocence, and luminous, murderous impulse."
"Detachment is at the center of the novelist's experiment."
"All human beings are 'poor, forked, and corruptible.'"
"I'm not interested in reflection or representation; I'm only interested in creating a fictive world. The writing of each fiction is a taking of a psychic journey."
"Everything is dangerous, everything is tentative, nothing is certain."
"I want my fiction to destroy conventional morality and conventional attitudes."
A man and a woman fall in love and are married, and are happy in every single way.
Then one day a flying saucer lands in their backyard, and a door opens, and an alien comes out.
I’m going to have to take one of you away, it says.
What? say the man and woman. Why?
I don’t know, says the alien. That’s just how it is.
And in the end, the woman gets taken away.
Paul French’s Untitled (2011) is either his most brilliant or most obnoxious novel yet—probably, it seems, his most obnoxious. What’s brilliant about French’s novel is this: for Untitled French has invented, not just fictional characters (as you might get in a realist novel), not even just a fictional world (as you might get in a sci-fi novel), not even just a fictional universe (as you might get in a fantasy novel)—Untitled isn’t set in our universe, it isn’t even set in our dimension. For the novel French has invented fictional systems of mathematics, of physics; electromagnetism, nuclear forces, gravity, French has done away with them altogether. French’s characters aren’t made of cells, and within those cells atoms, and within those atoms protons and neutrons, and within those protons and neutrons quarks. French’s characters aren’t even length/width/height-type characters: whatever dimension Untitled is set in, it’s not the traditional dimension in which one would set a novel (the third).
In that sense Untitled may be the most fictional novel ever written: everything within the novel is fictional. French hasn’t relied upon even a single nonfictional fact to build his story. Capitalism doesn’t exist in Untitled, for example; economics doesn’t even exist; greed itself doesn’t exist. Untitled took French almost thirty years to write—his last book, Come Hither Ye Stockbrokers, he published in 1984—and it’s easy to see why. The novel French built in those years is, in a certain sense, a masterpiece.
What’s obnoxious about Untitled, however, is that it seems French felt the premise of the novel required him to write Untitled in a fictional language. The fictional language is named .: (the language itself is a dot-based language, like a visual Braille; “.:” translates to, in English, “Wary”). Unlike books like the Codex Seraphinianus and the Voynich manuscript, it is actually possible to read Untitled—but, as it turns out, that’s what’s so obnoxious. The first several hundred pages of Untitled are an English/.: textbook—French has made it possible for an English speaker to study and become fluent in .: before reading the novel itself. (Some of the language exercises French has invented are, admittedly, actually sort of fun.) .: takes the average student about seven months to learn, the textbook’s introduction tells (warns) readers, but even after those seven months, the next several hundred pages of Untitled are a kindergarten-level textbook, written in .:, that teaches readers about the physics within the novel and the place this novel is set. Untitled is, without question, the most laborious, exhausting, obnoxious novel ever written.
in the 20th century people used to have secrets when people used to have secrets
they went to the grave with them
unless their secrets tormented them
then they took them to a priest
a psychoanalyst or a bartender
and if the police wanted to know your secrets
they tortured you until you spilled them
and then killed or blackmailed you
but now in the 21th century everyone is happy to share
in the 21st century people are only worried that their secrets will stay secret
people worry in the 21st century that that they have no secrets at all
self-exposure stripped them
exposure was insufficient
the closets are empty
or even worse
everyone is spilling their secrets simultaneously
so nobody can be overheard discreetly
there are too few vices and too much competition
manufacturing secrets is big business now
bigger than the technologies for overhearing them
spies are passe
fiction writers are in
we are forgetting what language secrets speak
or how to present a secret in just the right key
and how to pitch it in the whisper or the voice
that will draw the kind of attention only a secret does
secrets become quickly boring
the bigger the media that reveals them the more boring
because everyone can tell what kind of secrets they are
just by the way they go shhh shhh
to the dismay of agents
who know just how to sell a secret if you have one
or how to make one up if you don’t
but what avails an agent the art of PR if boredom overtakes it?
agents are losing their grip on the lubricious
nothing is viral enough because viruses mutate too fast
nobody knows what to hide anymore
the whole world is full of hiding places
no secret can even pretend to be a secret
because no one will believe it
but what else can a secret be but a secret?
oh my people of the 21st century
nobody cares about us
because why should anyone care for someone without secrets?
we don’t even know what is or should be secret
and what taboos still pertain with enough force
to make a secret effectively thrilling and anguished
even killers go on reality shows and nobody believes them
the priests shrinks and bartenders of yore
never listened that good anyway unless there was money in it
so we can’t go to them for advice
because they forgot us as soon as the money was spent
the radio, background to silence,
bristles with crises, box office revenues,
scandals in the voids between the stars.
silence bristles with arms, soft arms,
memories of eyes looking past long eyes,
rockin’ to the radio. not even the blues
of Blind Willie Johnson, Dark was the Night,
Cold was the Ground, starward on Voyager
blue enough to shake those charms.
Your mother sews you into a blanket. Your father adjusts his hat./ The town gathers to see you off. 
Some rules are made to be followed. People need to follow traffic rules. However, there are lots of other rules that are meant to be smashed into pieces with a wrecking ball.
As far as my writing coming from a strange place I can tell you that you are undoubtedly correct. I’m writing from the planet Earth, and it’s a very strange place indeed! We’ve still got the nuclear bombs hanging over our heads which threatens our species with extinction, half the human race lives on less than two dollars a day, and of course there’s plenty of racial, class, gender, and homophobic oppression to make things mighty strange on this planet! So yes, I’m writing from a very strange place indeed! My creative writing is insane because the world I live in is insane. And while I’m certainly not normal I am definitely not as deranged as people like George Bush and Barack Obama whose ambition is to be the most person in the world and have their finger on the atomic button, besides presiding over a war machine that has killed countless innocent civilians and has treated many injured veterans with disrespect. I’m definitely not as deranged as the billionaires and large corporations who ruined our economy with their greedy derivatives schemes. I’m definitely not as deranged as intolerant people enslaved to tradition who want to impose their rules on avant-garde Writers, Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.
It’s important for creative Writers to smash the rules of grammar and tradition into pieces when it suits them. If you’re going to write a manual on used car repair or to discuss how capitalism is causing widespread oppression than you should write in the traditional manner with correct grammar. Or if you’re going to write an EXCITING narrative in the traditional manner that’s okay too, because at least you’re not going to bore the reader.
However, if you’re going to write something creative than why not write whatever you want to write? Rules have no place when it comes to creativity! Pablo Picasso mastered traditional painting at a young age and then moved on to better and bigger things. We should look at his example and learn from it! Writers need to have more balls and be last less enslaved to rules and tradition. While there have been many great Writers in the past I feel very strongly that the greatest literature of the human race has not been created yet. The greatest literature of our species will be written in the future by people who are not slaves to rules and tradition. Certainly, they should read the great Writers of the past, but frankly the literary world as we know it has become an ignorant stale backwater compared to the other arts. Look at how far painting has advanced in the past 130 years! And who has advanced painting in the past 130 years? The great innovators who broke tradition and rules—people like the Impressionists, Fauvists, Cubists, Expressionists, etc.! One of the reasons that the literately world is so relatively backward is that there is too much respect for rules and tradition amongst Writers. Writers need to have bigger balls! They need to be more creative! They need to break with tradition and rules!
I’m not very good at doing things a husband or a father ought to do.
I am spoiled. A prima donna.
All I want to do is sit in my writing room
and write books. Not make a decent living, not keep
the place up, not do the dishes cheerfully, since
the dishwasher is broken and I can’t afford to fix it.
Not see friends and relatives, entertain guests. Not replace
the window air-conditioner in Brenda’s bedroom. I just
have ugly fits and show my tail, like a three-year old.
I am ill. Pronounced eel. So hateful I can’t stand myself.
I feel guilty about it but I don’t change. I get furious at
innocent bystanders. They are collateral damage.
In Trouble, a woman artist, a former addict,
goes back on dope and kills herself.
I’m not that bad. Yet.
It’s only rock-and-roll.
The paparazzi were after her.
The Disney channel is teaching kids
to want to be rock stars. To expect it.
When you wish upon a star. Just wish for it.
In A Christmas Story, the secret message
spelled out by the code ring was D-R-I-N-K
O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E. Warning to all. by C. M. Laster.
GRADUALLY BUT DETERMINEDLY AVOID BEING PRESENT AT OFFICIAL OR PUBLIC “UPTOWN” FUNCTIONS OR GATHERINGS RELATED TO THE “ART WORLD” IN ORDER TO PURSUE INVESTIGATIONS OF TOTAL PERSONAL AND PUBLIC REVOLUTION. EXHIBIT IN PUBLIC ONLY PIECES WHICH FURTHER SHARING OF IDEAS & INFORMATION RELATED TO TOTAL PERSONAL AND PUBLIC REVOLUTION
This is how you will go. Without applause. With a bump here and there. In relaxed turbulence. By finding meaning in a small thing which you weren’t aware of when it happened, and which you will forget a second later. This is how you will go. Addled, and all at once, but like a double-door,
and without a door-handle of doubt that it’s happening in-side too. And there. And this. This is how you will have to go to get through it. Head first without thinking so much. Flutter-kicking. Bellyaching. With things that make strong eggs, and endless. And heart. And it will be exactly the same as the last time
it worked, except with more memory and less remembering, and probably not in public. It won’t work exactly like a rope twisting an endless topology of impossible knots so easy. It could easily smell like a skunk, like life-like, like what might stink in the end. It will probably easily move you past the tiresome carnage of smiling it out with strangers you’ve known for a long time again. There could be phantom words left. You may be beguiled. And twice at once. Life will be space again. Cosmology for the taking. Instruments for seeing seeing. It could be bizarrely boring, maybe
end with a waker walking out more awake. It could require a long long reality spoon to reach a long long time ago, or a multidimensional long-reach-reality stapler, but then again, some of the parts might jelly, and it’s hard to staple together jelly parts. This is how you will know it’s time to go. Stretched into new shapes. Into the slow. Into the after life-saving convention collections of adding up all the un-geometric goodbyes. Like a landscape architect borrowing trees from the sites beyond, but with more leaving. This is how you will know it’s happening, but with the shoe-shine of pacing.
Like creeping happily a capillary action, the feeling of being sucked up again, or sucking, which is different than sucking-up. Again you could go without the gain of knowing that the first time you know is the last time it’s already too late. This is how you will disappear. Sincerely like a spill
which seeks out the shortest route downhill. In the bed usually, not the bath. Coughing up the insides of stars with all the last carbon copies. Worked-up but without footnotes or hyper-texts. This is how it will feel. Like licked pronto. Like creamed by it. Like a no-brainer, but more bird
song like, like more, like stiff-arming to safety, like this. Too any shore more safely, like this. This is how you will go, with a story stratum that looks like lava looks. Having absorbed all the dished out soaked up looks that silt your pond, as you persist in shade. This is how you’ll disappear. Outside
it is Berlin. Mumbai. The South Side of Chicago. You’ll be in rapture in Tokyo, or lost in, like last time, which you won’t find weird. Inside it will have been 1972, 1851, 2090 yesterday now, back then cat clawing its way into the lap of your next to last future. Somehow you’ll suddenly know
that you know exactly where Ethiopia is in relation to where you are facing. You’ll be able to stand in place and orrery your arms like a clock’s hands, index finger to figure out where the moon will next rise without being able to say why. You’ll be able to point to Croatia without trying, slow
dance Iceland important with a hip-flip, finger-tut Peru, the tip of your elbow directioning correctly Florida’s eastern most tip of the Keys by ducking. You may May a bit out of tune, but you’ll universe Saturn 3 o’clock, without dropping any of its 62 moons by moving a little nearer to me again,
and we’ll be moon practicing again. And while going out I’ll be falling in and up and you’ll go breaking-up, and the sun will light up: it’s just a phase the moon’s going through, but I’m burning up about it. Damn, you’ll say, what a way to go, and with the earth still turning me on so still. When I was diagnosed with inoperable cancer, my first thought wasn’t what you might expect. My first thought wasn’t “Why me?”
My first thought was “Why not you?”
This is a serious thought, I think, a logical thought, and not at all unreasonable, insensitive or anything. Why don’t YOU have cancer seems to be a more logical thing to ask, more logical than why do I have cancer. At least it does to me, but maybe there’s a reason for this. Maybe it’s because this is about me, that it is me talking, and because I have cancer, inoperable cancer.
Maybe this is the cancer talking.
The cancer is in my brain.
You should have this cancer; it should be in your brain
These things are true and sad. A painter used to live here. Lives here still but it is complicated. Tonight I am alone but for the flowers the painter left for me to discover in the kitchen, the living room, my office, the bathroom. The years we were together the painter thought I did not like flowers. I am unsure why the painter ever came to this conclusion. In this month after our breakup we have learned so much about each other. We are like new people. Tonight the painter is in Philadelphia. Tomorrow the painter will be in New Jersey. There will be a show. Tonight I am at my desk where I will write for the first time in many months while listening to James Blake. I will drink seltzer water and check my phone. I will smoke cigarettes in the rain. Unable to sleep, I will try to read. I will sit uncomfortably while my fingers remember what it feels like to touch these keys. I will trim my nails because it is difficult to type when they are too long. When I do not write, my nails grow long. My nails are a reminder of difficult times. My fingers worry over their own disuse. My hands do not know what to do. My wrists feel tight. My forearms rest heavy. My elbows are bony knobs on this desk. My shoulders hunch. My neck hurts. My throat hurts. My eyes hurt. I read these words and yet I continue to write. I go on writing because what else is there to do but remember this poem about a painter, his flowers, and what used to be his walls.
Someone explains how to cook something. Someone else does not listen. In the lake
look at how the fish are not cooking
anything. At the bottom and in other
places there is no cooking. It takes geography.
It eliminates it. When I am having toast
I keep not having toast. What would be
a liberation? A blue screw in the cement wall.
Orange. I’ve got my telephone. My telephone
does telephone calls. I was waiting again.
My heart beats fast fast fast. Is your heart
beating fast? A pattern of frequent worry.
Pick up geography. Wanting a new big easier.
Take me out. When the glass shatters,
it shatters too far. I have will. Where has it gone.
How you might want to show what you know.
Sometimes you go out there. At least as far as
your window can see. Or rather, no farther than
a window your window can see. Why not
want your own window? Want water. Want
water where you are. You want get struck
with a change. I go I go I go. But come back
come back come back.
I drove my Corolla down the high road; silver fields beside it; darkness ahead; oh fire behind; like niceness unfastened; I bent my head; in intricate dawn; the fields brimming; some dark remained; or was lit up; perhaps I did it; from my sphere; fantastic and pronged; I sat with my head; bowed; it is how I have gone through my country; like the road; which cannot believe its own height; I have felt warm in my car; unable to turn my music down; night wind rushing words from my mouth; for it is dumb to be right; even as trees grow with darkness; complicit; turning the earth as I have been turned; turning myself; from its labor; blame cleans my brow; so smoothly the road spills like a lie; through somebody; a girl was; through my face; I roll the windows up; down; and when I take a curve; I take it away; into my mind; I open my mouth; thinking I’ll speak; but dim houses stream faster; like painting; or a puddle of chilled water; I put my hand in; the autumn is thick; like everyone else; am I incredible; or inside of it. 
Because we are mammals we illuminate glasses of milk
We make wine and play the triangle
whose corners ring through us to the night
We are mammals in the kitchen
and on the stairs
And half the house is the emptiness
they built to make room
for an audience of mammals
We cannot record the distance
between us and the forest
but we imagine
when our characters imagine
it’s probably not too far
What is being related.
Your eyes have shutters. Your lips open to an elevator.
I step into a room, the room steps out into rain
shaped like a square that falls.
A person becomes a place,
a place becomes an ornament on a flammable wall.
You were mother's baby. You were my baby too. Red on the day you dropped like a fish, my pet already. I watched the kettle boiling.
Played nurse and mother by dials and switches, arm a lever
connected to the soft door.
You said, Baby, time for a nap
(but you were the baby, adam). I kissed you on the head. I kissed you on my sister. I kissed you in parts where the world vestibuled into darkness.
Cities on the coast are all tongue and trees and sister.
I watch the tongue swallow sisters, brick and arms and knees.
You said, Go back, Go back. Into what.
You point to a picture.
I directed us toward the room inside the highway, where the fast lights form a river and the river forms a plane, a wall, a curve, a blade.
We turned around. We watched movies backwards.
Trails on the windshield swept up.
Time alone has not made me
understand space.
Adopting it has not made me a mother.
Your place in it does not give it balance.
My solitude displaces no water.
Dissociating has not made me powerful.
Bridges do not take me.
Light bends. Space is something else altogether.
The geometry of coupling closes and opens unseen space.
Space does not see.
Smiles grimace. The space of your mouth. Subtle holes.
We have preached this landscape
where everything is incorporated
and telephoned. This is the machine gun villa.
A million models are priced, tagged,
and ready to ship
from the warehouse of our machine gun villa.
Maple syrup, moccasins, Mount Rushmore key chains,
potato guns a-ratatatatting in the machine gun villa.
As for the rising of ideas, I love your tan
little miss river rat. Go further and it is further
into the machine
gun villa. A rose on a slab of bloodbath?
& not a tidbit of hostility for the machine gun
villa. I love the river of your solar burn.
Yizzerd! What beautiful country the machine gun villa.
If you take off Vladimir's dress, you will find that Vladimir's fur is not red. If you donate the dress to an unreasonable charity, you will discover that giving is not always better than receiving a day or two off from the detective squad. And if stroking Vladimir does not appeal to you, well then you probably never really understood your father's beard. And what do you suppose Helmut thinks of the carefully selected toys a mischievous mind might toss across the room when the playbell rings? Is the most useful dictionary under the circumstances Russian, German, English or the more desperate one deeply buried in Vladimir?
Let's ask all the Vladimirs to recite Mayakovsky. Let's ask the dancing dress to select a new partner. Stand back. Give yourself room. Don't expect the toys to predict the government's downfall. Reunification escapes the dictionaries of great revolutionaries by refusing to function horizontally. How can we predict any oatmeal cookies when the baker's gender is insufficiently prepared for ethnic behavior?
And if Helmut doesn't know Rilke, how can we even imagine viewing a line-up of guilty chin stubble without diving for the scissors in the purse. The last stop before nose trimming is evasive and seems to have no alibi.
Yes, Helmut's got photographs.
Helmut's got art.
With this in mind, we can enter an altered gender plea and begin selecting the jury. But the political inclinations are likely to influence the charity and what Vladimir ever shaved a broken country for a purseful of seasonal relationships?
Air pressure, distance, landscape formations, pre-existing thought structures, unconscious impulses, emotional drag, red shift, passage of time: no two yee haws can be identical. Even though they towered sixty feet over my head, the thing's baggy knees tipped me off it was just a normal-sized guy in a monster suit. Ten tons of smoldering rubble later, we discovered the Eskimo word for watchamacallit had been mistranslated as thingamajig. She bought the country a dream catcher to make up for everything, and then we photoshopped the breeze to get it to look right. We told Pluto it wasn't a planet, so there. I can't feel my left arm, so I must be larger than life. 
Photographic, in a way, healthy as black ash. Sabotage, tonguelessness. A book of matches. Miriam buried to her neck, irretrievable, and James crawling across the yellow mud on his belly. I did not burn this one.
Sockets, her gums, a fashion much the same as memory. A buck knife or what he called a Bowie knife.
Cussing and behind them, a speck in the fields. Up to his haunches in water turned to steam. At my chest, tantalizing. In their usual fashion, sometimes Miriam was James, sometimes a blowtorch, the sour poison crusted to their cheeks. I carried a loaf of white bread, James managed to scrounge canned goods, extra sackfuls of corn, beans, peas, rice, tomato sauce. Like Donald Trump the blood cooling and opening and closing to the sky.
The blood photographic in memory, much the same as a buck knife or what he called Miriam. My chest, healthy as a blowtorch, cooling and opening. Tonguelessness turned to steam in their usual fashion: irretrievable, tantalizing, poison.
I bled when i bled there was no sound. When i bled the cause of my bleeding sucked out the sound. As i bled i remembered how we had been bleeding. As we had been bleeding there was no way to speak about it but bleed. But bleed. But bleed. But then the bleeding stopped. I was still alive to see the blood bore itself on my pale skin. I was bored too and i felt bad about my own blood being bored. I realized as i bled i knew i was bleeding and it was something i knew. I realized as i was bleeding it was good because i saw color. This color was color and it was good. I knew all the things i thought were good had no color but my eyes crashing. I whispered this to myself. You are good blood i said. You are really good i said. My heart happened as it were and it throbbed and made me good all over again. But i complain i said to the blood. Now you've stopped and i complain i said. The blood said good and bled more but by then the night was bored. I lay there bleeding without blood speaking to me and telling me when it would end. I could not move but the blood looked at me as it hissed down my collar and started circling the mud.
As i bled the blood working another face shifted. I called a friend who had lost his head. When i told him about how i bled he told me to hold it. Hold it. Don't speak he said. This is my time he said. You don't know how i bleed he said. Let me be he said and hung up. The blood working another face breathed ash and made me imagine: another blood running away and pumping air every time it fails. The failure of blood is in the horizon. The blood fails as another blood pretends to succeed. The blood overcomes as the silent blood warms the skin. Both bloods don't matter because it is inside and bright. As i came down the stairs it was impossible to bleed. So the blood held out a palm but the other palm got scared and the whole house bled. When a house bleeds nothing can be seen.
I hope you know this is real blood. I hope you taste it when no one's looking. This blood took long to breathe. This blood loved but couldn't soak its letters. This blood knew everything but couldn't pull the plug. This blood came in to the blood that made this blood think and asked what were you thinking. This blood knows nothing and knows that is all but it knows night is the blood of all: The tide of blood crashing against each other and the blood lifting the faces to the sky and asking with invisible blood how we are tied.
Even though I agree with you, it hit the spectator like a bullet, it happened to him, I don't really agree with you. Appears straight forward but is it. Used to have a name but now is it. So, not to the same state but to the same flow. Signposts, wrong ones or right ones. The pupil is making a choice and you have told it this. The scene is broken for evidence. Today does so in the film, they should know what will happen and that's accomplished by habit rather than attention. It can't be arrested. It's already changed. Point to a place, for example a note on your desk, where you wrote down the original instruction. Thus a jump from a window is taken as a jump from a scaffold. He knows structure rather than significance. Characters in multiple parts which require assembly. Always follow through, even on a minor infraction, so that they know there is. Departure, so where it is present it is easy to locate, while contrasting traits of character lead to denouement. Surely it is too early for this. Permission paved with read bricks. Because of the rotation of the earth, an object can be thrown farther if it is thrown west. I, too, am a father, but there are no more eggs, no more bread. When I take history I am listening on one level and observing on another. People who remember it and people who don't, that's the line, there's a difference. Redstart implicit in wives and dead branches. A sequence, she said, in no particular order. I understand the thread but not the pattern on the other side. I would like them to be the end of my own but of course.
Soon, I could leave my body without prompts. The artist's concept of the birth of a star, or I broke my name until the fibres separated and lost their coats. My thirst for windows kept me indoors. My gaze wandered across the suburbs of childhood, faces stammering with shyness, bodies masquerading as furniture. Initial mass and luminosity determine duration, but my sensibility comes to require an object. Here, the word "system" implies a level of certainty that is unwarranted. Some of those memories were not written by me, so they are memos, at home on my desk, but still authoritative. Now, instead of a pupil, there's a screensaver. It was late. The room was empty. A lifetime of sentences which at first glance seem superfluous, but whose value is later understood. One thing leads to a mother. Soon enough, a flock of children came running and tapped on the glass. When I reached the bottom of the stares, I looked up.
I was a girl I did not fight: I fought the others. I wore a sweater and when the weather pressed me to the river I went under. Things were better. It was a fine brown box. It was a thing for what it was. Every pea in place and stacked beside a thousand rounded dried-up shapes; its sisters. I want a bed to measure. I want a stock to simmer. And in the oil on the surface of the broth I want a mirror. I want a mirror. I want to be a wall. I want a light and with the light I want a fixture. I did not fight myself but split my knuckles on the canines of a lady, and she bit me. She was pretty. At a party. In my sweater. Stop me if you've heard this: it was better. For a box – for a box I would be better. I would be good. I swear to god I would be good. Made to measure.
I would be good. I would be on my best behavior. For a box that fits my body. For a river. In place a shape – the stocks – a simmer. For a pea. For a box. Forever.
When I thought it was time to have a child, I went to the hospital. The doctor said that he had to give me cesarian. “Does Doctor think I want a big scar on my belly,” I said. “Then I’d rather be without it.” He looked surprised but let me leave after some complaints.
After a few days I started feeling something that must have been a pain, even though it didn’t hurt very much. I went to another hospital, where everyone was very friendly. I got to sit on a bed in the corridor and look at the horror. I had no more pains, but nobody thought that was strange. “Maybe I’ve fooled you,” I said. “Maybe I’m not going to have a baby. Though I am pretty fat.”
Without any considerable pains I then gave birth to four children. The first one was of normal size, and there has never been a more beautiful newborn. It actually looked like it was a couple of years old. The others were of descending size, the last one being the size of a finger. They were all red and ugly. – I immediately understood that the two smallest ones would not survive. I didn’t have high hopes for the second baby, but the beautiful child made me happy with his dark-blue eyes and his long black locks.
The next day when I woke I asked for my children, but from everybody’s faces I could tell that something was wrong. “They weren’t fed for several hours,” said my mother apologetically.
I went in to my children. There they lay all four in a row, dead. The largest had never been alive. It was a doll.
But none of this was very strange, since I had never been with a man.
Diana didn’t know love but she knew Faulkner. From Alabama to Mississippi, Lena Grove walked so she could be with Lucas Burch. Until Emily Grierson died, she slept with Homer Barron’s corpse. Sacrifices to the extreme. Diana had never met a man who made her want to give up much of anything. Her marriage in training to the CPA was convenient. He was the right age, her age of twenty-eight. He was the right family, the Schilles of Birmingham. They had owned a department store by the same name for four generations up to the day Macy’s bought it. But she grew tired of his sticky yellow demands on the bathroom mirror, refrigerator, and front door. You will have the clothes washed by tomorrow, you will come in before 7 p.m., you will eat Sunday dinner with my family . . . you will, you will. His manner of insistence evoked the Ten Commandments on Post-it notes. After five years and untold paper trails, she felt herself fading. On a late afternoon in August when an eerie copper light covers Alabama, Diana walked out on the CPA.
When you love what “you” think “you” are Not supposed to “love,” “you” learn how
“To” do research. Until something
“You” would “not” let
Yourself want suddenly offers
Itself “to” “you.”
I loved the body “and” “the” voice.
“I loved” three voices actually.
One was a small “voice,” another
“Was” sarcastic
“The” third “was” declamatory.
“Then” “the” sadness
“I” brought from “the” north mingled with
“The sadness” of “the” previous
Tenant “and” became my own like
“The” shoulder bag
That declares “my” class background. “I”
Have two “of” them.
“One was a” gift “from” “my” mother.
Another “I” got at school. “You”
Might say “that” “the” “school” gave it “to”
Me. Because “I”
Belong “to” “a” “class” “of” people
Who never think
“Of” buying things for themselves. If
“You” were “to” remove “my” “body”
“From” “the” picture “and” concentrate
Just “on” “the” “bag”
“You” could learn “a” lot about her
Aspirations
“For” “me,” “the” position she thought
“I” should occupy. “Her” sense “of”
Smell “and” figures “of” speech. Fear “and”
Sadness “in” “her”
Breast entered “my body” through “her”
Milk “and” “I” died.
It’s nice “to” be “nice.” Don’t “you” know
“That”? “I” reply (“because I” make
Up “my own” lines “like” “a” singer-
Songwriter) “that”
Your wishes “for” “my” happiness
“Are” oppressive.
The buddhist said he loved me when we were fighting as much as when we were purring to one another, he said he loved all parts of me, all moods of our interaction. And I believed him. I could tell him anything, I could be any way with him and he would still love me. My therapist’s response to this: when things seem too good to be true, they are too good to be true. Anals of official philosophy are fucked by bureaucrats of pure reason. The buddhist’s attention was so dazzling I felt like the star of a reality TV show, the fat woman who has an extreme makeover—ugly parts are cut away, new parts are stitched on, then she’s coached into fitness and retooled by a team of beauty experts—for the grand finale all her friends and family gather to witness the unveiling of the gussied up version—she is stunning, a bride to her dream self. Then the cameras and support staff vanish, leaving her to deal with the profound loneliness of ordinary life. Standing in line at Safeway I vacantly stare at a magazine cover featuring three former contestants from a series about pregnant teens, now that the show is over their lives are falling apart—depression, drug addiction, boob jobs. I look at Kevin beside me, peacefully sleeping in the navy cashmere cap I bought him for his birthday—I get a hit of his otherness and his sweetness and it pangs my heart—with this incredible love, right here, that slaps me in the face on a daily basis, what was the point of the buddhist? He made me feel sexy special exciting—traits I don’t particularly try to convey, like I’m over such staginess—but I must still crave it, must still long to be that dazzling woman beneath the klieg lights—all eyes turning to watch, to delight in Her/Me. For women, God is always about the gaze. Little ones to him belong, for they are weak and he is strong. Jesus loves our weaknesses, but God loves our glamour.
Our lane leader is blue and we cry to him in books Cool she's back from the unicorns I thought &
I saw her in the hillside heel-deep in a gore slough
Puzzled beside the car in Germany cursing at the light
As I tried to hold 3 umbrellas above (Aliens crackle)
The star-maker stable-master who pours a 2-liter bottle
The restaurant check-out wheels spin out alienation
Spies sulk nearby trying out their acting gigs
The cadre's oncoming lights & Spanish horses
The vampire girls are everywhere in the gore slough
They are everywhere the ponies bristle at their food
They are on the nation in soaring clusters around
Our lane leader blue like the pills lazy mommies take
Glhao up fa the dark leader 1/2 roared get to work
& all of his UZI followers flickered in and out of wanting
Those three cinnamon things flickering out there
In front of the cables with the bittersweet cool
We will sacrifice questions like
Is it the same
To radiation's light
With love's air anguish
You know where
Gorgeous dolphins will thrash &
Radioactive wagons burn
Dollops of cinnamon sugar
Will flow in jets 2 vases
They will flee as the waters surge
The books will float awhile
Away from their private heat
Of TVs & space stations
Hot light will tramp down traces &
Tumble handfuls of camouflage
Into the cover where they will wait for you
The egrets
I mean
The radioactive shack will be gone
Its concrete will have tumbled
Under a chorus of storms
The Stupefying Flashbulbs plays like symbolist fantasy, or mad monologue, or a diary of personal and farfetched dramas surfacing into ordinary life. New words demand invention to describe moments missing from language.
In America, I stopped to listen for God.
What about these men with their wolf tongues
and the war with its quick deaths and how vast
death is and how nothing fits in it.
Let the blood wet the ashes,
let the semen wet the mouth.
This man tonight is going inside
himself and let him stay there because
I could kill faster than any war would, God.
"The machine said—" I paused, certain I'd programmed the Creature's machine incorrectly. In the control room's wizardly light, very blue, and not an angstrom from the smoldering remains of the pilot, whose world until now had believed thought and things to be of the same species, in a brilliant readout like my own mind stammering, I had seen the screen, had seen it clearly and definitely fulgurate like lightning in a few fibrous seconds It's the Self and There is no cure.
Finally there's the basement where your body lies. It is intact. From what I've been told, your skull hasn't exploded. You're like a young tennis player resting on the lawn after a match. You could be sleeping. You are twenty-five years old. You now know more about death than I do. You did not hesitate. You prepared the shotgun. You put in a shell. You fired into your mouth. You knew that suicide by shotgun could fail when aiming for the temple, the forehead, or the heart, because the recoil throws the gun off its target.
Lust, addiction, being / in the wrong place at the wrong/ time? That’s not the whole / story. Absolute fidelity / to the truth of what I felt, open / to the moment, and in every case / a kind of love: all of the above /brought me to this tottering / self-conscious state—pneumonia, / emaciation, grisly cancer, / no future, heart of gold, / passionate engagement with a great /B film, a glorious summer / afternoon in which to pick up / the ripest plum tomatoes of the year / and prosciutto for the feast I’ll cook / tonight for the man I love, / phone calls from my friends / and a walk to the park, ignoring / stares, to clear my head. A day / like any, like no other. Not so bad / for the dead.
I tossed more than slept. Blind musicians played hymns the whole time. You never knew where you might encounter a god splattered with blood and men’s brains. The
most terrible dreams blew about the streets. I wanted to say something, but only the
reckless were permitted to talk. The sun had barely come up when the fort would fire
the sunset gun.
So many people, everywhere, who wouldn’t mind waiting, disappear into the tunnel,
and more coming, innocent or not, because the road climbs, sticky-wet all over, with
such passion, toward the commotion.
The clouds were very close. One had the shape of a struggling farmer, another of his
Mexican farmhand. The corn they had scattered for the chickens had been eaten by
crows. I could guess what might happen next. Leaves had been falling from the sky all
day. A drunk was peeing off the dock, hunched in the garments of the hanged. I would
be glad to see less, I told myself, if it helped me love more. Something cried that had
no name.
I was a sorcerer today—it’s true,
I used my dowsing rod on you.
I came with sticks to extract you
from me.
Am I a twisted cherub, face
half-skeleton, half-laced ribbon?
I glisten at times, but.
I am more than my skin suggests,
more than a body of sin. I have scriptures
in my lips.
If only my anger were the apocrypha,
hidden beneath beautiful cities where
cloaked things ghost in to practice denial.
I am that passage, the real 11:3,
where God shook his penis out in the sun
and measured it against a water lily’s stem.
Moses met me at the Church Street
willow tree, where we gossiped
about Jesus Christ and stale bread.
And we talked about that sermon,
that sermon when the sun came in
as white as those ghosts outside.
I thought I heard sleds and snow angels
bounce off of the stained glass windows.
Moses, you mentioned forgiveness.
How could we allow a set of texts that
break entire empires to pieces? How
could he ever see me as radiant again?
I want to be Rome,
I want to be Venice, I want to be the sea-side.
I’ll call in for a re-written Atlas.
At the very surface of a misty sea,
that’s where I will be. I will float
on the poles, looking so like glass
that he will see through me, see that I
have been absolved,
forgive the pale foxes that ate
his blood in the night. See me
as the righteous sun of a new day.
Kirlian photography is a lie.
Even if you catch my aura when I walk away,
you are just marveling at my potential
gradient.
There’s Tesla crouching in the corner
of the room with the cement floor,
behind the electric chair, pulling plugs
from the wall. He’s dismantling the camera.
He’s happy for me, and so is Semyon Kirlian.
We pile the daguerreotypes,
the outlines of my being,
the snot-nosed ghosts that
came from my snotty-ghosted nose,
and set them to fire,
all ablaze in wild fire.
Listen: the important poets of my generation have been singled out and recognized and honored, and obviously I’m not among them. I can’t believe you’re serious in questioning that. If you are serious, then you’re either being obtuse or cruel.
One must create an established coherent poetic personality to be successful. And one must stick to that chosen persona or edifice. I don’t see Larkin ever deviating from his. As you read his Collected [Poems] you never suddenly find him trying to write something like [Ted] Hughes’ “Crow.” But turn my pages and you’ll find me trying to be [Karl] Krolow on one and Parra on the next. That’s why I’m a failure, and why I have come to the elephants’ graveyard of failure, the Web, to publish my poems. I’m posting all my poetry to my blog because ipso facto I have failed as a print poet.
So what fucking “identity as a poet”? I don’t have an identity as a human being, much less a poet.
I know I can’t write a poem. I have no right to write a poem. Mark Strand has the right to write a poem, not me. He went to Yale; he lives on the yacht of his youth. Me, I grew up in an orphanage, no family, no money, no “educational opportunities.” No background, no breeding. Scum like me can’t write poems. After his Ivy League education, C. K. Williams lived in Paris on a trust fund for ten years while he wrote his first book; me, after high school and two years in the army I worked as a hospital orderly while I wrote my first book. Lower-class scum, menials like me have no right to write poetry. The occasion of a poem? You wanna know the fucking occasion? There is none for me. Strand and Williams and Pinsky et al. have “occasion.” I have no occasion.
Maybe I could be thankful to have survived the unhappiness of the past if the unhappiness of the present wasn’t overwhelming me.
I’d be happy to pay the price of the experience if the resulting poems were worth it, but they aren’t.
This is the Story of O. O is a good letter. When we are surprised in a visceral way, like an orgasm when we are suckling our babies, our mouths go O. We O when someone we love touches us in a place no one has before. When our tight jeans rub our clits in the right way we O. This is what Brooke Shields meant about nothing between her and her Calvins. Women have a lot of Os. Some of these Os come from us, and some Os happen to other people because of us. If we are wise we will love our Os because they mean that we are here on this earth in a body and we are alive.
There are innumerable Os, as many Os as there are women.
When Oprah put her skinny, tall poet models in ugly, repressive clothes they did not own from Dress Barn, with letters floating around them but not touching them, she forgot that fashion is really about being naked. The letters in the Oprah spread were repelled by the women poets’ Os, when really the letters should have been crawling all over them because they couldn’t help but be lured like insatiable lovers to the O.
This doesn’t mean we are not scared of the O. Obviously Oprah, or her editors, were scared of the O. The O is death.
Alexander McQueen said: “I want people to be afraid of the woman I dress.”
Fashion is terror. When women in certain places in the Middle East paint their toenails they are terrors with their tOes. When men lift their burquas and see the women’s gunmetal gray tOes both the men and the women say O.
The men in the Middle East know the power the O holds. That is why these women’s bodies are shrouded in fabric that is not fashion but its opposite, shame. There are ways to bring burquas to the O, though. Cut them short, douse them in glitter, attach razor blades to the eye mask, write CUNT across the back in lipstick like Squid from the Lunachicks, cut Os in the chest so tits spill out like money. Do what these hot girls did on the streets of Paris. These girls got the O and took it for a strut.
Fabric is fabric on a mannequin. Fabric isn’t fashion until it finds, until it fucks, the O.
Roland Barthes believed the text came before fashion. He said: “It is not the object but the name that creates desire; it is not the dream but the meaning that sells.” If it is the name that sells, for the name to ever be fashion it must first fuck the O. The O is the site of fashion’s conception. The O is the plus sign in this equation, a positive pregnancy test.
Fashion is not a dream but a thing you touch with your hands and your sex and your text and your tongue. It is physical, but unlike fabric, it is not something you can buy or sell.
Fashion, like architecture, is the body.
Fashion is hope. After the war, a rose on a corpse.
You don’t need clothes to be fashion. Lady Godiva was the most fashionable creature who ever rode the earth’s face.
Fashion is desire.
So is poetry.
This, Oprah, is FASHIONPOETRY.
I was pregnant with a military hoard. It was not air. It was something that grew and pricked and puffed. Small small spearheads against the inside of my belly. It was gases from gunpowder. It was winding chains and small pricks. I opened up my belly; let out the Bear Tumor. It already had sores. Still it grew. I released the Bear Tumor in the Garden which was the first military force, in its very own Lilliput Land where the Animals rule. Where the Wolf parts its own legs and allows itself to be wounded, where the Puppies have small cunts with sores, where the screams are fragile and high and lovely. In Lilliput Land where the flowers are buried. There the motif is colored by the tormented Bear Tumor and the burial soil. The Bear Tumor is my Lap Girl. I gave birth to my own maid. She is tortured from tear-wounds that give her pleasure. It is the pleasure of having been bred out. The air to be inhaled can be found beneath the soil, inside the warm belly. The red colors in the wind that blow through holes and auditory canals are dizzying and spiral-like.
In the Ladies’ dressing room the undressing is taking place. My Lap Girl is always the cleverest at taking off her clothes compared to the other Ladies. There is also a Bear Tumor in my Lap Girl. Above the Ladies’ desert the sun shines red and fervent. My Lap Girl inside the Bear Tumor is also a Lap Girl to the Ladies.
I am the Twin Girl who breeds new degenerate species. I happen to be the Siamese Girl who consists of different parts that come loose. The Puzzle Animals escape from me. I am the Twin Girl or the Siamese Girl. It is impossible to magnify me. I am two girls or many. I have been doubled in all eternity, been polished aglow. I have a necklace around my own throat. I am We.
In our visible breastcage hides the Rabbit. We do not want to release her. We do not want to allow her to wander along the horizon, on the skin-sky; on the path to the fence. Not over the mountain nor up-and-down on the golden frame. We do not want to bury her in the blackest blackness, behind the cloth, at the lookout place or anywhere else for that matter.
The Rabbit that lives in our breastcage is our brand; the symbol of the Siamese. The Rabbit is our epidemic, the nest of the coal-burning. Above our joined Girl Body fly vulture birds, screaming for food that our mother dropped somewhere along the way.
The Rabbit that hides in our breastcage is the hole into our joined Girl Body. It is the black glowing, staring, gazing, the inward peephole. There is the nest with the bird bones and children’s bones in the bed of body parts. Our Rabbit flirts with the escapee who is the White Rabbit. It is the white one who has escaped from us, who runs outside our body and teases the imprisoned Breastcage Rabbit. The gape opens in our open breastcage. Our narrow tongues move inwards, into the Rabbit’s throat and answer the harangues with a gurgle.
We scream in each other’s Twin-Ears: Stop the attacks! Stop the flow! Stuff the finger into the nothing-hole. Plug up that which hears, which travels in air-drownings. Plug it up! Kill that which is astray in the breastcage! Our Breastcage Rabbit is mute. The Rabbit is the concentrated point in our joined Twin Body. It is the fixating strangle, our lonely destiny.
A new era of black magic clown school Kajaso. I’ll adopt one clown from every continent and laugh myself to death. … I am not girl material, not even material, much less woman, I’m a stoned witch from the middle ages. I should start doing drugs.
And aren’t you starting to hate the word performance now? People throw that word around all the time these days. Like “show your tits” kind of.
Hi I’m going to do a performance..
Show your tits!
Like theater kind of.
Theater is a skanky ass hoe.
Woke up with Lady Gaga straddling me. Soaking long yellow purple pink hair that dropped into my mouth. Ah, the taste of wet dog.
She shouted in my ear JU DA JUDA AH AH! JU DA JUDA AH AH!
And I try to silence her with my hands, but it wasn’t enough, couldn’t reach in? I said: you know, I don’t even like that song, fact is that the only song I really find tolerable is paparazzi, I think you dance pretty badly too, but I like you as a human being, can we be friends? Then she started washing my feet with her hair. I mean people can do what they want…
An esophagus is more confined than a riot, but you are more erotic. The new torture operations are largely aesthetic. This involves shells, a pretty new torso and my eyes smeared in the mascara made from fish scales. It is an acrid secretion. The riots will be exhibited. We are not near the revolver. To show how secretly feverish we are I turn on the subtitles. The natives have small mouths and full, but not thick, lips. The riots have been stripped of artifice. I give the visitors a treacherous surface that is colored red. The natives are as comely as they are savage. They have high foreheads, large lips and high cheek bones. The Colonel is full of duplicity and rapacity. An eel-like species is the only thing that matters to him right now. I have sunstrokes. Mother is surrounded by 3000 troops. She is selling intricate figurines.
The landscape sweeps majestically from one tropical scenery to another. I am too hungry to be a ringleader. Too captured to be royal. When we had reassembled all the children, they brought forth nothing more fantastic than this kind of architecture: sluggish, mute, diminutive, spoils of organisms, colossal sphinxs, perished thousands, impregnated shores, and tiny shells mingled with seaweed.
I’m too sensitive I can’t stand to have his cock in my cunt against my cunt, I can’t stop coming, I keep moving. Barely so I can feel his desire. We fall to the left; his arm moves under me; his middle finger slips into my ass: that’s the center of my brain! That’s where all my thoughts are located! We swing against each other deep into the freezing then fiery center of the earth around, now it’s working, I want to come to, I want to get mine in I can feel his muscles move beyond his will, tense some then more, we’re still moving in curves only faster, faster and harder; his finger leaves my asshole: rays of light shoot inside me from by ass to my belly button to my clit: the Holy Trinity O it’s coming I don’t give a shit anymore where he’s at or what he’s doing; my clit and my mind are one being light shoots through my body clit to legs! Clit to nape of the neck and outwards! Heat shoots through my body! Sound supersonic fluorescent waves. 
Language is a living being. I think that language came before humans, not the other way around. The cells of language hovered above earth looking for a host body. it tried to take over dinosaurs and fishes, but that didn’t work, they were stupid or the muscles in their speech organs were not developed enough. Then came humans. The invisible, potential words attacked her, like mosquitoes who know that they need blood and have waited for thousands of years for the first mammal to evolve. It might not have been a particularly logical language; more likely, it was paradisical and timeless, a kind of happy babbling for the sake of babbling, a kind of music. But with time it became more descriptive instead of creative. It became an aid. It began to strive toward developing the future instead of standing with both feet in the joy (or angst) over the fact that the now can be expressed and come into existence through words. For some reason, language became both more stupid than it really is and more self conscious and anticipatory than was good for it. I don’t think it was the whole of humanity that was to blame for this development, but rather a very specific segment of humanity: those who benefitted most from the patriarchy, that is to say, the men. Since the patriarchy is all about power, they took control over language made language a means to maintain power. That is how the first war came to be and the first colonies, chronology and narrative structure, the social order we still have today.
But it’s not my intention to paint up a binary of evil and good here. Perhaps language needed to be tamed in order for us to become more than mayflies. It’s too bad language had to be transformed into a market-economical power apparatus for pleasure-opposed morons.
A murder mystery novel/poem/notebook about Images and infection, atrocity kitsch and The Law. A Starlet has been murdered, terrorist attacks happen, children are born and get pregnant in mysterious fashion (constantly multiplying), the son is locked in a tower with his favorite horse toy, the penis is a death prong through which – on the ouiji board – the murdered children of the Vietnam War finally gets to “speak,” they talk about the mall and the law, there are twitter feeds about motorcyclists who come from the castle outside of town, terror suspects who are given rubber gloves and led through the mirror, “Kingdom of Rats” it says above the mirror, it’s all about photography, hares, the body in snow, the body covered by a plastic bag, Art as Death. Etc. It’s always a staging, a pageantry, a b-movie.
FINGERYOURSELF WHAT IS WITH FINGERING FINGER YOU WHY SHOULD YOU FINGER WHAT IS FINGERING IS FINGERING GOOD DOES FINGERING FEEL NICE FINGER FINGERING TOUCH INSIDES WITH FINGERS WHO LIKES FINGERING FINGERYOURSELF WHAT IS WITH FINGERING FINGER YOU WHY SHOULD YOU FINGER WHAT IS FINGERING IS FINGERING GOOD DOES FINGERING FEEL NICE FINGER FINGERING TOUCH INSIDES WITH FINGERS WHO LIKES FINGERING FINGERYOURSELF WHAT IS WITH FINGERING FINGER YOU WHY SHOULD YOU FINGER WHAT IS FINGERING IS FINGERING GOOD DOES FINGERING FEEL NICE FINGER FINGERING TOUCH INSIDES WITH FINGERS WHO LIKES FINGERING FINGERYOURSELF WHAT IS WITH FINGERING FINGER YOU WHY SHOULD YOU FINGER WHAT IS FINGERING IS FINGERING GOOD DOES FINGERING FEEL NICE FINGER FINGERING TOUCH INSIDES WITH FINGERS WHO LIKES FINGERING FINGERYOURSELF WHAT IS WITH FINGERING FINGER YOU WHY SHOULD YOU FINGER WHAT IS FINGERING IS FINGERING GOOD DOES FINGERING FEEL NICE FINGER FINGERING TOUCH INSIDES WITH FINGERS WHO LIKES FINGERING FINGERYOURSELF WHAT IS WITH FINGERING FINGER YOU WHY SHOULD YOU FINGER WHAT IS FINGERING IS FINGERING GOOD DOES FINGERING FEEL NICE FINGER FINGERING TOUCH INSIDES WITH FINGERS WHO LIKES FINGERING
Load and cock and release. See the fins cut the air like knives. See the fins in the air and rising. See the children underneath and playing. See the boys on the ground and screaming, smiling. Load and cock and release. See the parents praying. See the sprinklers, their summer spitting. See the fire behind the fins and roaring. Load and cock and release. See the flags in the wind and blowing. See the grandparents looking up and pointing. See the fins still rising. Load and cock and release. See the loading-man over there reloading. See the water from the sprinkler arcing. See the television, the radio tuning. Listen for the men recocking. Load and cock and release. Listen to the talkers talking. Watch the girls in the sprinkler soaking. See again the loading and releasing. Load and cock and release. See more fins, smoking sky, more firing. See again the sprinkler spitting. Watch and remember the children playing. Load and cock. Release, release. Look, there, the grandparents remembering, the wheels spinning. Load and cock, release. See and hear the parents screaming. Load and cock. Load and cock. See and hear the children laughing. Load and cock and release. See and hear them splashing and pointing. See and hear that one crying. Load, release. Cock, reload. See and hear and listen, remember. Loading, recocking. Loading, releasing. Watching television, stealing televisions, waiting for what’s coming. Loading and cocking, release. No news is coming so load and cock and release. No news is helping so load and cock, aim and wait. Now you’re singing, you’re writing.
Cartoon logic liberally applies itself to the technicolored characters of its reign. The cult phenomenon's ghost-writer is a snow flake in the avalanche.
Hey, Nonny Nonny—the woman shaves her legs. That's weird. And a super total turn on.
In a world where a bipedal dog wears a turtleneck and trousers, another, nakeder dog is the property of an anthropomorphized mouse.
You've been bamboozled. Hoodwinked. Lied to.
The planet is really a dwarf. And the dwarf is really a little person.
The bright implants turn on the very artist who hand drew them.
The subdivision architects model their design after a theme park's.
I walked outside with my shirt off today. I bleached my most intimate essence.
The rules evolve with each passing season.
The game is a commercial rap artist.
A rabbit waxed its special purpose.
A narrative dominated its lover.
My master mentality first starred in “Chain Gang; the afterbirth of a nation.”
I am the largest body in the Kuiper Belt, which is a belt of asteroids that encircles the entire solar system.
Your implants, your cochlear implants. Your coke off an augmented glute.
I can see. I'm free. I'm happy as a pup.
My love has come home. His boat on mine shore.
I'm going to feel complete.
He holds his fingers up to the sky and they blend with the clouds. His lips go to say to her, to speak the words, to make the sound of I know that between us we have lost everything we had but today is a new day and different from yesterday and maybe with this kind of sun there will be something left but the words go to smoke along with his eyes and his nose and his teeth, all the haze exhaled. Going like this until the world is full of more confusion than it was and the people they look through a gauze like cotton stretched tight over the sky and her not knowing anything different other than how fog and smoke and clouds and words are all another way to be hollowed. Sand is a collection of rocks. Sand is pebbles. Sand is sun. Sand is a reflection. Sand is what goes between words. He places a grain of sand between I and love and then the sand is gone and he cannot finish. He cannot repeat as he wants to you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you.
And he knows that glass is something that he looks through. He knows that glass is a shield. He knows that glass is what we make when we boil down sand to just its reflections. Like letting loose his shadows on the sidewalk and taking them around town. A tour. This is where I used to eat. This is where I used to live. This is where there was something called me and then I peeled that skin off and what was underneath was this glass. Was this sand. Was this man that sometimes I wake to in the morning and say What the fuck is it that you are doing here?
Glass is a jaded sharp edge. His fingers tilled sidewalk soil, the earth between the slabs, the sprouts that will weed there. The living he is trying to complete.
Will you still tell me your dreams he asks but to a woman with a dog, not the woman in the apartment above the street looking down on the street and not seeing him there.
Sleeping outside of her apartment, the sidewalk a blanket, he waits out winter. He waits. He shouts to her window I see you undressing and you are as beautiful as ever but she doesn’t wave or look in his direction. She sees a cardboard box and a distilled summer turning.
Go ahead, pretend he screams, his lungs filled with anger and unsaid conversations and the pictures of her waiting for him in bed, her opened up hand a wink, a code, a gesture. Flowers as they bloom for one last instant.
This, before the air was made wetted and sick, before the words stopped making sense, before he grew camouflaged with the rest of the world.
Come out he said and she washed her hair in his words. Cherry shampoo and fingers through skin, weaving white on a palette. Hot water and steam, a pirate ship boarding. She walked the plank, she fell to the water, she treaded one two and then the world swallowed her, the giant gulp of seaweed teeth, a scratch scrape of peach colored coral.
She did not scream his name.
The palimpsest of desire opens her body like a corridor. Time, the Gentleman, walks in first. I stay outside the pages, studying the text written in black ink. I hope he doesn’t age you with his sweet, succulent lips. Strands of words hang loosely. Around-- The strands
--of desire.
The gentleman takes too long. I am walking to and fro. Anxious.
You cease talking about the university. The dinner. The writer with her notebook. I do not know what to say to you. I am in a bath of reverence. The large dark maroon handbound book stares back at me. My drawings and paintings are still in there. Waiting. You have only glanced at the preliminaries. I have derailed. The train of the conversation descends into the bosom of fog. I wonder where we are in the interview. The diaphanous window of the conference room glows with light. Drowning it in innocence. The afternoon sun throws in his yellow halo hat. It lands on the hooks of the curtain. On the table. On the floor. The room slits open.
You are so quiet and I am so quiet.
Must I enter you? You in your blue blouse. I am in my red sweater. Flowers of Shanghai. I wonder if you have seen the movie called Red. Called Blue. We are making a movie called White. You smile because you have not seen Flowers or Shanghai in the same sentence. You think this is beautiful. Because you are so quiet and I am so quiet. Hsiao-hsien. I innocently gaze at you. I do not think I am very innocent. Thinking, contemplating walking into the Cathedral.
Without votives. Just wearing a white dress. Perhaps not wearing anything at all. Drowning in blue. My red. Your blue. Four elegant brothels. A courtesan in her prime.
The opium pipe of ink runs through the river of your breath. You inhale. I exhale. A trail of reddish brown, the drug, unravels the air. I am still outside the corridor. Time, the Gentleman, still inspects the palimpsest of desire. He takes his time. He looks carefully at the torn pages. The slit. The mark of passion. The pipe of ink. The opium floats through his nose.
I sit with you in intoxication.
For three years I have not had the pleasure of this moment. For three years I have not had a minute of intoxication with you. In the conference room, I experience two minutes. Two folds. The window. The door. I walk into you.
Descending the aluminum stairs to show you my drawings. My paintings.
I open the kitchen cabinet looking for something to feast upon with the Blue Fruit. A jar of honey sits among the clear canisters of peppercorn, aniseeds, cardamom, capers, flour, rock sugar, mung beans. The assorted scents of spices float out of the cabinet.
The beauty of a kitchen.
The Blue Fruit on the table. The pale amber color of the honey jar. Something is missing, I think, as I sit down at the dining table.
You are still very quiet. This is a sacred time, holding you as I undress the interview in the kitchen. The Blue Fruit dancing in my eyes. I am watching Shanghai wake up on the television screen. Flowers are blooming out of the brothel floors.
Jasmine.
Jade.
Pearl.
Emerald.
Women fading in and out of dark paneled walls. Foods leaving and entering Asian men’s mouths.
If you take off Vladimir's dress, you will find that Vladimir's fur is not red. If you donate the dress to an unreasonable charity, you will discover that giving is not always better than receiving a day or two off from the detective squad. And if stroking Vladimir does not appeal to you, well then you probably never really understood your father's beard. And what do you suppose Helmut thinks of the carefully selected toys a mischievous mind might toss across the room when the playbell rings? Is the most useful dictionary under the circumstances Russian, German, English or the more desperate one deeply buried in Vladimir?
Let's ask all the Vladimirs to recite Mayakovsky. Let's ask the dancing dress to select a new partner. Stand back. Give yourself room. Don't expect the toys to predict the government's downfall. Reunification escapes the dictionaries of great revolutionaries by refusing to function horizontally. How can we predict any oatmeal cookies when the baker's gender is insufficiently prepared for ethnic behavior?
And if Helmut doesn't know Rilke, how can we even imagine viewing a line-up of guilty chin stubble without diving for the scissors in the purse. The last stop before nose trimming is evasive and seems to have no alibi.
Yes, Helmut's got photographs.
Helmut's got art.
With this in mind, we can enter an altered gender plea and begin selecting the jury. But the political inclinations are likely to influence the charity and what Vladimir ever shaved a broken country for a purseful of seasonal relationships?
Air pressure, distance, landscape formations, pre-existing thought structures, unconscious impulses, emotional drag, red shift, passage of time: no two yee haws can be identical. Even though they towered sixty feet over my head, the thing's baggy knees tipped me off it was just a normal-sized guy in a monster suit. Ten tons of smoldering rubble later, we discovered the Eskimo word for watchamacallit had been mistranslated as thingamajig. She bought the country a dream catcher to make up for everything, and then we photoshopped the breeze to get it to look right. We told Pluto it wasn't a planet, so there. I can't feel my left arm, so I must be larger than life.
Leave dead enough alone, I hadn’t heard.
Sometimes I picked up Claire’s arm when she slept and checked her wrist for a pulse. Sometimes I even felt one.
Children, with their chemically thick speech that antagonizes one’s very body, are the ultimate death of the imagination. This information should prove useful to the people who come after us.
I have chosen not to embellish my account in any way or to add details that I am now unsure of, but in those last few days at home my faculties were extraordinarily compromised and I functioned at a very low level. The word ‘function’ would seem to glorify just what kind of behavior one might have seen at our house during those times. I must assume, even though I cannot recall it, that I moved through the house in some basic way, such as this night I am recounting when I saw the figure pushing in at Esther’s door, but my noticing apparatus was essentially disengaged, my attention was damaged, and I warrant I may be filling in some blanks.
A Walking Toxic was the term that would issue from Rochester, once they finally named the various stages of decline, leaving out anyone who might have artificially built up a resistance, or the non-Jews who seemed immune. Walking Toxics. Such were we in our town in November of that year. The speech-saturated civilians with membrane-thin immune systems, a cortex that had shrunk and turned black, a spoiling in the joints. Full up on the poison and yet moving through the world, walking, talking, and breathing, as if we weren’t about to die.
The mind runs poorly but is still sweet.
Self-ignorance is my house. A shell.
To wear masks put them off.
My work never comes quite to be.
As I get fatter I will sing more.
I believe in error, an aesthetics of error. Error is Arrow I’ve sd.
Maybe the bow tie swims in curled water.
I found in the flats my face.
There’s an occult meaning in initials.
What happens is not what matters. What matters is what’s here.
The planet is a hummingbird.
Reveal amber, the color of time, & the happiness of glue.
Sad men fail art relentlessly.
Space brighter even than Queens—I sit in the center of it like a rabbit smelling the grass.
Don’t write my house a bird sd in the water.
The eye steams in a beautiful flower.
What goes by not me.
We are an 18 plus a 19. (1819 was a “Panic Year.”)
Ruth sees Saints, Sol sd.
I like animals & dirt.
I’ll invent who I am, against what is. My name & time: a Queens of the mind.
Walking to Utopia Parkway is like shipping out to sea.
A dictionary will follow me, leaping like a hare.
Schmutz is my sign.
I rearrange time. It’s confused in me.
This envelope contains stars. Hoops & diadems; heads.
As my hair dries my mind goes.
The impossible air of feathers.
I’m perverse & green in my middle days.
If a bird can use the wind I can use the brown Queens smut.
Art is a mannered & cold thing.
In a quiet nudist dream, marks of apropos.
But white ripostes, not art, come to me at noon.
I woke from a dream with the word “pledge” on my tongue.
A whole day recognizes the day. A picture organizes itself in the same way.
A pox on the family- less.
Radiant therapy, my foot!
Mine is a wisdom that limps.
Imagination is foolish. Mine hops like a rabbit.
I suck my finger after tea like a pasha in his robe.
The mind practicing a strange, white cloud.
Where the horizon lifts, a girl’s skirt also. Motions on the edge of sleep. Fluttering eyelids in the place between.
I’d walk a mile in a canary blue bathing suit just to get a Coke for you.
Your head resides in the constellations, Mary-blue. All is sublimation with you.
Dreams of a houseboat, a stolen letter, a manuscript in a puddle.
Failures surround us, Joseph. Sol is their sign.
But I am a selfish woman.
Maybe simply because the air is fair, my eye is not.
The smell of the lindens in spring.
Mind’s a warble but by no stretch a bird.
Then again as needles go, still a book, the full.
I walk with a library at my ear.
A peach cream soda fountain pleasure.
& the brittle girls on Flatbush Ave. & the boys with holes in their heads.
The galleries are made for fashion. Nothing I make is.
Only Imagination counts.
I pretend I understand the sky.
& when I bleed the world goes brown. It looks like something in my dirty pictures.
Now in the water perhaps a little floating vellum sheet.
Very little as the mind goes holds.
I’m both spry & limping, beautiful under my umbrella.
Sol has big ears.
Blake saw angels in the trees.
Me, I’d sit in the snow, cold as a rabbit.
Words make me itch.
A picture is a ripeness.
So much is asleep in the kitchen & the bank.
When I slip in the mud the sky opens up.
Legs twitch in glue, print. We are nuns of it, none of it, a priestess & a bird at heart.
In a sum of signs my head, rocking.
This is made of nerves.
I’m green the wind sd to a Studebaker.
Today I wrote my nose into place.
Everything makes figure.
My pictures have no shadows.
Now whose air is whose, Whose hair whose?
Listen: five times five bells ring.
Glue was made from rabbit-skin.
You’re always a wandering possibility.
The number 18: a fat woman beside an elegant man.
The “dust bunnies” are in my head, not under my bed.
I may not be thinking of me now.
Nobody makes potato latkes / like I make potato latkes.
I travel when I do by wind.
The day bends gently over fountains.
Shaping is sidereal & unaccomplished.
I make hat, toe, eye, belly.
If the house dream the mind falls, aware & a horse.
My thighs hum when I work.
I remain in practically all things a beginner.
There’s always something more to paste in.
A bottle cap is a summons.
I tune myself toward dying.
Art go ding in my tired room.
Green as the color of a shoe in the grass.
Burdens mesmerize me.
As I age I see more.
The honeybee is out today.
The mind is a toe.
I make & unmake figures as a pageantry I see.
Gobblers Knob Club is the Club for me.
In lateness is sourness.
The Indictments: a broken eye.
Art is mesmerism.
I can only make a word stick with glue.
My book is a running bet with time. My resources are staked on it.
Lulu snores, Lulu snores. Ha ha Lulu snores.
Pictures are Emblems.
In Queens I know how the grit Sits & who I love & all my dead.
My heart is what is weakest in me.
The world is very far. My eyes are not.
Feet to the ground—What’s found.
I brought a seasoned goat to the bath mat.
I follow a line that isn’t mine.
Stem the head on its shaking course.
Spots of color on the image: stars upon its body.
An unclear heart laughs.
My mind is wrong. The little not enough.
I have invited an owl into my barn.
Sol is a black sun.
Demesne of green stays brightest Queens.
The head is a wheel.
My gift is fear.
What is ripe is also weak.
I have a zoo in my mind.
Every animal dances.
When the racket halts my heart beats again.
In the house my head swerves.
Burnt studious sweet wondering.
The carriage too (my typewriter) goes thru the lagoon.
The moon’s rancid tonight, like my foot.
Dust is stars in turmoil.
It is all a cobble-ment.
It’s the windows are white every even day. What we manage is what is.
Whatever has a wheel / is real.
Sol is not the sun.
My name is magnified at the margin of the page.
I was given the word Rue, Ruah, Ruth, Wroth. In the desert I carry a parasol like a wheel.
Every scrap is drawn to every picture.
Art has a hole in it the size of Queens.
A picture always wants to be something else.
Time’s my only matter.
My dreams have a rope-ish quality.
Not even at the market the right colors or smell.
What I determine is not what is. Even the sky is frugal.
I have no imagination for what is.
I am always a little visible behind my mask.
Teeny scares me.
I’m naïve in my navy pants.
The small thing sings. Hummingbird matter. (An envelope in the air.)
What you mark is soon.
The stain is beautiful, beyond any order.
Thought wields a siphon.
I love the possibility I am still possible.
The page is operatic.
Beyond what I am is what I wld make.
A picture is always a book.
Morning rain is happy mind.
The girl sings a new ding.
I’m a written thing.
Duct tape the dumb mind.
Even the stars in my sleep empty.
A trembling animal at the edge of thought.
We fold up lost men in our wings, our arms’ robes.
My art is a damaged thing, made of damaged things.
Let complaint rise into beauty: a curmudgeon’s bell.
I will not hope a lawn foursquare in the noon & ripe with mules in the distance.
Genius never arrives.
I hear how the distance is.
Patch the word with tape.
Birds elope in my hair.
Fake fur attracts the gapers of Ithaca.
A banana is not a door wedge.
Melancholy inspires form. Depression empties it.
I write my life. I make me up.
Blake drew his brother Robert with a star at his foot.
Roussel had one stuck to his forehead.
The bachelor is light; the maid heavy.
Unrequited affection is ugly.
What the sky can’t say the stone is.
There is sun in my preserves. It lights up every jar.
I am every bit a towel.
What is green is always first.
Sol is an “Oont” (Mole).
“Goop Joe,” of the “Loyal Order of Moose,” is the man for me.
Time opens fountains in every thing.
A slug in the bath is worse than two in the hand.
The sky leaked saffron, the picture was wet.
Half my moves are moves to cancel.
Saul has a shoe like art has time. Both are muddy.
Collage is nerve art.
Here’s a lark in the bedroom.
& the outsize name of animal.
Gentle dogs prowl beside their friends the fleas.
In my bag was a horse.
Shall I wear a chair I sd.
If I honk, standing center, with Sol & my hares around me, will anybody notice?
I climb memory of image & make the possible; all one moment.
Imagination, my flounder—
I drip honey-paste, slick fluid. & draw with it. & paste.
In the sweet finalities (by & by) rose & pink holes.
Sky is touch. Green & red.
Still the morning reading the upside down, which is a flower.
What poetry comes out of it goes into.
The eye in matter— Looking at me.
Shower with spiders, sleep with flies.
It is so much to one, & so much to two.
In the hold of myself myself, locked as in a ship hold.
My nose. The rock. A wheel.
My desk’s beautiful & wood, a tree (house) for art.
Banking murders mind.
The rabbits are the stars.
Rigidity accompanies & shapes my end.
I am thinking you are hoping I am not.
I’d run thru town hopeful as a mongoose.
Sometimes the bone is white; more often it is yellow.
Secondary meanings swale, as in a dovecote a cat.
Art begins in admiration.
My biography: a slow moving north into cold.
I am jealous of Henrietta Sontag, Hadley, Ondine, Lauren Bacall, sylphs of all stripes, Emily Dickinson, Mary Moore (of Trenton), Mary Moore’s mother, Marie Taglioni, Marilyn Monroe, Fanny Cerrito, Carolee Schneeman…
I am notating the sky.
What we see—word sees.
Sludge go by, little roam, clouds my noodle in the pot.
The ship & the sea. The sky above the cabin.
Sound dies in a goblet. The man goes away. Awry.
I am sick of sleeping.
What’s in yr mouth, rabbit?
Where’s your ear, now Rome is here?
I see creatures in my urine.
The imagination is luminous, mad & nervous.
I am such vision as white is, a laughing bone in my room.
Let the ants know, this house is not hospitable.
The hand opens time, drawing it.
Distress makes a picture.
I shower with the moths.
All art is collage.
From rough to the sun in a boat “not brilliant.” Going is the only event.
I used to be a bubble.
My mind’s not mine.
When I cry I think.
My navel is between my legs.
Only the healing imagination has animals in it.
Stars sit like stones on my shoulders.
A rabbi is nearly a rabbit.
A mole has long toes.
My tongue a patter, marmalade sky.
The grave’s stink’s on me.
This vehicle is not prescient.
Imagination resides in the rocks.
I am the house I glue in.
My nephew is a nut.
With a sad eyebrow hidden beneath my cape.
The worm & the rabbit & the star.
“Every day your relationship with death changes.” “You’ve got to be oblivious to other people-the push and pull of other people’s opinions, the way other people measure success. It’s then that you realize you are 100 percent who you are and you have to use that who-you-are 100 percent in order to create great things. And that’s very difficult because everyone wants to be better than they are. You’ve really got to get down on the floor with yourself and get low in order to make great art. I think you’ve just got to accept who you are and do the most unbelievable things.”
“I sometimes feel that I have nothing to say and I want to communicate this.”
“Artists are like everybody else.”
“And I think, you know, I like it, so I can’t understand it, I think if you’re gonna have this stuff going in your ears, you might as well have some stuff going in your eyes.”
“I wanted a shark that’s big enough to eat you, and in a large enough amount of liquid so that you could imagine you were in there with it.”
“There’s always something you missed or something you didn’t notice or somehow you got wrong… I don’t really have a beginning.”
“Architects don’t build their own houses.”
“I always feel like the art’s there and I just see it, so it’s not really a lot of work.”
“I’m more interested in why people are frightened by Jaws and why Jaws was such a hit than saying Spielberg’s my main influence.”
“Sometimes when you’re drunk you can see better.”
“I always liked the fact that you get these totally unacceptable images, but they’re taken by a really expensive photographer, with great light, and in terms of the quality of the photograph it’s a great photograph, but in terms of imagery it’s unacceptable, and I like that contradiction.”
“People say to me that my work’s sensational. And I go, “What’s wrong with sensation? It’s like touching skin.” Sensation is an element of what I do, and why not? It’s not sensational for the sake of being sensational, but it’s sensational art.”
“I don’t think I invented anything. It’s like I just saw it, just because I did it first. The road was there. It was going to happen.”
“It’s good to have a title that’s not just one word. If you’re gonna title it, you might as well try and say something.”
“There’s no possible way you can get what you want.”
“The great thing about painting now is that I’ve gotten to the point where I can forget everything just by doing it. And I never used to be able to do that.”
“I just wanted to find out where the boundaries were. I’ve found out there aren’t any. I wanted to be stopped but no one will stop me.”
“I don’t mind if it falls over… if you break the glass you replace the glass, if the sheep falls out you can always get a new sheep.”
“Warhol said a brilliant thing. He said if anybody slags anything off, make more.”
I would rather be bored alone than with someone else. I roam empty places and eat in deserted restaurants. I do not say “A is better than B” but “I prefer A to B.” I never stop comparing. When I am returning from a trip, the best part is not going through the airport or getting home, but the taxi ride in between: you’re still traveling, but not really. I sing badly, so I don’t sing. I had an idea for a Dream Museum. I do not believe the wisdom of the sages will be lost. I once tried to make a book-museum of vernacular writing, it reproduced handwritten messages from unknown people, classed by type: flyers about lost animals, justifications left on windshields for parking cops to avoid paying the meter, desperate pleas for witnesses, announcements of a change in management, office messages, home messages, messages to oneself. I cannot sleep beside someone who moves around, snores, breathes heavily, or steals the covers. I can sleep with my arms around someone who doesn’t move. I have attempted suicide once, I’ve been tempted four times to attempt it. The distant sound of a lawn mower in summer brings back happy childhood memories. I am bad at throwing. I have read less of the Bible than of Marcel Proust. Roberto Juarroz makes me laugh more than Andy Warhol. Jack Kerouac makes me want to live more than Charles Baudelaire. La Rochefoucauld depresses me less than Bret Easton Ellis. Joe Brainard is less affirmative than Walt Whitman. I know Jacques Roubaud less well than Georges Perec. Gherasim Luca is the most full of despair. I don’t see the connection between Alain Robbe-Grillet and Antonio Tabucchi. When I make lists of names, I dread the ones I forget. From certain angles, tanned and wearing a black shirt, I can find myself handsome. I find myself ugly more often than handsome. I like my voice after a night out or when I have a cold. I am unacquainted with hunger. I was never in the army. I have never pulled a knife on anyone. I have never used a machine gun. I have fired a revolver. I have fired a rifle. I have shot an arrow. I have netted butterflies. I have observed rabbits. I have eaten pheasants. I recognize the scent of a tiger. I have touched the dry head of a tortoise and an elephant’s hard skin. I have caught sight of a herd of wild boar in a forest in Normandy. I ride. I do not explain. I do not excuse. I do not classify. I go fast. I am drawn to the brevity of English, shorter than French. I do not name the people I talk about to someone who doesn’t know them, I use, despite the trouble of it, abstract descriptions like “that friend whose parachute got tangled up with another parachute the time he jumped.” I prefer going to bed to getting up, but I prefer living to dying. I look more closely at old photographs than contemporary ones, they are smaller, and their details are more precise. I have noticed that, on the keypads of Parisian front doors, the 1 wears out the fastest. I’m not ashamed of my family, but I do not invite them to my openings. I have often been in love. I love myself less than I have been loved. I am surprised when someone loves me. I do not consider myself handsome just because a woman thinks so. My intelligence is uneven. My amorous states resemble one another, and those of other people, more than my works resemble one another, or those of other people. I have never shared a bank account. A friend once remarked that I seem glad when guests show up at my house but also when they leave. I do not know how to interrupt an interlocutor who bores me. I have good digestion. I love summer rain. I have trouble understanding why people give stupid presents. Presents make me feel awkward, whether I am the giver or the receiver, unless they are the right ones, which is rare. Although I am self-employed, I observe the weekend. I have never kissed a lover in front of my parents. I do not have a weekend place because I do not like to open and then shut a whole lot of shutters over the course of two days. I have not hugged a male friend tight. I have not seen the dead body of a friend. I have seen the dead bodies of my grandmother and my uncle. I have not kissed a boy. I used to have sex with women my own age, but as I got older they got younger. I do not buy used shoes. I have made love on the roof of the thirtieth floor of a building in Hong Kong. I have made love in the daytime in a public garden in Hong Kong. I have made love in the toilet of the Paris–Lyon TGV. I have made love in front of some friends at the end of a very drunken dinner. I have made love in a staircase on the avenue Georges-Mandel. I have made love to a girl at a party at six in the morning, five minutes after asking, without any preamble, if she wanted to. I have made love standing up, sitting down, lying down, on my knees, stretched out on one side or the other. I have made love to one person at a time, to two, to three, to more. I have smoked hashish and opium, I have done poppers, I have snorted cocaine. I find fresh air more intoxicating than drugs. I smoked my first joint at age fourteen in Segovia, a friend and I had bought some “chocolate” from a guard in the military police, I couldn’t stop laughing and I ate the leaves of an olive tree. I smoked several joints in the bosom of my grammar school, the Collège Stanislas, at the age of fifteen. The girl whom I loved the most left me. At ten I cut my finger in a flour mill. At six I broke my nose getting hit by a car. At fifteen I skinned my hip and -elbow falling off a moped, I had decided to defy the street, riding with no hands, looking backward. I broke my thumb skiing, after flying ten meters and landing on my head, I got up and saw, as in a cartoon, circles of birthday candles turning in the air and then I fainted. I have not made love to the wife of a friend. I do not love the sound of a family on the train. I am uneasy in rooms with small windows. Sometimes I realize that what I’m in the middle of saying is boring, so I just stop talking. Art that unfolds over time gives me less pleasure than art that stops it. Even if it is an odd sort of present, I thank my father and mother for having given me life.
I believe the people who make the world are the ones who do not believe in reality, for example, for centuries, the Christians. There are times in my life when I overuse the phrase “it all sounds pretty complicated.” I wonder how the obese make love. Not wanting to change things does not mean I am conservative, I like for things to change, just not having to do it. I connect easily with women, it takes longer with men. My best male friends have something feminine about them. I ride a motorcycle but I don’t have the “biker spirit.” I am an egoist despite myself, I cannot even conceive of being altruistic. Until the age of twelve I thought I was gifted with the power to shape the future, but this power was a crushing burden, it manifested itself in the form of threats, I had to take just so many steps before I got to the end of the sidewalk or else my parents would die in a car accident, I had to close the door thinking of some favorable outcome, for example passing a test, or else I’d fail, I had to turn off the light not thinking about my mother getting raped, or that would happen, one day I couldn’t stand having to close the door a hundred times before I could think of something good, or to spend fifteen minutes turning off the light the right way, I decided enough was enough, the world could fall apart, I didn’t want to spend my life saving other people, that night I went to bed sure the next day would bring the apocalypse, nothing happened, I was relieved but a little bit disappointed to discover I had no power.
Dropped toddlers, attempted drownings, juvenile promiscuity, road trips, and inappropriate therapy sessions compose the multi-voiced family portrait in Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake. Yoga stalkers, guns and gold, babies with iron stomachs, drunkards with t-shirt cannons, and warlocks are the stuff of Do Not Touch Me Not Now Not Ever. Dominatrixes and fetishists, face paint and goo, fierce parental love and perverse longings cohabitate in Evan's House and the Other Boys Who Live There Leukemia, meteorites, Wal-Mart, bocce ball, Charlie Brown's clinical depression, the language of talking crows and of Che Guevara's omelets fill the eggs in How Some People Like Their Eggs. And smallstories about pretty girls who sit quietly and behave themselves (or not) populate the pages of Paper and Tassels.
Her heart swells like someone turned a faucet on. It is enormous. A fast-moving cloud of blackbirds dissipates into the trees. Or are they bats? They’re at the zoo. It is the same as the bowling alley or the skating rink only there are animals. They sky looks like snow. The thirty-year-old woman doesn’t know what the twenty-two-year-old girl was like. She only knows this: the girl spent a lot of time in the mirror but she never saw herself. The boy asks if she wants a Coke, she says she doesn’t, he gets one and she drinks most of it. They watch a couple of rhinos on a mound of dirt, just standing there. It looks boring, she says. It must be boring to be a rhinoceros. He agrees. She says the same thing about the spider monkeys and the elephants and the giraffes and he agrees, but at the manatees he says: you’re boring. They marry, live like old people.
