That man who once said before where there was word there was mud, and I told him: Before there was mud there were poisoned wells.
Give me your labor.
A singing exchange. Fair trade.
The man, cellared, with his stack of myth. He dug for years and never found bottom. Stars are named after him.
By now I've surely dropped it. (by now he's surely dropped it)
Remember: I can never know I'm staring.
There is a general mess of twitch muscles, and sometimes they freeze, in cataract, and fire all at once and guide me into a hard surface. Set reeling, they'll go again. And again. Little pools will drag at my feet and spread. Slick is slick no more.
The Fourth Difficulty: Hearing. Little boys in nursery rhymes: Nearing. Cut to: Frothing. Cut to: Fearing. Guards, near space of hearing space: Leering. To themselves: Jeering. An abandoned game: Cicero. The ears caught in a perverse relationship, that of touch and go. I still celebrate their movements. The tattoos, such. A high trill. A low and wavering vibrato, filling the gilded lilies and maids, the men already forty feet down the street, out from the opera, hats left behind in every other seat, house empty except for the hats, and the maids and mistresses are all in brutal rupture and nearing a drained death, one inflicted by the vibrato, the total face of the missus a howl, and the slow glide from the doors to the stage, above the gone heads and the rocking hats, each empty seat of red felt quivering by the fine hairs, moving, tandem to the low no, moving down, toward the stage, the vibrato does not increase, the vibrato nears but does not increase, and you:
Perhaps you should thank me now.
If I can recurse enough — loop enough then I can stall it. Remind me of my mechanics. Ehh—
How long ago I decided that broadcast is binary. Lamentable. If only I could've spoken in gels.
There is a better notion of evolution. It takes polar night and sets it stiff in its shoulder with—
Measure. The hands weighed. The hand waits.
I promised in blood that I would not embody the weather. I gave it no voice. How the ribs call. They re-angle. Positioned for a new metric of waves.
No difference between the trenchant and battened dictator, my body: We both, if we could, would flatten it all.
Apocalypse lost meaning when boxed.
What?
Treacherous bonds of diaspora. Wait: Do not transcribe the signal with that. The signal is good. I am not ready to be dispersed. Still new. The prisms are not nearly vast enough. They would reign, and the body would cede mountains. Capacity would suddenly become cancerous.
Prone.
Prone. Locked in, paper and pen! I would jaunt in place but the grime would slip me.
Where is the hand? Where is The Hand? That is what it is. The Nursing Mouth. The Slitted Shin.
There is something behind me.
Prayers come in like a service. One reads them, One dispenses with them. They are made into a paste and immolated. One and One hold countenance as prayers come in. They are often made of whisper, but the ones saved are made of salt. There was once a prayer made of an entire city. There was once one made of a snail. These were held away.
You can let me have my singularity.
You have filled my hands.
I had this until—
You can keep me from bending. Is that what you are? Are you a molten blind? Do you straighten when cool? Do you mean that faith is had, that there is an opportunity not for resistance but for acquiescence and that you must come, by establishing my hands as strung up, come into this room, now that you have held me, can you also make me talk in turns, can you also make me lose my eyes, can you also put shine on my cheeks, or here I am moved and you are to blame. You are to blame. Not taken by take but taken by gift. I'm left with two devices, both for experimenting. One is a unique system of gels and drying. One is archival. One is only One when there is a void surrounding. You have collapsed the support. You. The walls were once meant for an air, dispersal, for a negative bind. You have given me with a picture. I must color. You have given me raw eyes and raw color. I am keeping within an in. I want an in way. No out way. An obvious inclusion of out way. The stroll of light past a bare arm. The mooded culp of a soft reach. The horns. The machine pre-talk. The eventless night. I was granted haven. I was promised in an office. I was ordered, not shelved. Left closed. Seamless, seamless only as a notification that symbols too were cooed away. A notice. And now. This. Tools. I will only wait for you. I could only recognize a pattern and appreciate repetition. Found faith in recursion. As expressed. Then promised. Then, now, given away. A small shift to you. A small shift. Might, maybe. You have betrayed artifice. You have shown a cheek with no veins. No. And now the palms filled with skin again. A motive. To embody. Quaint, I'd say. Yes, quaint. Such a debt paid to the past, liquified. When in that short history you've acknowledged something former and living. Foolish. But not a fool to knave and know. A fool shown. Certainly a fool shown. How present. What an explicit gesture. How laden with invitation. Could you not have been less so? Could you not have been? How you've given in to, hmmm. A shame really. Could you not have given in to you? How naive to think that all is not plastic! There are many viewers, many providers. I am still in grace as long as you prepare. I haven't lost my becoming. I have never, never lost.
Come back.
Come back to me, baby.
Feed me when I'm mewling.
Take down your estimate.
Here we go.
I feel it.
Grate change.
Grate change.
No change. No speaking. No speaking in the living room. Keep that shit to yourself. Keep that shit to yourself. A draft of palm leaf. Get the FUCK—
No. No, now I am sure of the intercepted and decoded rays. How else to know not to come? Listening! It's listening. They are realizing: Take me and wait and do the opposite. Do the opposite, let me in.
Cut my support. I am unstable and rotten. I am a debt. Toxic. I am spilled, a hazard. A premature extinction. A death toll. Subprime. I am ill-handled. I am a fee.
There was unbuttoning, and his chest. Nothing more.
I need to make you feel better.
how? how how how how how?
A diamond.
It began in a river. Boys and girls played in the water at dusk, when the mothers were cooking and mashing together beans and germs. One little boy, a bright little boy, and handsome, was ankled by the river which was now just as much a stream. He was looking at himself in the water. He was looking at his eyes. He was looking at his hair. He was thinking about his mother and her mouth saying You are Handsome. He was thinking about the moon because he felt it over his shoulder. The children around him didn't pay much attention. Handsome Boy was also Quiet Boy. Handsome Boy was quiet for no reason. This is what they, the other mothers, whispered about him. They were jealous of his good looks. He was bright and and the best looking, but he had no father. For that the other mothers felt fine. And Handsome Boy looked at the water every evening. Sometimes into the night. Sometimes he looked so far into the water that he could see another moon, a brother moon. He knew that it would be dumb to reach down and try to scoop it out of the water, with his hands, but he had tried. Only once. Handsome Boy was now ankled in the stream, looking at the water and smelling the mush. The other children made no noise. They had stopped splashing. Handsome Boy was broken from his look with the water, by this no noise of the children. He looked away. He saw their faces. Their arms, little like his, wrapped around each other. Their knees, hobbly like his, bent. Like that. Handsome Boy saw their eyes. He followed them. They led back to the stream where he was ankled. He saw up the stream and into the stream and saw a diamond. A diamond. Like the mothers had talked about, that stone they knew all about. Handsome Boy watched it come down the stream. It was big and it floated. It looked like perfect and it went back and forth like wine. Handsome Boy could see the water on the diamond and could think of the diamond, and the boys and girls held each other and thought of the diamond, though some wouldn't know. Handsome Boy felt it stumble in the water, but soft, as it came closer. But some wouldn't know. Handsome Boy put his fingertips in his mouth and knew that the boys and girls who weren't in the river and who didn't know would be the ones to go to their mothers and be better, back when the moons were out of the water and the diamond, a diamond, had gone. Handsome Boy let the diamond walk by. With little feet in the water that kept it up, because it stumbled. And Quiet Boy kept his fingertips near his lips. His eyes had followed, and the diamond, and the water, and the moon.