COULD WE — I—postpone the bodily business — SHITTING! PISSING! — to another — relegate it? Could we — I! I — take myself into a low mode of coma dome, manufacture a steady somnolent state? NO, NO — what about a total tear of all that's known? HAH! HAH — or a plug? WHAT? — a plug! A PLUG — yes, a plug. I could keep myself plugged! I could back and back and back and — STOPPAGE? YES! Now we're — I! I! I! — getting, now we get it!
Boiling down the billed words; take atoms in sludges, thick against the back of the throat and as bitter as any mercury, here or not. Truly — membrane as my witness — complex. Little reactors, we are. Bumbling along, nudging each other in lane changes as the space splits infinite inside us. Remember: Mimesis is our great grandaddy, our big mother. Lest our copy painters cry dumbly, let us sing them genetic praises! Let us share our genetic expressions! Let's fuck.
Coyly I return to plugging myself. Should I? Dour days, folks. Dour days.
All-night telethons on grain-fed televisions. Speaking in reverse. The blue condolences. Soft touch withdrawals from a hemmed neckline. Under tray, on mute. A mountainous terrain, aural, phonic — escalating screeching. Cash appeals in front of us matched with the staving sort behind. A familial and familiar sideways nod. Brother eye lock. Pulled into the ween box. Behind us a range, behind us a teleplay.
Burn the senate with no one in it.
A sweeping orator:
CAN WE NOT AFFORD THE DEAD A SIMPLE GRACE? A SIMPLE REGARD, WITHOUT SENTIMENTALITY OR STATURE? ONLY AFTER WE ARE LEFT WITH THEIR LIQUID MAY WE THANK THE WORMED FOR THEIR FOUNDATION AND SILENCE?
Totem counting. The whole tribe run together and crowded, flinching, investigated.
I'd bring up the rare musical loops if I hadn't brought up the rare musical loops.
Does the hand want me to use myself as a spigot? Does the hand admire thirst? Is thirst ever seen?
Once, I found fears of gas chambers.
Knees like knuckles, patterned with bite marks. Tooth mosaics.
Repeat.
How do you feel?
…
And now I don't describe the paper because I can't.
Under beaded whip or metal flak, hand drawn, I would probably profess to cyclicality. Under local anesthesia, I cry light.
Can one be axiomed without jury? Without trial? What about hung and supposed? Superimposed? Plotted?
You see, I leave the questions when I weave. When the thread comes together the hand disappears. Godly, I know. But even this is among itself, and trapped, so help me sing.
Ain't a performance without a frame. Ain't a shoe without a sole.
And in the valley there were kings. And in the valley there were kings who rode. And in the valley there were kings who rode pale horses. And in the valley there were kings who rode pale horses into flame. And in the valley there were kings who rode pale horses into flame beside red lakes. And in the valley there were kings who rode pale horses into flame beside red lakes, mountains weeping. And in the valley the kings knew of metal and knew of stone and had dominion. And in the valley the kings laughed. And in the valley the stones sang. And in the valley the kings awoke in stupor. And in the valley the kings were visiting fairies. And in the valley the kings knew themselves. And in the valley the kings were made of rock and made of steel, and kept the fairies to themselves, and fired the lakes from all sides, and wept horses, and buried mountains, and felt themselves alone and red underneath a great weight that is always becoming.
And since a pill can throw a body into The Great Fathom, The Place In Which All Resides, Nirvana, A Temple Among Innumerable Leaves, I say Fuck The Pill and Let Us Rot Inside Ourselves, Be Trapped, Because Without A Call There Is No Road And No Reward, and For That I Am Grateful.
And I already relayed my comedy.
What then is left in the digital guide? Who can you find in boxes? What's to buy? Where's to go? Do palm trees sprout in nation states? Do the refugees build in prayer? Do mud leaves lie unordered, left in stacks, not being thatched into roofs? And who counts everything? Where are the records kept? Will the ink dissolve? Will the ink—
Member the motor took.
I can't keep carrying these things; stigmata. The little lapping ocean — topcube, roof to another — below, though, promises to dry whatever rain has been bestowed; make the paper dirty and smudge the pen. Well, god, I'm just stuck.
Sniffling. Hugging myself.
Must strike out all the softness. Record: Rely on me. Kemp me bare.
Wait. Phantom draft. Surely mistaken. A notion of wind is… null. But what it brings me to? Yes. Hand. Yes.
How quickly I forget.
The paper chase. The paper chase! It's already in my gut, goddamnit. Churning there. Outlasting its host I'm sure, winning champion medals and crafting an electric current, like a big wheel stuck in saltwater. And I could chase it with a sword. A metal rod. Conducive — conductive! — to my audience, I'm sure. Another antennae, this one lockable by X-ray and electromagnet. A beacon to industry I'd become. A hero, a champion of fidelity and technology; a truly modern man and thoroughly oiled filly.
Bear with me. Bless my internal logic. Bless it now for it's all that sinks. Our anchor. In time of storm it is our anchor.
Vitriol from the mother mast always promoted bitter sleep, but sleep. From the fearhead, wavetaker, we were hit. From the mother mast we were hidden in orange satin and left to daylight. Doorway maritime battles. Skirmishes without hit, sink. Water left running after the mascara seeped down into the pipes, ran away from the fevered fingers, ran away from the howling mouth. Take a hand into your hand, bring with you a flashlight. Make shadows. Make faces.
I feel the fingers of wonder. They are pregnant and laced with indescribable color.
Laughing! Laughing.
To focus on teeth: Oh you know sometimes I wish my teeth would grow in. All the way. Fuse in the middle and become a plate of teeth. Tall enough to always force a bare, a smile.
Talk of plates: The ones below us. You assumed — us an abandoned term, an abandoned stretch of grammar. So: Me! Talk of plates: The ones below me. Talk of plates: The ones below. Talk of plates: The ones. Talk of plates: The one. The one plate. All one plate, with fissure. Heat.
Remember the days of profession? Of both kinds. One in the same, really. Does the sickle form a soul? If so, only in crescent moons.
Remember the days of temperance? When the minute hands didn't melt down into stripped, clean-on-the-edges sludge. When the tale had a tail. How the mouths were soft, then. But were they ever soft, son? Are they ever hard, daddy?
And then to humble oaths: The roar, jet screams. Lawns left of at half past street, fading completely by the commercial zone. How, from above, the earth looked like a strobing. Finally. An inarguable pattern.
And how, like in a combustion engine, the spaces between explosive motion — when captured — all caught the same frequency and idyll light. That was the secret. That was the entire secret of an entire age.
Let us rest.
Will I hear crickets?
Two feet through the door and she's saying where is the haircut? Where is the haircut? Where is the haircut? Where is the haircut?