Wedded Monks

We lost.

In the early, this is my kitchen. These are my hands. The run (the dance) of the in and out is the flee of the in and out. They have fled, child: we have fled.

A man sells wooden chamberpots on the urban street. The street does not face the sun. The street is a market. Men and women unload their carts. The carts travel from the countryside. Men and women pick fruit in the country. They sell the fruit in the city, on the urban corners, in the up-down. Nearby, a tourist is attacked by two men with sticks. The tourist likes to scream. She screams when she goes on the give and take, too. Then, she gossips and is red. Now she screams. She screams and she has a red face. Her face is red. A foreigner has taken her purse. A foreigner has scratched her face and she is crying when she screams. It is morning.

'Oh.' The man in the round hat says. 'We will catch him.'
'Oh.' The women says. She feels better.

Behind the screen, a dwarf in rememberless waltzes scratches marble tiles with his diamond hoof. The guests are masked. The host is masked. They will not catch him, the dwarf thinks.

The space shuttle collapses. The cardboard shuttle has people inside, has men and women inside. The men and women are trapped. They cannot breathe. The shuttle is on fire. The shuttle is close to space. Space is a vacuum. Men and women cannot breathe in a vacuum. We hush, we hush the others. The cardboard shuttle has turned into little bits of metal. The little bits of metal fall into the sea. The sea is on fire. We hush.

We lost. And un-elegant.

In the late, this is my kitchen. It is time for the silenced monks to witness my hands: these are my hands. It is my blood. My skin is weightless like the men and women, the tiny astronauts--they were ripped into tiny pieces. The astronauts were ripped apart after the cardboard shuttle burst into flames. The earth was a small ball for them. The monks bow their heads. One of them has a round mole on his head. I have mold on my fingers.

In the quiet late, the sun goes. I have the eyed monks lowered into the unearthed graves. We begin to dig, after the shuttle collapses. There are famous names on the graves stones. The graves bob on the rolling ground like water buoys. We park the monks and begin to undig the famous buried men and women.

We are wormed. We have walked in the wretched and worn: we are wormed. We have to wait and stare. It is the eyed monks, the eyed-wonder, that began to see that it was hollow.

The unfettered now the unfree: we-we-we. We free them.

'It is a dream.' She says. 'It is like a dream.' She says. She says that it sounds like a dream. The up and down is like the up and down of a dream. She has bleeded fingers and fretful-fretful-fretful: that girl-child will not marry in this town. We sell her: we have sold her.

We sleep and it is (this is buttoned) the free. Thistled and dreary, there is no story. The poor greek emblem. These un-done and sainted have adultered the future. The monks continue to dig and the monk with a mole on his head smiles. He likes to dig. He smells his hands and his hands smell like dirt.

'My hands smell like dirt.' He says. We smile and pat each other on the back: we have met our own reflections. At last, we can smile. We are perky and adolescent again. It is not the inside and outside: in and out--in and out--in and out.

'Let us go out!' The monks say. We rejoice.

'Let us go in!' The monks say. We rejoice. We are not lost. We are praised and blessed. And in the late night, in my kitchen, we unearth the greatest. They will certainly know what to do with these monks who will not stop their talk and their joy and will not stop their digging.


[s]