Not like their blood

I been all over it, again, just all over it, you know, back and forth in my head, like they been telling me I got to do, like they saying to me, over and over, that I got to remember, I got to remember what it was like, just like that, in that room, exactly what it was like, you know, with all them walking in and out and them other ones lying on their backs staring at the wall, real dumb like, you know, like they couldn't even talk or nothing, that was it, really, I don't remember nothing else, nothing about any of them other faces, them other faces coming in and out, it was real tough to see them, it must have been tough, like they was all shaded, or covered or something, but I been over this, I been over it with that other fellow who come down here asking all these questions, like he was real serious and he was gonna get to the bottom of this, like he was gonna find some answers, shit, like he was the law or some damn thing, but he just like the rest of them, just as dirty like the rest of them, stuck his face in that mud, right about then, and he don't like what he see, he can't like what he see, there ain't nothing to like what you see, not like that, and then he just left, all mighty and shit, he just left and I never heard about this thing til now, and I been over it, I been over it then, I been over it again and again, you know, sitting out here, just sitting out here thinking, really thinking, like how is it that they come to be all looking dumb like at the wall, with all them people coming in and out and nobody not even thinking anything about it, not wondering if they was gonna do anything about it, just like they don't even see them there, but I been thinking about it, I know the rest of them aint thought about it, cause I know they aint got no cause to think on it, but I been thinking on it and I been thinking they had no cause to be there, none of them had no cause to be there, not like that, not like they was all dumb, lying there, just like that on the floor. Not with that blood that was in the place, not next to that place where they slaughter them herds, not like that, they had no place being like that. I been thinkin on that, sure, but you'll see, you just like that last man, thinking you all like the law, when out here, it just that some people, you know, like they weren't ever here, like they don't never want them here, some people, they just don't care for other types of people, not out here, and they just don't think on them like they do their own people.

I thought about what you said

all air is actual air
and no relationships are just "in our heads"

so don't go down that road unless you are ready
to shut all the windows and close the blinds

in a sensory deprivation tank
even the dumbest people hallucinate
the busy galaxy of the mind has all it needs

and if it what goes on between people
is only in there

then so is the air and the dust,
the blood, the tall buildings many people made

once breathing now gone

actual people

they don't belong to anyone

weather report

but then again sometimes these days

when the clouds arrange themselves into a wrinkled brain

and it is partly cloudy in my head with a chance of rain

electrical storms

striking thoughts

little needles

wired to my heart

spasms

i thank you god for most this amazing night
to be alive in october
to be alive

i am 30 years old today--
30 years of gifts from you wrapped up in skyscrapers, trees--
and what am i to do?

what else am i to do but give myself back

Reductionism, II

1.

There are a countable number of possible universes but an infinite space to cross in each one. Why do it alone? you might ask.

But there is no one there.

2.

And why not? When everything done is done, and all the new things have started themselves up, single finite cells of infinite depth, will that be a good time to talk about God? There never is, lately, unless you happen to have a magnetic resonant imaging machine, several underpaid graduate students, and a Lonely Planet's guide to the human brain. Then you might hit on the g-spot right in the center of that old wrinkly white and gray mass, the God spot, and when you do it will light up the charts.

"There He is": a functional MRI of self-reported religious experiences.

3.

Still in the end the alligators will blink their complexly-lidded eyes; the flies will live so fast if you were them then this morning was childhood, tomorrow you die. What then? Fly heaven must be an infinite space too, and if there are particles there (mustn't there be?) you can bet they contain a whole heavenly depth of their own.

Ruth was right: better stick close to the surface of things. Everyone who's everything is there.

Reductionism, I

I'm more of emergent properties man myself. That's why the talk of dreams. I like the life that emerges from my own when I am finally, totally quiet.

MFF -- 31:15

I could have wringed him in his neck, right then, and taken him down, right on down, in to the hallow, and sent him straight, straight to his god-fearing sonuvabitch matron whore, right then, mixing up himself in the midst of a firecracking sex escapade, a damn x-rated hooker jerk--crying, I bet, by the time he come around, just ever crying, beating himself and whimpering and beating himself, real bad like, sure, like he done it before, thousand times, just beating himself and crying and making himself feel all like he is just damn rotten and fallen into the big pit of shit up by that knee high cradle strip club, there he'd gotten, there he'd gotten for sure, by then at least, by then he gotten there, at the time he wasn't crying no more, wasn't beating himself to blisters, waiting til he could climb back inside through the basement window, all gutted and pissed on and whimpering, right, whimpering like a ragged bitch dog, then he'd gotten hiself out of the blisters, red torn skin and just red skin--ing him off, like a shit trick placed in the middle of a damn fucking b-rate film, him all riled up, and goated, goated like he done it before, like he done it a thousand times before and like he knew he was gunnin to tell you about it, just grinning, all bloodshot and pissy, woozy like he been dropping pints in the laboratory on south street, right there in front of them frosted hoes dumping their damn feces all over their fingers lick--johns, they just ate, wishing, lately, less lately perhaps, that they just too clever, just sneaking out for ciggarrettes and finding them hoes, finding them hoes in the tall grass and just riding them silly. Its all like that, then, just there, typed in all up front, I could have wrung his neck, wrung it good and give me blisters but I watched them hoes instead and wrung my own head, right there, crawling down between the basement, and I got them hands all worked over like sandpaper and me just thinking I been sucked out of this place, sucked out of this world and left like there wasn't nothing ever in me, nothing by that raft in the river next to the place they take them hookers and ball them til they think it time to turn it off and walk in the other room. Shit, there ain't no balling like that -- its just wringing my neck in the showering and thinking maybe it looked like something else, something like that wouldn't be, just couldn't be.

September 21, 2009: to do list

Remember to listen
to myself
and do what I love:

all the cells humming faintly
in the brain--
uncertainty

"If there is no cell doctrine
there is no single place to stand"
so there you have it

stand nowhere
straddling everything

banging your head against the wall (overheard)

"you think you got it bad?

the first year is nothing.

the second year it hurts like hell.

after that, you start to stop noticing.

I think it's been four years now

and I'm not even sure--

am I still doing it?"

he said. and banged his head.

Why we suffer / How I am like Mom

I press myself into my being.

The world presses itself into me.

I change myself, and the world changes
how I change.

Do not worry; the world will always win!

Respect the world--

it will always win.

once upon a time

Faithful, faithful, faithful. Samuel knelt by the oak tree in the snow. The year was 1987 -- the world was different then. Circuits were not yet crawling through the soil.

What if he wrote you a poem right there? He fights the urge to lick the flakes from the air. Samuel is faithful so he will not bend or else he might tear and out will come his faith. This is a problem; poems require flexibility, a certain carelessness about the joints. Impossible not to leak, even just a little.

When the world is pixelated, later, pixelater, there is a threshold past which it becomes impossible for you to tell yourself apart from the sofa and the window with the view, and your hand. Fortunately since feeling is first it is the last to go. You will know your hand on your knee even if you cannot see the distinction. And if you write poems -- if you write at all -- it will be like closing your eyes in the dark.

When Samuel closes his eyes now he see the whiteout and the tree swallowed up by the world come to meet him, years ago, and what happened next he knew then would change absolutely everything. Now he thinks of the line "closing your eyes in the dark" and tries to type where the difference is there is no difference at all

but mistakes his lap for the keyboard and writes until he feels such joy that he leaks out all this best thoughts on the floor.

I am not the life that is this life

There isn't where we, no, it is not where, yes, it is, perhaps, and then--like it could not be as it is to be, like it could not be as it would, like it is, perhaps, when these are the ways that that world, without itself, the other world, the world that is not the all, is the all that we do not consider, is the fiction that is not our fallacious past, present, future. But. We are, alas, yes, we are, forever consumed by that image that is our self, though foreign and random, and but a spiral of dispair, we are forever obsessed by this image, that is ourself, and is only ourself while, we are, if ever, I, again, suppose, perhaps, only not worth the strength and if, just once, we are to commit, once again, the suicide that is our skin, that is worth our skin, that is the only truth we would ever admit, just, yes, perhaps, just once, to permit our own skin, this very fur, to allow a vision into this world, but a world around a fire, but a fire around a vaccuum, and I, alone, do venture, that it is all, perpetually, yes, yes, perpetually, forever, forever and again, it is all, a glimpse and a forever suicide. We do, I admit, as life, upon this earth in birth, commit only ourselves ever to self imposed death. Aha!

but as I was saying

the baby in the womb

does not know

she is a baby

in the womb.

      later there will be lightning

fireflies in the grass

and books full of the names

of things (but

for now

there is one world,

and it is only by leaving

that she gets to

eat

it
up)

JG

I must acknowledge, perhaps, that the better haves, the ones in the base compartments of memory, yes, yes, where it is to be (uneasy, but confined, and convinced, at once that the glamorous and novel post of a dear friend, an ally, an absolute artist--one beyond comparison, for certainly, I confide, there is no greater companion in this, in this, this discovery of abandonment, hah!, you fool!)--again, I suppose, where it is to be, where it has been, often times, places, discarded, against what would be [description! dear lord, my lord, description!]. We have, alas and yet ever with great success and fortune, encountered, a location that will permit us entry into the world that is not this closet. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Unless, we commit ourselves to such mortal sin that would encourage a sort, of (fuck you!) revolt, a rebellion of sorts, a soft removal (due! due! due!) due to the difference of opinion.

She is caught, oh god. And I, this troubled sour beast have taken the plunge into the world that is not mine, will not be mine, should not be mine.

AND made it once, and if there ever were a wheel, oh dear god, if there ever were the turn back into the grave that was that wheel, if there was, dear soul of mine, if there ever were a ground that did not demand its own sacrifice to unbecome itself--damn, damn--to unbecome itself, then, yes, that would be our beacon, our hope, our--

Fuck. It is his light. He is not so forgotten. I have it here, close to my chest, it is so dear to me that I could see like he does if only I could remember that I am only ever, yes, yes, only ever being taught [those are only assholes].

To see. Alas, I have no eyes.

8

The problem is now. The endless stream of nows, not discretizeable, so the computers can't do anything with them. Sure there are floating point numbers, and double precision, but there are limits to these things. The problem is precisely beyond those limits.

It used to be no one could talk about it until a gentleman sorted out a few centuries worth of thought and came up with infinity. It had been around forever, of course, but it needed rules to work. Otherwise you're just talking about a mess and that is far from the stream, the endless endlessness flowing through you, now and now and now now now now now

But the computers still can't model it, and neither can the typefaces looking at you, all pupil, from the whitespace of the page. Discrete words -- the best you can do it arrange them so they point, like a finger at the moon. But every dog knows how that one goes. He'll just look at your hand, tail wagging. Doesn't seem to be bothered by the problem at hand. Then again, he knows he did something wrong when you come home and he's slinking around the silent stain on the carpet. How? Somewhere in his mind -- now the preferred term is brain -- he held on to a piece of a now, even as it passed several hours ago downstream while you and Carol were at dinner talking about the relative merits of slow vs. fast moving zombies in film. Remember that? (You agreed faster = scarier and now that too is downstream, bobbing with the pee and the release of one canine's unbearable urges).

How do you remember? It can't be caught, yet somehow it stays, sometimes horribly permanent, sometimes like little clearings in the wild of your mind. Brain. Apparently what infinity needed was a set of relationships to something not infinite. That's what he figured out. That's where you come in.

Trust

Close your eyes.

Fountain falling, the water shines under the sun. It is difficult to tell the news from words, a poet almost said, but without them we are lonely. Is it because then we are adrift in the senses? Somewhere a few days ago an information theorist reminds his audience: "Our world is 80% vision."

So whose voice is that, in my head each day?

*

I am remembering a path in the garden. Tomatoes pull on the arms of green vines, they are almost all red except for the curved window of sunlight reflecting off their side. Which is where I put my teeth to. And the juices, I am remembering the taste, outside of words, inside of time, back all the way across the days, unnumbered; before the machines came and needed to know how many before we could know what it meant.

....

I startle, indeed, I harbor, I pledged, once, again, perhaps in upended circumstances, to un-nerve the hostess, and return, once, upon re-entry, to my appropriate place, against the wall: myself, as ever, only a fucking ending.

I want to know what happens -- I am curious to know what happens, she says. She mutters. The goddamn process, I tell her. I am spitting. Quite enraged. The goddamn process.

Who gives a shit what happens. Who gives a shit where it takes you. Like you even fucking know when you got there.

I am troubled, indeed, later, to know that she is committing suicide, right now, by sticking a pen in her eye, because that was where it was that she knew, she knew where she would go, at least in immediacy, when she stabbed herself with her pen. I am pledging, yet again, and this I admit is most foolish, to abet the next wishes of the next woman. Even she will, I suppose, stab herself with a pen.

on approaching the speed of light

Johnny broke up the band and decided he'd become a pilot. Took the $$$ from the guitars and amps, stole the remaining band fund, and bought himself an introductory lesson. Later, years later, when the computers failed and he knew it was the end, he wondered if he made the right choice until he saw the ocean, and remembered flying a kite with his father by the shore; and how time passes faster (empirically) for everyone on the ground you've left behind.

Miserable

Instead Jim understood microclimates: micropolitics, microanxieties. There was nothing too small for him to attend to. Was it raining today, Jim? Should I bring an umbrella?

It is raining inside these blood vessels, like tiny boats in my arms.

So we all get wet.

abababa

Raging, he is able to see through the open places in between himself an the world, which is on fire. Of course! That's a story I heard when I was a kid. Dad in the other room, cracks between the kitchen tiles, and me outside on the patio, drowning ants. They all got to go sometime. I tried different ways -- water, straight; water, soapy; water and windex and some other stronger stuff from underneath the sink.

Today it didn't rain, and that's newsworthy to me. So let's post it using the internet, and not ask how it got there. Take it as a given. Take it with a grain of salt. Take time, take time, take time, before the soap cleans us out.

.

Anything remarkable?
.

The collection, though very dear to her heart, and exquisite in nature (obtained illegally from an Iranian gypsy seeking safe passage into the artic states) became expendable during her third marriage -- indeed, her entire wealth became expendable. As she once imagined herself forever attached, certainly most secure, in her foundation, her physical harness to the world of the elite, the frightful fall from twenty seven thousand feet cleared her of any misconception concerning endless love and, more severely, about the possibility of harboring wealth beyond her tragic and now imminent death.

.

Aftewards, the obtuse captain proclaimed (quite fittingly) the outer door did not close upon take-off and we were forced to shed some weight to regain balance. Of course, the proceedings, during the following days, focused predominantly on the assumed heirs, only one of which was excused from any possible wrongdoing. Oh he is quite too mentally ill to be engaged in criminal offending. Besides, his suicidality is right off the charts, it is about a nineteen and a half. He wants to kill himself so badly the doctor has to duct tape his hands to his legs. Why would anybody that mad desire a collection of Iranian gold coins?

.

We are ever desperate in this cube.

.

I think it is timing that is coming and going -- but not at all -- all that coming and going is just wasting time collecting things and thoughts about other things until -- all that coming and going stops and we aren't really fixed at ever.

.

Boy, I liked that distraction. It cost me about twenty-seven years.

.

There are whores down that alley, Frankie. And they cost $35, at least. You want the other alley, next to the department store.

.

Period.

oh, mercy, there isn't even a button on his stomach

Oh, the flaking tool -- he's a degenerate asshole, she mutters and she is, oh, yes most certainly (yes, she is! she is!) she is angry, annoyed, terribly vexed. I am beside myself with such rancor, she admits, but softly to her teddy bear, that I would literally rip the teeth out of a squirrel. A squirrel? That is mighty fine and feminine of you -- damn you, doctor, she suddenly screams and tears her poor teddy bear to pieces, you witch bear, you monster witch bear, he is a tool, oh, I have seen him on his little side jobs, his extra fucking curricular activities, running over to that fucking tramp, you said little witch bear, trying to turn me into a princess, no? Trying to turn me into a pacified wench, the one that is just taking it in the basement, learning to love on the wheel, against the cupboards of an apothecary, the old sell out gold-maker : yes, yes: "I doubt that I would desire such an opportunity, just to be afforded the chance to stand stoic by your side, even through the [ahem]" -- even through the cursed in and out, the stampede of wolves, spit me out you fucking tool, I will not step aside. Oh, heavens, dear, you are beside yourself, you are quite mad, out of control, flailing like, oh I don't know, a fucking witch -- you stay away from me you teddy bear and again she attacks the bear and stabs him in his puffy fake heart, I will kill you bear! I will kill you bear!

Is she here yet? Has she arrived. Please ensure that the tables are properly set and that our guest, this fine gentleman, is seen delicately into the drawing room. I would hate for any activity (especially on such a fortuituos occasion) to disrupt what must be considered to be an inevitable future. A remarkable bond. He is here? He has arrived? Like this, I am not even prepared, not even dressed, why I have forgotten all about my own self, how irresponsible, yes, yes, show him into the drawing room, ensure that he is with tea or drink or whatever it is his pleasure is -- I am beside myself, I have erred, this union will not take place, I have completely and utterly forgotten myself, to such a post I do not think I have ever been, how has this occurred, how has this transpired, I such a wench.

She runs out of the room, muttering ever so fiercely to herself: that fucking teddy bear, I will find that bear and let him know his tricks are not acceptable and will not derail this princess. I cannot believe I have forgotten myself for such a time, at such a momentous occasion. That brute bear will pay for this!

restorative justice

"She is merry -- the whore." What were you thinking? What was I thinking? That's all I was thinking, you know, sitting there and thinking, she is fucking merry -- and then, like that, it wasn't like I was trying to think like that, it wasn't like I was thinking I got to get my mind to thinking like that, to thinking like all the rest of them, you know, to dig into some really disappointing and dark place in my head and look what is there, you know, like, look around, and say, ah shit, I'd like to pick this up and put it in the slot and see what comes out this fuckers mouth, of course not, no, it couldn't be like that. You ddin't plan it, then. No, I didn't plan it, I said that, you know, I said what I said, I'm not trying to come out and say that I didn't say what I said because I said it, I was there, I mean I know what I fucking said, and I said it like I said it because I was pissed, you know, angry, real mad at the whole picture painted on something that I said or wrote, I don't know, ten years ago, something that good put out there, somethign that was really just a far fetched load -- well -- a bit pile of nothing that I care about now, how's that? She's knowing that too, I can see her knowing that too right now, she's knowing that I haven't been anywhere near any of this since then and that I haven't even, yeah, you know, yeah you know I haven't, ah come on, you know I haven't even thought about this in like ten years, you know that, she's just trying to play with us, you know all of us here, she knows, I mean why would I, I mean look at me, why would I come back into this right now? You wouldn't. Exactly, I wouldn't, you see, what would be the sole purpose of me coming back into this, I wouldn't. This man just said it, I wouldn't come back into this because that wouldn't make any sense, its not, its not like I've been sitting here waiting, only waiting to get caught and to get caught up in this again, I mean, you have it, you can look at it, you can look back through, go ahead, go ahead and look back through all that time and see if you can see any point in time, anything at all, that reminds you -- you know that looks like to you -- that it was something different from what I'm telling you, from what I'm saying was happening from that moment on until now, because, well, if you don't, if you don't do that, then you aren't really affording me any reasonable, you know, assessment or whatever and then we're just two guys you know talking back and forth and see -- she knows look at her, she knows, you aren't even looking at her, she knows I haven't been off roaming around and looking for her, not like that, not like I was trying to come and hurt her, not like that, and no don't play it again, we've seen it, don't, because that isn't me anymore, that's not what I am about, that's not at all what I'm like, not me, here, not me. Don't play it again, no, because, I'm still the same person, walking around, I mean I still sound the same but I don't think like that, I probably still talk like that but, just don't play it again, you know, just don't play it again.

Aside from apart, once: it was suitable

She is over-spoken, over-fond, of herself -- and in admiration, most dearly of her darling purchase. He is indifferent but present in the manner (only ever, certainly) in which he readjusts the cushions on the sofa, readjusts them so she will be in discomfort and forced to readjust them again, if only to be in comfort. He is unnoticeable beyond that -- and offers, as a simple component to his arbitrarily true indifference a composition of meager worth, noting that it is not even of a timely nor culturally suitable subject matter. In defiance, she admits under heavy medication -- assuming failure and praying, eventually, for hypnosis (but not until Tuesday afternoon at four thirty) -- in defiance, she echoes. This time: hmph. It is rather far from bold interjection or even a purposeful attempt at redirection, completion, or, if ever (oh if ever!) reconciliation. You are angered by him? She had supposed, in reflection, at a later time, that her immediate reaction to such a cleverly stupid comment was dismissive in a far more subconscious way, so dismissive (and in fact so overtly submissive was her self-possessed madness) that she did not even recall a course of action, a logical course of action, that could effectively introduce and explicate the process of beating a therapist close to death with the base of an iron lamp.

He bought the lamp in Lisbon after witnessing a spectacle, indeed a state execution, he should most likely never forget. It is the lamp owned by a religious zealot a socially labeled vagabond, who had suspiciously murdered fifteen children in the back of an alley and set them on fire. He has insisted. She has accepted, eventually. Suspiciously, though? No, she mused, I suppose not. Nevertheless, he wouldn't ever forget a spectacle like that -- and even if there were a course of reality that brought a self-bought lamp to be the lever of his own maiming. But, as matters seemed to transpire, not even the general public felt her actions at a distance from the normal hectic meanderings of those under strict supervision due to mental instability. She couldn't have possibly understood such ramifications, it was illustrated in the daily monitor, but to assume that one who already seeks help has but no wall to protect her from such illness is to assume we are a state of unseemly and crude aliens. I for one am not, she snickered, even in court, pretentious and without veil. The manner in which a man begins to introduce authentic altercation -- yes, yes, the manner in which he begins to offer -- as opposed to simply imply -- a contribution without the threat or disguise of reward is, of course, a manner in which he is seen to know and favor the wells of intimate humanity and not merely enjoy to drink.

This I couldn't possibly describe, she admits -- and even admitted, later. Though, perhaps against the better (urbanely) pleas of her casual acquaintances, assumed romantic bothers, she would acknowledge weakly, maybe to only herself, that it was the other he she meant to kill.

"I can tell you two things:

make sure the top lock and bottom lock are different;
and you have to hide from darkness
with darkness."

by george, they changed the law

"Zounds, by Pete, they are at it again!" Oh, soundless remorse -- the pity, upon the fifth regime was without equal, a particular handicapp, yes, given the natural recourse of action - reaction; consequence after impact. We, alas, the Mistress intoned, are of primary affluent noble descent, yet our unprecedented admission (and dare say act) of such failure will not be attenuated by our simply magnificent reflections. Indeed, ponder to watch Melissa, she is enraged by the chance exclusion of her prized mirror (that is the exclusion in the wagon items, as listed by the general accountant, ahem).

I admit. I exhaustively admit that we were without recourse. Our own fingers, bless their bleeding by my own sight, epitomized failure -- and alcohol. The Countess, so taken to service by our --(sure, yes, regardless of the admitted, the admittedly deplorable and realized legal enslavements of crude and improper populations)-- but this countess, again, so taken to service by our tragic and isolated and defeated image swore an oath, to such a height there must have been a doctrine of angelic mandate, reminded demands of man over angel, serve the un-servable, the indolent indigents! Serve us who have lost our people, our followers, serve us who now have no voice!

It surely, upon my own brow, I swear, it must have been this calling, though Melissa, sour and uncouth, against the better likings of her proper feudal mother, dismissed such aid as inadequate, indeed repellent to the (mind you a woman endlessly inculcated by, again, noble doctrine) skin of such grace, perfection, and ah, the angel. And dare I admit, by Pete, that there was such crude interruption, such crude intrusion into the inner estates of the dear lord and provider that, upon, my head, by which was included notes of treasonous and seductive intent --

"Zounds, by Pete, they shot her dead!"

jebarb and mildren

In a sheer whimper of a storm -- an unconvincing act, pretense, sure -- in a sheer thunderous entrance -- a mild and yet oddly appealing, though half asleep, modernized and adapted on numerous occasions (cliche? -- no, in and of itself, that mere interruption is actually the character and action of the inquisition -- odd and ironic and like a ball) -- in a sheer downright dog-gone hollow of a storm, the most usual and conventional path toward adulthood was momentarily unpassable, though, for certain no one could predict how lengthy the momentary break would indeed last, a final lapse? Oh, my, I would dare venture that I hope not. But, in truth, perhaps. Though the bridge had been rebuilt and even remodeled on countless occasions in the past half century, its usefullness was waning and the more structured and well equiped highway was a much more popular (and really, let us admit, a more suitable) choice for passage. Those, however, a coy Mildren remarked, are not headed toward maturation, not in the strict biological and social sense. An unnecessarily long pause, thereafter, lasting well into the fifth and sixth breaths of the young traveler, ensued. Oh, sure, she smelled quite awful for an elderly woman, lacking in appropriate care, abandoned halfheartedly by willful and drunken grandsons. I opine rather with doubt, Mildren confessed, that you are unlike to attempt the fallen earth? The traveler, by now most confused by the ancient worm, decided, though unagreeable to him at the time (and most unagreeable to him in the near future) to disregard her feverish and rather uninviting disposition, and venture a question in regards to the trail now coined as "muy fea". The damn naturalists. It is by far a better option -- perhaps a far better outcome, though it is without its merits and without its recompense. I think. By now a third member had eagerly, though ever slowly, joined the standing and half snarled half eated duo. It is not completely fallen away, Jebarb motioned, though he himself had aged in such a manner to resemble the grandfather tree and in each gesture it is true his hands began to appear as tattered paper. You are just a sad drawing, the traveler thought, but now thoroughly unamused by the still growling storm and the incomplete directions by an unashamed and stoned innkeeper, remanded his own initial distaste and insisted (for he was a man of great will power and strong cognitive discipline) he must encounter the path back out of the town at the lake and on toward the city. Of course, Jebarb continued, it may but be a monster of a storm and little could we ever expect what to know from either path. Though this one is certain to have fallen. For it is always falling.

she just came in short, black eyed, and bleeding

She is a hooker, I count her money. She comes in here, once or twice, you know, a week, with her stack of ones and fives, and I give her a receipt. She gets it into the bank that way -- so she can have an account. She can't take that money, with all the blood that is usually on it, she can't take that to a teller, she can't walk in all beat up, with her eyes black, smoking, like she does, and hand the teller a stack of bills that are grimy, crunched up, and bleeding. She is a hooker. She gives me her money. I deposit it for her and I tell her, usually, that she isn't living that swell a life, I say that and she sometimes smiles, like she had heard it on tv too, and it was a good memory. But she is living a shit life, you know, and she lets these marks beat the shit out of her and they really beat the shit out of her. But what can I do, I count her money, so at least she isn't squating in some crack house, or running into the basements of the city buildings to get from the weather. You know, this way, she keeps a place, she keeps some food and she makes, it from today until tonight and maybe even til tomorrow. I don't know, you know, she is just walking through this day to that day, thinking, well, hell, not thinking, but getting her money this way and that way and then bringing it here, and I take only a small fee, a modest fee, because I have to clean the money, you know, and make sure its not bleeding anymore, not like it is when she gives it to me, and then I have to be putting in these deposits into an account for her so that she can have the money for the place she has but in an account that they can't find her, because you know, those tax men, they don't really think that hooking is all that proper or legal so even if she could pay her taxes, she can't really pay her taxes, not down and out like she is. So I take a modest fee, a small fee, really, and adjust the account accordingly and we see the results. And she doesn't complain, not after all that, not now that she can walk up to a money machine and take out her money like she is just another woman in the city, just another woman making errands, you know, and paying bills -- but really, she isn't, you know, she's a hooker. And she gets the shit kicked out of her. I'd help her, but you know, its not like she isn't surviving, its not like it really is gonna come down to something that different for me or for her or for anybody even driving down here from the hills, I mean, on that last day, you know, that last day when you think that that sky is gonna be differnt, its just the last day, and she is going on the same boat as everybody else, even though she lived like this, like a rat, in the sewer. So what's the point, what's the point but make it, survive, and let her survive, I'm not trying to not let her survive. But what's the point. So she gets beat up real bad and one day she is gonna be dead and there she'll be, sitting right next to the whole bunch of assholes that thought there wasn't gonna be any room for a whore like her.

my own sad puppet show

This is what it reads:

"...the tall one says its accustomed to difficult inference -- and manipulated, only slightly, by the disjointed bridge to appropriate, certainly legal and justifiable resources -- it would, it implies, only use generally agreed upon and specified courses of action. In such a situation, while disposing of competitors efficiently (and in an unbiased seemingly random fashion) would greatly benefit the syndicate in legal gambling gains, political contributors, and even in the number of average dull normal conservative check writers (the fucking balls of the abused)..."

She is watering flowers, afterwards, in the garden, in the back. It might rain, she mutters. That would be the fucking day, he thinks. He is reading a napkin:

1. Everybody wants it.
2. It is accessible to everybody.
3. Everybody does it on their own.
4. Only the self is to blame for failure.

I'd rather pour gasoline on myself and ride through town on fire, he says. Then it'd be the hell they'd see, not the hell they'd let themselves walk. You aren't ever gonna ascend beyond the barbershop, dad. Stop yelling at the radio. All they see is that black mud on your face.

You're blocking my sun, she says, and it is about to cloud up. I don't think I'm the one blocking your goddamn sun, he mutters. Recognition is the same fucking goal -- and we'll give up the natural world -- the one that is not in pieces, is not picked apart by the reductionist illusionist -- because it all happens tomorrow.

and she said, you know, I get high

She, you know, well, shit--
she says she suggested a solution
a reasonable solution
to a hyper-allergic drug addicted bond salesman --

she was numerating, you know,
making it happen,
making it happen.

All the while,
she was just making the numbers roll,
you know,
back and forth,
like it wasn't anybody's,

wasn't nobody's business,
not to start the slashing,
the slashing and the cutting,
the bleeding,
the slashing and the cutting --
she didn't even like the dissections

not that she was making them,
not that she was asking him to make,

just a punk bond salesman.
just a punk bond salesman.

poem.txt

1, When I was a boy;
2, I loved computers;
3, I connected with them;
4, My sisters and I;
5, played them all the time;
6, But at thirteen I decided;
7, If I kept loving computers;
8, I would never get a girlfriend;
9, So I stopped;
10, My sisters became a teacher and a veterinarian;
11, and I became a therapist;
12, I took care of people;
13, I told them;
14, We are in the world to love the world;
15, if we can only learn how;
16, But the computers called me back;
17, to paint with them;
18, what I dream;
19, And what I dream is;
20, connecting;
21, everyone;
22, to everything;
23, because everyone;
24, is everything;
25, and everyone I love is everything;
26, and whoever loves anyone;
27, loves everything;

if I can only learn how

Sally and Jim find a way to go north

I am faking it, Sally says. Sally is not crying but she is sad. She has circles around her eyes. You look like a raccoon, Jim says. Don't say that to me, Sally says. I am serious. I am faking it. Jim turns over on his side. They are in bed together. I know, Jim says. Jim is not completely naked. Sally is naked. Sally is not under the sheets. Jim is under some of the sheets. And I don't really care, Jim says. Sally sits up. She sits on the side of the bed. I have to be up in two hours, she says. I have to go and visit my father in New Hampshire. Will you be here when I get back? Sally looks over her shoulder. I'm faking it too, Jim says. Christ, I can't stop. You know they are going to find out sooner or later, Sally says. I guess. So you'll be here when I get back. In the house? Yeah. Jim scratches his upper lip. What time? I don't know, probably before dinner. Yeah, I'll be here. I'll make sure of it. Sally gets up and walks into the bathroom and turns on the water. You shouldn't go see him alone, Jim says. I should come with you. You can't come with me, you have that presentation. I know, but you shouldn't go by yourself. Sally sits on the toilet. She puts her hands in her face. You know your brother stopped by yesterday. I meant to tell you. I know I didn't tell you. Turn off the water, Jim says, I can't hear you. Sally turns off the water. She doesn't get up. The bathroom is still only half finished, she thinks. We were going to put that water color in here. Did you say Jack stopped by? Yeah. What did he want. I don't know. He asked for you and he said he had something important for you. Jim leans over the side of the bed. I'm up, he thinks. I am going to go to New Hampshire with you, he says. Why don't you shower and I'll start driving. We'll get there by breakfast. Jim stretches. Sally? I'll drive. Ok? I don't really want to shower, Sally says. I don't really feel like getting clean. Jim walks around the bed. It is still black out. He looks at her. What are you doing sweetie? You look like a little sad racoon. I can't laugh, she says. I know -- but I am not sure that it is going to be like that all the time. I don't want you driving. But what about your presentation? I was just faking it, Jim mutters. I'll tell you what. Get dressed, get in the car, and I'll buy you breakfast at the border. I don't think I want to get dressed. Jim stands at the sink and stares at himself in the mirror. Jack was asking about that deal in Florida, wasn't he? I don't know, I guess so. I'll bet he looked bad, didn't he. He didn't look good, I don't think so. Do I really have to get dressed? Yes, but that's the only part of your day you have to fake -- I'll take care of the rest.

Oh I, ever so, could be thinking like you, but only in possibility

Macy thought her purpose was quite shocking, over the top really, a tangible vocation that (in all honestly, yes, and given the absolute parameters) had little bearing in the overall outcome of her success. Of my chosen success, Macy noted. This is quite at odds with my chosen and what I imagined to be my acquired success model. This just won't do. Of course, or rather evidently, the selection process and the ensuing dispersement of purposes had, of late, resulted in incredible scrutiny and (in the general and usual absence of logical analysis) quiet calls for re-organization of management. Hers, I assure you, Clyde remarked, is not the first miscalculated and hence misapplied purpose. While I assure you it is in no way reflective of the general tendencies within our official obligations as Link from formal institutional government to prescribed enthusiasm, happiness, contentment, and (ever quietly, I suppose, but still noted in official exchanges between departments) containment. Of course, if there is a complaint, an official complaint, one that cannot be resolved through informal mediation and informal persuasion, Clyde continued methodically but now clearly resolved to either pacify the agitated Macy or extend an institutional costume marked by the cruel yet calm disposition. Yes, the Post Commander had instructed, be firm and calm at onset. But ever gracefully rise to the assumed position and natural exhibition of disappointment, pity. A true condescender, you see. But it just won't do! Macy intoned, yet again, and unwittingly jeopardizing her ever fragile position in the institutional, the formal, lobby. Oh dear, Clyde thought, not yet accustomed to his parental obligations in such interactions. You will have to keep your voice at a level that is appropriate for official interactions, Clyde warned, considering himself a sound pupil, adjusting his jacket in the manner of the videos and again posing as far from delectable as, well, as is just about possible, Macy considered. Indeed, he is so ever far from delectable I would even venture to suppose that I would recall his image when I ever hear such a word voiced again, because he is surely the exact oppostite of that. By now, the merely extended presence of a resident at the official desk of the institution had gained the attention of the entire northern wing and I could not accept another citation, Clyde thought, not this early in what he assumed would be a very long career as an institutional employee but, at the least, there is some concern for my presence here, it must be unusual for such an interaction to take place, hmph, under marble, or on top of marble, Macy, now thoroughly annoyed, considered. This is just improper separation of duties, improper delegation, faulty leadership -- oh, but she wouldn't dare to suggust faulty leadership of the formal institution, a claim that would engage the outer members of the northern court and cause a great deal of disatisfaction, I would certainly, most certainly hate to spend a week in jail, or even a night, Macy thought and considered whether just leaving, just turning on her heel, might just be the best course of action, of course, if she does mumble the slightest slant, I am within my right, moreover I am obligated as such to handle the confrontation with swift and direct action, Clyde considered. Perhaps, he (oh he himself) would engage the two outer officers into an elegant and peaceful capture of this purposeless woman, this intruder, and in fact, assume that the future orders of purposes, of course, will be well suited to owners, no correction could possibly be made in prior distributions (a point clearly evident with consideration of the response to an admission of error by the formal institution). Of course this was, after all, directly contingent upon his purpose, which with ever poor judgement he had failed to open and, at present, lay carelessly on his bedside table.

g.

Georgia, god damn you -- that was what it was about, that was its fucking constitution. It began in foul places, like those under the bathroom sink, and in the walls, where the fingers play against themselves, undoing the sealant and making it all -- just jesus, Georgia -- you were instigating the entire entourage, into this collapse, my own fucking head into a pile of pie : my own consistency was muddled and we weren't even fucking -- the other kind, the kind that is for embrace and entanglement and confusion and -- jesus, he was watching too, just watching her rob me, take me into the barn, you know, yeah, like that, she threw me on the hay, as I remember it, the only way I am gonna remember it -- I was out of control, then, I was remembering too much, she wasn't anything like she was now, not like she is now, I couldn't have brought her into the barn, she had to lead me -- and he all watched, he and all of them watched, like it was chickens they were watching -- I didn't fight, no, but I was crying and I think I was almost, maybe, I am not remembering it how it was, not like they tell it from A until D, I am not like that -- but it wasn't different than that, it couldn't have been any different than that -- not as I remember it, she was in her skin that day, really in her skin, she owned it much sooner than I owned mine, it fit her better than mine has ever fit me, she didn't have any of the doubt that it was elastic that maybe it would just melt off one day, especially if it was too hot -- jesus, it was hot all the time, it was hot like that all that summer -- it was too hot -- everything else, on top of that, over her skin wasn't really important, not to her suit, not to the fact that she fitted, she wasn't caring, not as I remember it, as I have been remembering it, she was fitted, usual and accustomed to it -- yeah, I know she must have taken me there, even if they were all watching, she must have taken me to the barn, to the place with the hay, because I know, she didn't even know, she didn't know the difference, you know, between her clothes and her skin and she wasn't touched by herself with her clothes, herself was always just her skin, I couldn't have taken her then, she must have taken me. But it was hot and I think my skin melted -- they were gonna see my bones and all my muscle and I was gonna be an alien to them. They were going to scream and run and pull out their hair. But she didn't stop. She kept moving, onto and over me -- she felt like she was in her skin.

I was in her skin. She wasn't unkind -- but fucking inconsiderate -- I can swear again. Now, I am forgetting, all the time, but there is one other command, just one last command that I need to forget, the contracted purpose of my ambition to conquer them and all of them, especially when I am at dinner parties. I don't want to be inconsiderate either, I just want to forget, she was always forgetting, she was always seeming to forget, I just want to forget about the way to get anywhere -- jesus, I can't take anything off, anymore but I like to put everything on. I need to forget that too.

Listening, the other day, to the Stereophonics, singing about Pier 49, I smelled the Pacific air and cigarettes.

Rambling now past the edges.

Loose grass, mud in the air I can smell it so I know it is there.

S----- I remembered drinking and smoking in the narrow space of the fire escape, and felt unbearably sad that it was gone. But remembered, remembering, I had it all and -- believe it or not -- that helped.

"When are we going to build our empire?"

Every day now. At varying amplitudes, different heights. Spring comes and the ceiling is lifted. Sometimes I am allowed back to places that are eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed off the planet, fatal combination of time and time and time and time...

In some shadows, mud. I saw evil on the wall of a bungalow -- how weird is that? I must have been high, sure, I was, I was tripping balls too but I mean: evil? Last night in a dream A-- said, just to piss off my grandmother, "God has AIDS." And I said, "I mean, sure... only He doesn't *have* it, He *is* AIDS and the mud I keep mentioning and the mentioning and what isn't mentioned and your hair that I coughed up after I went down on you and the whole nine yards and seven years since we were out there," I'm talking to you now, under sky I can almost smell though the fire escape and the cigarettes and the shadows you stood in as you drank the whiskey and the whiskey too are all gone to God now. God of body attacking itself. God of time. I remember, and remembering, close the gaps between Him and me, me and you, and bear everything.

We got robbed.

I am decide to break the bank. You call me, it runs, like a clock. Like clock work.

Put in and punch out. I put it. I took it out.

*

So let's get focused. The mistakes are not my hidden attentions. I am trying to say something very direct. I am tired of tried.

"Citibank, motherfuckers, all those big buildings leased to big companies and no one to blame. Knock one down and then there's a whole nation to blame, doesn't matter if they are women or children or if no one there blew away anything on American soil before (but might, now). Yes it does. It matters. No time for sarcasm. No time for anything but to live in the shadow of the fact that your life is short, and all yours. What will you do? I tell you what I want to do; I want to honor my place on the planet by doing the things I do well, well. Next time, if there is one, I may not be able to do these things; type; relax; lie on a couch with a computer and a talk streaming over the internet from a NY Times columnist. I might be in the sand, bombed; I might not be at all."

so I am vein, and I am blue. I am death star and lightning high in the sky. Count the stars over the countryside, red rocks, martian rocks here on earth and yet most do not see it. Bring me your glasses, Dad, I'll clean them with my shirt. To help you see. So we can see each other, maybe a little more than lately, I know time is short. Our lives last so long and then...

I am circle and green. I am Washington on the dollar paper. The rolling paper on the street. Some things you see with your eyes, others you just have to hear. On the radio, I hear a song like distant thunder, Thunderroad, Bruce, my man, boss, boss, boss, everyone's gotta be a boss sometimes.

I wrote this with my eyes closed.

&

punch out

be still and die

Unremarkable, Thero emerges, no more impressed by the land than this sun by him. The entanglement of the two,though, now, desperate, in tow to the latest defeat of the summoned prince, does grant him mediocre praise from the gathered villagers. We sad and meager few! We have no demands on him! We are but the saddest of the lot! Look at my garden, it is nothing but rag-weeds. I cannot eat those. No! Of course, in the absence of usual clarity, Thero stumbles in pose and offers false praise and even ironic and misunderstood solace to the wimpered and unusually vocal horde:

Be still and Die!

The vantage point from here, beyond the hill, even after the collapsed sun has been murdered and brought out of its pearly estate--brought to bear its own blood hands on the mark of our prince--you will still suffer, plagued by the merest recognition of sallow ineptitude, tragic uncertaintly, but more desperate, more lifelike, is the irrelevence of even if, even if my own hand were to murder that star and take the necks of each of the oppressors still you would have the greatest saddness, the only sadness that is ever your lot--so Die and be still!

ps

with a sick stomach sticky heart she took the last of her weight off the chair and tried to remember a time that was different. the birds landed outside on the fire escape without any sense of urgency, spring was coming, this had all happened before. hadn't it? I thought the birds looked a little unusual, so close behind the glass. their song sounded through the solid wall. this is what they mean by miracle, right? she rolled over and went back to bed, slept to dream of a spinning cube that produced color, woke and said You can see things in dreams that you will never ever see in life...

and the birds flew off for worms, busy making babies, no eyes.

this business of being light

I would like to get down to this business of being light. Tia, Bobby-Dean, Nicole -- we're putting on a play and I'd like you to be the stars. I am playing the sky, and this machine here, yes this one right here, this machine plays the subatomic substances that make us who we are, that governs our relationships to ourselves, and to each other

I mean you, Bobby-Dean. Your belly, the dirt under your nails. I mean you, Tia. I haven't forgotten how your body felt. It was wonderful.

But there is no more time! In the business of being light, we can' stop to differentiate between which body touched whose in the dark, or divide up time between 'back then' and 'tomorrow.' I want to leave that all behind. And if you three want in, then just lie and and let me hook you up and I guarantee that when you return to the streets and are hungry, dirty, or sad, you will remember how it felt and though it won't save you (or you, or you, or me) it will have mattered, yes, that time, not tomorrow, not back then, when you were small enough to sing the world into being--

when we were valuable

the end

And so the story was over and its narrator no longer hovering outside the page turned inside and became a bright blue ball of light; and the actor who was the hero was no longer bound by the narrator's words, and he moved free and fast down the dark city streets, the bright blue ball of light ahead of him, which he chased while kicking up his heels and letting out shouts into the world; he became a dumb animal no longer mute, still preverbal, with great deep guttural sounds shaking his ribs as he cried out with the realization that the narrator that once held him in time and place (to women he loved, things his mother said when and all the work he put his hand to) finally let him go.

So where are we now? It wasn't my story to tell anymore, and I couldn't slow down. As I rose up I felt his hand so close to me, I could feel him breathing hard and realized as much as I knew about what came before -- his words, his scar, his love -- neither of us had any idea what was going to happen next.

for example

the reasons seemed quite simple in the end. in every bag was x number of marbles. we knew they were red, blue, and white. but we didn't know how many there were of each, or how to make them sing. this was a mission of mine, it was personal, you know, so I didn't explain to anyone else why I wanted to do it. I just said,

how can we teach these marbles to sing?

and padro replied,

hold them close to the ears in the side of your head until they see what happens inside. then they will understand, all of them, even if x > 20 or x > 30 or x >= the number of cells in your head, or heart, or limbs, whatever, you see it didn't matter in the end, it was quite simple: take what you need from the thing with no mouth, no way to sing, and put it into your mouth and then open wide. and if it works everyone will hear what you've been needing, what you've been wanting, more than anything else, and no one will know what you had to lose or let go of or break to get it, or how I didn't even know what I wanted except to know what I wanted to want next.

She got normal, after it wasn't so normal because it was all fighting

She was just fucking counting, you know, just sitting there and fucking counting, each piece, like he was a goddamn set of marbles. He gets up, stands on the sink, squats. You're going to break the sink, she says. She is looking at her nails and filing them. I'm not gonna break the fucking sink. He spits on his toes. God damn fucking crazy bitch, she is, you know, she's got some nerve to take us out, show us around that entire factory and then come back, as if she didn't know that whole time, as if she wasn't thinking about, oh shit, I have a man blown to pieces in my goddamn office and now I'm going to go pick him up, piece by piece, and put him in a bag and bury him. You don't know she buried him. What you think she ate him? Get a grip, Kelsie. He hops off the sink and stretches his lower back. The sun has come up now, between the buildings at first, and now into the bathroom. He squints. She's gonna have something coming to her, you know, something that she doesn't expect, something that is gonna knock her off this blithely indifferent bullshit. She just watched her best friend get blown to pieces, Pete. What do you think she should do? Act normal? Give me a break. Kelsie sits on the toilet. She is still looking at her nails. I wouldn't for a second think you'd know what to do if Scott got blown up. I don't expect you'd know exactly how to react--Well I sure as shit wouldn't pick him up piece by piece and put him in a goddamn sack. That's for sure. What would you do? Call the police? Call his parents? Jesus, Kelsie, you sound like a fucking nut. Yes, I'd call the cops, I'd call his parents. He is looking at the street. That man is still bugging people, he thinks. The man with the new tennis shoes, clean haircut, begging. Give it a break, asshole, you're obviously not on the brink. Now I have to go back there and see her again and ask her if she's all right, if she got rid of the body all right. He yawns and scratches his stomach. I hate that crazy bitch. She saved your ass more than once. What? You should be glad you have a job, Pete. You should be glad you can walk over there and dick around all day and not worry about it. So she has to exercise a different type of social control. It is her place. And I wouldn't start complaining, not right now. Yelling starts in the other room. Fuck, they are already up. Yeah and they are gonna be asking about their uncle, if not today, then tomorrow and if you go and tell them that he got blown up and Lucy put him in a bag--then what? Well, I'm not gonna like it all that much. I have far too much to do this week, we have the builders coming on Thursday and after that, well, you know, its the holidays and then your parents are coming, and they just don't need this right now. Besides, its not like she blew him up. I wish they'd stop yelling so early and just decide they hate each other. Yeah, me too, then maybe we all wouldn't be picking up pieces of each other and putting them in bags.

quality, hetra

...I thought that just once, you know, just at that one time, when everything was going pretty smooth, that something was gonna work, something was gonna align itself with all that magic out there, you know, all that synthesis out there, that something was gonna definitely gonna follow, I mean, it was gonna happen, it was gonna happen because, after all, I would have spent enough hours, yeah, enough time, putting all those little pieces together, just sticking them together, just making sure, ever so sure, you know, that they were all in the right spots, in the right places, that each one, each one of those things was where it had to be, where it could only be, and that when it was all built up, you know, after all those hours, it was going to stand and look back down, back down at me and everybody around me and it would be there shining about, right there, you know, at all of us, and at me, and it would be that construction of work, you know, a big construction of work, like nothing in it that was asleep or that was trying to fall asleep, like nothing in it that was considering itself foolish, or considering itself out of place, or considering itself, really, at all, it would just be beaming, like all those pieces, each one of those pieces really was in the spot that it was supposed to be, that only spot it could ever be, and then, maybe, I thought, you know at least that once, that it wouldn't really be beaming because it was proud of anything, it wouldn't really be beaming because it had accomplished anything or because it was receiving all this attention, no, it wouldn't really be acting at all, I mean, it, up there, all completed and built in the only way it could ever be built, as the only thing it could ever be, you know, with all those pieces sticking together, just like they had to be sticking together and it standing up there, in its place, it, would be that thing that was completed only in that it was all that it had ever intended to be, and all its parts, you know, each one of its parts, was only there because it was part of that intention, part of the model in presentation, with no utility, with no action, no, it wasn't about to leap out and squash out, you know, some major social problem, or fix something with the taxes, it was a real exhibit, you know, of what it was to be all that was intended, without carrying the rest, without carrying around with it, the rest of the things that weren't intended, the rest of the things that really had nothing to do with intention, place, you know, the stuff that wasn't really important to it, that didn't represent it, that didn't complete that form of intention, were just left aside, you know, never attached in place, didn't really every have a place. Yeah, I suppose, that is what I thought, when it was about to decide how to choose, how to choose anything at all, but I, you know, I just chose the wrong thing, you know, even after all that talk and all that work, you know, even after I had constructed this walking piece of newspaper or whatever, I just thought maybe it wasn't really worth it, maybe it didn't really have all those pieces that it needed and maybe it needed some other pieces, and so, after a while, I started adding a bunch of other pieces until, you know, I have a room full of crap....

Mr. Madison refrains from pleading guilty

I was collecting hair, like little bits of hair, it was harmless, really, I mean, from barbershops, they throw it out at the end of the day and I was collecting it and using it, that isn't really stalking, not like they say it is, I was using the hair, its not like I was obsessing with the hair or sleeping with it, or putting it in my mouth and eating it, you know, I was collecting it, and I happened to go to places like salons, you know, among other places, hundreds of other places, not just salons, not just women's salons and not just the salon that she happens to go to every week, but other places too, like the barbershop off Delancy, that place has such good business, I could go twice a day and get two garbage bags full of hair, and they don't even watch their dumpsters, they don't care at all, I mean, have them go through all that hair and see if this is really stalking, let them see how much, you know, hair I was collecting and then they can come back to me, they can come back right here and say look we've seen all this, you know, we've seen this hair we've run a lot of tests on this hair and we think you were stalking 2,552 people since last july, and you are under arrest for stalking 2,552 people for nine months, because really, that is what they are going to find, when they start tracing all these DNA things that they are going to have to trace, they aren't going to find one lonely woman from the heights, they are gonna find a bunch of, you know, hobos, and whatnot, and those freaks from the lower haight and even the mission types, and probably, because, I don't know, I was at this for a long time, they are gonna come across all sorts of people, maybe even people they know, like that couple from the marina that likes the salon off van ness, then what, you know, all of them are going to come on in here, telling me that I can't like hair and I can't collect things that don't belong to me even though nobody wants it anymore, nobody wants their hair that they don't have anymore, its not like there are a bunch of people saying they miss all their hair and they wish they had collected their hair all their lives and stored it up in a room somewhere, in a cabin somewhere, like in vermont, and kept adding to it every six weeks, you know, kept driving or flying up to their cabin and keeping their hair, its not like this is happening, so I'm taking something that nobody wants, least of all that woman, and I'm collecting it, I'm using it, I'm using the things that nobody wants, nobody wants to have anymore, and they leave all over the place, and I'm using it, but they can't have that, it must be stalking, because once you start collecting the things that once were people, that once were part of people, all those people in the heights and all those people downtown start saying that you can't take things that aren't yours even if nobody wants it anymore--otherwise you are just stalking, plain and simple, just stalking the women in the salons, making them feel unsafe, making them feel unsafe because you're using their garbage, you know, the stuff they don't want anymore, and they are feeling unsafe because it was theirs, once, you know, like a pair of pants, and now they have decided they don't want it, don't want it all, and they don't want anybody else to have it either even if I'm just making carpets, rugs really, for the nice couples north of the city.

it bombed: .....

How about a fistfight? Real casual, after she finishes vacuuming in here. The goddamn buzzing is making me mad. She looks like she just got out of space and then she just got out of the gym and then she just came in here and started yelling. The place is already clean, you know. The place is already god-damn clean. We should just fistfight because, really, after all this time, I think I've slipped. No, I'll get back up, eventually, and re-order this power structure, to start looking like it should, away from this penetrating mold of shit that is coming at my face everyday at about ten billion miles an hour. I used to like to look at them, even when I wasn't thinking that I was looking at them. Now, I am just tired. They are all playing with the same rules and none of them is really playing by any rules that really make sense. I want to run a thousand miles an hour and burn my face on the outer ozone and then come back and say: See, that was space. Way up there, that was fucking space. You goddamn apes still don't get it. At least then I'd have a real burn on my face and when I walked around here, people would say, wow, there goes that man with the burn on his face because he touched heaven. Then recognition would be all about the warring and acting and I could live like a king knowing that I was something, even if I don't think that I want to care what they are thinking. Even if, really, I think I'm pleasing a bunch of goddamn apes who are thinking they are better at finding order and systems and patterns, better at looking at patterns and memorizing colors. No, its horseshit, they are all different color reds. Thats like saying all those people are white. They aren't really white. Some of them are, but not really. I could run one thousand miles an hour, you know.

that is infidelity

www.makeyourselftransparent.com

The Color Currency of Nature

"Red toadstools, red ladybirds, red poppies, are dangerous to eat, but red tomatoes, red strawberries, red apples, are good. The open mouth of an aggressive monkey is threatening, but the red bottom of a sexually receptive female is appealing. The flushed cheeks of a man or a woman may indicate anger, but they may equally indicate pleasure. Thus the colour red, of itself, can do no more than alert the viewer, preparing him to receive a potentially important message; the content of the message can be interpreted only when the context of the redness is defined."

Nicholas Humphrey, 1976

Creativity

Elizabeth said that once she wrote an international best-seller, she was fucked. Really fucked, she said, into microphone, into the crowd, their faces wide open and blank and waiting,...

She told them though that in East Africa when the men dance well the onlookers chant Allah Allah and that's how it is to be creative, to let God come through. But what of the next morning? When the dancer wakes, and his body aches, and he's getting a little fat, a little older? How will he feel when Allah leaves him?

Elizabeth said what she wants most of all is to tell Allah, Hey, I'm working hard, come visit me today. She wants Allah to do His part.

And everyone claps, a sound like thunder they make with their hands.

fuck emememememem

The universe has a shape. How weird is that? It took 10 computers 12 weeks to draw it in flat 3 dimensional space. How many parametric equations will it take before one tells you it has a name and it is yours? What are you then? I raised my hand and said humanity is what we are left with. I tried to warn them not to count losing ground as a loss. But they were too busy clutching their dicks, swinging them sadly at guitars and Picassos, saying there is Nothing that can replace me Nothing like me like me me me me me me me m em em em eme me me me me me me me me me me em em em eme meme me me me me me me em e

but ah they were already being replaced

by the distant cumulus clouds, drawing shapes of dinosaurs

in the strange blue lawn

AR? AR? Rules, rules, rules.

There is no way out of the rules, woman. Generally speaking, this would probably be the time to witness a massacre and engage in formal analysis, but we have so few participants that we are requesting you join the opposition.

Yes, in front of the man with the scythe.

BangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBang
BangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBang
BangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBang
BangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBang

No shots were actually fired. As appropriate witness to the defense, this was not a modern engagement of military force, hence the general adoption of sophisticated and more progressive definitions of "woman" and "man" would be, by all accounts, crudely biased. We cannot create standards and hold the past accountable.

............................
......................shhhhhhhhhh..........
.....shhhhhhhhh.....................shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.........
ssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh..............

The eruptive nature of the witness precludes a logical and systematic review of his behavior. Therefore, in regards to the charge of inadequate manslaughter, all further lengthy and academic discussion is dismissed.

Inadequate manslaughter?
Yes.

BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep
BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep
BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep
BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep
BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep
BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep
BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep
BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep
BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep

Inadequate manslaugther?
Due to the conditions, so stipulated, and as evidence of the social triangle (hence the informed consent of massacre), we cannot determine that the nature of such an action, a truly absolute action (ok, arguably) would necessarily involve the systematic unmaking of this, or any, woman. In pedestrian terms, there is little appropriate data that elucidates the germane nature of death in live court-room exercises.

Of course, she is not alive. Of course, thereby, it is not proven that it is anything but removal of an opposite (or the addition of a disimilar trait). Thereby, making her a creation that she could not ever have possibly been. No recognizeable identity in this world would hold such a list of definitions as identity.

This is, obviously, inadequate manslaughter.

I think I see your reflection in the pond

This is a map of georgia:



No, this is a map of georgia:



They still kill people in georgia. They tie them to trees and light them on fire. I have seen it. In which georgia?

This one:



I have a friend in georgia. He isn't tied to a tree. He must be one of those free georgians. You know, the kind that live here:



I don't think the free georgians live there. Not anymore. Its far too small.

lets go have a slumber party, Ghoriantta!

Thi s is a cl ue that--we are making ourselves into circ les. I run around the house, run aroun dt he house, ru nar oundth ehouse and ea tcho colateca ke. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Man = Ghoriantmab
Woman = Ghoriantta
Child = Ghorianttab
Eats = Ghorentab
And = Ghoreghore

Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab!Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab!Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab!Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab!Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab!Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab!Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab!Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab!

There, there, endless useless man. You didn't mean it. Go ea tcho colatec ake!

ultimately, the reductionist claim will murder all our senses

Stop counting?

I should just stop counting?

No............................ yes, wait, you see? wait.. ..........................................................
...................................................................
...................................................................
......................................................................
............god-less whore of a traiter gets arrested, penalized, sentenced, punished, and in traffic, crosses the street accidently, without a goddamn clue then you can resolve the issue of unfairness, peacefullness, bigotry, when he is hit by a truck, a UPS truck......................................................
.........................................................................
......................

I am not going to stop counting.

There are still fifty left over. I hate remainders. She is still working on that proof, you know, that 1=1. The rest of it, and I would motion toward all of it, is rather irrelevent without that.

I wouldn't kill anybody, not even myself, not for fifty left overs.

the single and only acceptance, like the future, like the past horror

He's a fucking animal, she said and she was upset, you know, red in the face, and crying, like she'd been hit. I know he hit you, I said. And she said, no, he didn't hit me--she said, he didn't touch me, he didn't, she said, no, he didn't hit me, and she grabbed me, you know on the arm, she grabbed my arm, and told me, you know, told me looking in my eye, she said, he didn't do this, he didn't hit me, and she told me to look at her, to look at her in the face, and she said it again, you know, making sure she was looking at me, making real sure she was looking right at me, and...I don't know what happened, honest, I am sitting here right now, you know, all together, talking like I am completely under control just as I was standing right there, all under control, watching her lower lip shake, just like it was off its own goddamn course and, I was under control you know, and I went to touch her hand, and I was thinking, he goddamn fucking hit her, that fucking asshole and I went to grab her hand, and she had this big cut on her hand, you know this massive cut, she was bleeding, she was bleeding on her hand, and she didn't even know it, but she must have noticed something because she saw my face change, you know, like it must have changed real quick because she started back, like she hadn't known she was bleeding, like she hadn't known she was all in blood, all over her hand, and then she started screaming, just screaming, and I ran out of there, you know, I can't really tell what was happening after that, you know just running, like real fast, and not really seeing anything around me, not really taking notice that there was anything around me, not really, but I could feel it, even when its all passed, I can still feel it, I can remember that blood in the skin, you know that rising blood level, like your body is storming, like its kicking up the sea, and its picking everything up, all the pieces, its picking them all up and throwing them all over the place, and changing the directions of everything until you don't know where the sky and the sea is, you don't know where your skin ends and the world is starting, you don't know if you are walking on actual streets, looking at actual houses, seeing actual people, you know, in actual places. But now, I don't know, I just remember her screaming, just screaming real loud like, like she knew I was going to go do something terrible, like she knew I was going to confront him.

He's a fucking animal, she said. You know, she said it, she came in, all red in the face, torn up, and she said it. Every once in a while, once in a blue, this blood picks me up, you know, picks me up like that wind and takes me somewhere else, somewhere over there, strips me of my clothes and my hair and all the things that are me, that detail me, that make me recognizeable. And I'm undressed, running. You know? I was real angry. I know I was angry. But that's not the thing that's ringing, you know, after the screaming, after she stops, somehow stops, its not that I was angry. I know I was angry. But after all that, you know, just sitting here, I can't help but think, you know, I can't help but know: I let that fucking man tell me my own place, my own future. I let that fucking man take my face long before I resigned to exist like this, you know, like this here, all confined. That fucking man. I let that fucking man tell me what I was, all that I was, all that I was ever gonna be. And I was ok that he was telling me that I was nothing, that I was without it all, undressed, unfit. That's the real horrow, you know. The real horror is this willful submission to all that I was ever told, all that I probably ever even knew, all that I was gonna become no matter what. And I fucking accepted it.

{break}

I thought it would be easier to perhaps integrate, not differentiate, the exact rate of change the difference you see between me and you. hwere and aI s thav toenca 't the ths ess see

that is noise on an otherwise purposeful signal.

"Assigning purpose or other intension to the observed process of matter and mechanical things is folly, and how we got religion in the first place, jackass."

He said. I think he really meant it. Blackboard's singing in the wind, I caught a whole lot of rain on my tongue and drowned.

Does God separate signal from noise, or it is to Him always and only signal -- pure relevant meaning?

or is it all noise

xxzzzxzxcv vcxxxxxxcvvdsaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaqaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

my early escalation into dissatisfaction

I could tell him to fuck off, you know, be really direct about it, just come out and tell him that I am tired of this fucking shit:

Where are you going?
I am going to class. I have a class. I need to sit in class.
Where is your friend?

I don't know. I haven't seen him. I think he is in Africa. Building houses and walking around the desert, real lost like.
Do you think he is lost?
Not really. He doesn't get lost.
Have you spoken to him lately?

No. I haven't spoken to him lately. Not in a long time. He is off walking on sand and then flying to strange places and eating strange foods.

I was hungry, real hungry, I think, I mean I must have been really hungry, like starving, you know, like hungry all over, like you are always a little bit faint, like you aren't getting the right things into your body even though you are getting something into your body but it's mostly the wrong things, or it certainly isn't enough of the right things. I don't think I was getting any of the right things. I was tired all the time and hungry. And then I was faint. I was crawling out of my skin, real sneaky like, like I was just letting my body crash. Then I collapsed, I just collapsed. It had everything to do with a dream, I think, everything that I've ever had with dreams. I mean, that is how you describe it, right? That's how I describe it, like a dream, at least that is how they would describe it. Right? Don't you think that is how they'd describe it? I would at least. Well, it felt like coming out of a spaceship or something, after I collapsed. You know the whole class had moved around, adjusted themselves to see maybe if they could see a little bit more and there I was walking in off the spaceship, waving to the little earth people, and still desperately hungry, my own mind watering, and the whole place looking like a goddamn desert, and there I am running back to it, with a big schmuck smile on my face, you know, eager to get back to this place where I know there is nothing for me to fucking eat. I couldn't even try to find something here. There is no chance that there is anything here. And I am just starting to fall flat, uncontrolled and flat, disappear into a self-loathing shadow of cactii--that would be my great finale. I have already come to recognize my ephemeral state and my limited range. But not my disappearance. I can't stand my willing disappearance.

He's not really in Africa is he?
I don't know if he's really in Africa. That's what he tells me. It sure sounds different than here.
Do you think he'll come back?
I don't think I'd come back. Not from Africa. Not when it is terribly romantic and beautiful in Africa.

never the same

I couldn't believe it was said, really, or that it even needed to be said at all. Sad clowns, balloon in the rain. I tried my best to look both ways, cross the street with arms wide open, sweaty palms pointing to God. He said, No way Jose, and then let the traffic flow over me like so many drops of rain. Balloons, clowns, God, nouns -- I've said them all so many different ways.

She didn't understand. "I want you to love me, always, like you used to, always," and I said love is a river -- you can go back to where you came from, but it is never the same.

The Language, Behavior, Attitude Triangle and its Useful though not always Self-Reflective Purposes

She started asking questions, you know, like real penetrating questions, the kind that made me look again, look at her again, and, not just because she was asking them, not just because of the circumstances (that would be cruel of me, wrong, right?), no, not just that, but because they were really penetrating questions, and they were getting at this problem she was having with, what I could only imagine, you know, some rather frequent occurence, like the problem was happening with some regular occurrence, you know, like often....exactly, because it was all about her neighbor and his lawn, or his fence, and it really had nothing to do with me, not ostensibly, at least, not that it couldn't have had nothing to do with me, no, I thought about that, you know, I look like him, or looked like him, and I got to thinking, one of these past nights, when that main electrical switch froze and they couldn't turn the damn lights off, well, I don't know why it took me so damn long, because I always rememebered her penetrating questions and her frequent occurences, but I never considered, not until this week, you know, I never really considered that she thought I was him, she thought it was my lawn or waste or whatever it was that she thought was wrong....no, she didn't phrase it like that, no of course she didn't phrase it like that, she said something like, inappropriate or careless, like she thought my action was inappropriate and careless and disrespectful and some other word...I haven't come across it yet, something else, but you see, I already am, changing the part of me, you know, I already am incorporating those things into my meal times and my outside time, you know, and taking some of those words, because she was always using those words and I even think she was using them correctly, and using them myself and making it a natural part of my conversation....so, no, I don't know, I think it just finally hit me, you know with the electricity on and all and my brain in that inbetween where it doesn't really want to recognize where it is, well, it doesn't ever want to recognize where it is, but then it didn't really want to be turned on and yet, like it was guiding itself, like it knew if it turned itself on, I'd screw it up. And that's when it hit me, right there, you know, right smack in the middle of the forhead, yeah, I thought, she was thinking I was her neighbor, all that time, she was thinking I was her neighbor, and all this could have been avoided, not that she should have really been approaching me like that, not really, but all this might have concluded in a different way had I just either really been her neighbor, because then I really would have been doing all those things that she wasn't liking or if she hadn't confused me with her neighbor, you know, either one, I think we'd be in different places, at least right now, we might even be in opposite places and she'd be calling me and asking me to come down here and wait in line. You just think, sometimes, that one little misunderstanding, you know, just one tiny little thing, like her thinking I was her neighbor and all that results in this, I mean if she had known that was gonna cause her death, you know the simple misunderstanding was going to lead to her death, I know she wouldn't have confused us, and, but really, the other side of it, is if I had moved in there, like I almost did last year, then I really would have been her neighbor and that too, you know my action too, would have saved her life then, because it would have been ok and all that thing about my lawn or my fence would have been about me and I could have fixed that. I mean that is crazy, you know, that is almost unbelieveable and you know, sometimes you just got to wonder, you know, you really have to think about these things and all these interactions because, just like that, the smallest wonders can change the whole trajectory of your life, the smallest confusions can throw your life into a whole other pond and that whole other pond might look so different and it might even get you to throw it all away just like she did.

city gardens

Fuck it, you know, I was all coming up here, earlier, you know a lot earlier, and I was thinking about all the little changes that have been going on, you know, like the fence next to this guy's house, you know this new fence, that just came out of nowhere, just a fence built right there to protect the plants or something, some sort of garden, I think, you know, but that was earlier, and there was the man squatting across the street in some new fenced in community garden, here he was just squatting and digging in the dirt, you know this grown man digging in the dirt, like he had nothing to concern him but the mud and the mud had nothing to concern him with, not at all and, then it was just hitting me like that, you know especially earlier, when I was walking around, back and forth, this whole block, even more than the block, you know past the block, and into some of those parts over, you know, even in Far Rock, where my friend lives, he seeing the same thing, just these little fences starting to come up and protect these plants and a bunch of grown men, grown men, sitting in the area and getting all dirty, getting down into the mud and with the roots and spending all day, like all day on a saturday, out there in their garden, in their new little garden, brought in by a bunch of those people, set up by a bunch of those people, yeah, I know they are from the city, but they aren't from the city, not around here, they don't end up in parts of the city where you look at a face and you know he's seen the city and you know he's from the city, they aren't from this part of the city, not the one we've been coming up in all this time, and so, you know, earlier, maybe even much earlier, I was concerned, I suppose, and I think, maybe, I was even conflicted, right, like I had this feeling that there was something not right about this grown man all fenced in and talking to all these people that have no business walking around back here, and then, you know, you know why I was conflicted, because, you know, the city blocks with the fences and all those things growing up back there are really ok, you know, and earlier, I was thinking it was really ok, it was probably even really worth something, you know, like green is a good color, and it felt good, but man, that is like the poison that we are getting fed, you know right now, right this second, just like that, just in a second, just like that old man squatting in the mud, not thinking there something wrong with that, just in that second, I was, you know converted to thinking like they wanted me to start thinking, thinking its ok if I am squatting in my owh mud, in my own street, like that's ok, but I know that's not ok, I mean that isn't even a little bit ok, that is just wrong, you know the kind of thing that you know is just wrong, that's how it is, and so, you know, really, even after all that color, really--fuck the plants, man, fuck the plants, because I am squatting in my own street, looking like I can't even protect nobody from coming at me, and you know, as I was saying, you know, this was earlier, this was earlier, now, really, fuck it, I mean it, I mean fuck it, there is no way I am gonna run around here, just here, and let my brother or my uncle, you know, let them start squatting and thinking that everything is ok because look at this, I mean, look at this, its a far way from being ok, its pretty fucking far from being all right. Yeah, so fuck it, I said fuck it, and honestly, fuck it because its far from ok, its really pretty far from ok, and like I'll ever really have the chance, really, you know, of trying to understand how messed up it must be, I mean, of really knowing how messed up it must be, of really letting everybody know how messed up things have really gotten, how disconnected I must be, how disconnected all of us here in this city must be, when I am convinced, and I am really convinced, you know, that I have to take out an old man because he's fucking gardening in my neighborhood.

the famous night we first made love

in the morning everything was clearer. Last night -- where were we? I remember there were stars, that the moon "was watery and pale." Robert said this, but he was remembering something altogether different. The moon, even the stars, were stand-ins for the other thing, the thing he didn't mention. That was the whole point.

"How do we substitute the flesh and bones of man for the flesh and bones of his brother?" We were silent at the long table. I don't know what the others were thinking. My morning was clear until I drank too much coffee, and suddenly there were fireworks of thought in my skull.

"That kind of substitution is essentially meaningless," I said. "How could we measure it's success? By which I mean: if man x1 is there and then we see man x2, unless we watch the transition occur we DON'T KNOW IT HAPPENED." Juan nods, and deliberately pauses before looking to Robert, asleep, his glasses a little crooked, his head just a bit above his chest.

"I think that is a very good idea but it needs to be put into proper terms."

So I said x ---> system ---> f(x) so that f(x1) = f(x2) where x1 is man and x2 is his brother, then Robert hollered, and the papers flew around and mixed with the coffee and I watched him tip the table and it headed for the floor. I felt a curious pressure behind my eyes that built until all the differences between me and my colleagues (and the table, falling, the waves of light in the air, the moon) disappeared into a colorful noise, like static but soft, an ocean I suppose, fine, okay, let's just call it that.

the deletion in error, is by chance, only a circle

As a child, I suppose, there is a longing for the perfected face, an image that is not so torn between culture, history, and idealism. That is the face, yes, once sought. But now, I am only here, unable to work, really uninspired to dissect, detail, re-write the already written, merely at the request of the reductionist (who, I am convinced nonetheless, has found certain noble and divine foundations in his work). So, without true joy, I walked here, without valid ambition and not quite alone. No, it would have been years earlier, perhaps even at the very beginning, had I been without help. They did keep me locked in step with the world, a chosen submission, of sorts, but after several attempts, taken in honest effort, the outcomes would not separate themselves from each other, each, even in its completion, a hollow resemblance to the nature of the vacuum, the bright fierce ball, the speed which has no ignition--this is the only act to resemble.

He is, himself, in pieces--literal pieces. He did not dress himself well today and, later, upon inspection, removed the unfortunate pieces of clothing and decoration. I will collect them, he muttered, eventually. I will collect them and re-place them in their proper homes, owned and catalogued.

Is he mad? Of sorts, of course. The resemblance to any hierachy, she mentions, casually (I believe she is sarcastic but almost witless, you know, indifferent to the lunacy that clearly runs all through my family), itself requires a, what would you people call it, a leap of faith? So, technically, his logic is rather faulty to suppose that any resemblance, any actual reflection, no matter how authentic he believes it to be, is merely a subjective relationship--one that holds no absolute divine power (unless, of course, by serious mistake, a critical accident). Given this overall analysis, one that I take no pleasure in delivering, we have no choice but to execute him.

She is mad for analyzing my proposition, he intones, unwilling to accept or even acknowledge his pending death. The only witness in the circle is never in the circle at all. That, I have pretended to understand, means that this long reflection, even at dawn, is simply something I could not possibly comprehend, not unless I remembered not to be involved, which of course, I am destined not to do.