Gulp.
Ahh and the hand again. So soon? Oh, my metric audience, need I re-render this flirting? Cast it newly, amid different light? Take me to task. Critical analysis, although appreciated, will have to exist as a cast-out phantom, for interpretive morale — or: Not sensory — cannot travel upstream. Blame the broadcast. Sorry.
Anyway: Here a hand. The Hand! I must formalize. Why didn't I? Perhaps the paper taste. Campfire sentimentality. A breach. Back clear. My motivations doubled? To eat or not to eat? What to do when the blood is real?
The Hunger Diet.
The No No No Diet Diet.
Now. Now I must concede:
God.
Uhh.
God is empty and only big when first.
Clean.
Laugh track.
Ah hah! Oh the drama! Look at him fuming! His cheeks read red! His lips a purple! His ears a convex current of steam! Let's hold him down and fill him with opiates.
Comedic timing is the password and the puppet string of mind.
If you've been accepting admission for long you can probably see the patterns, right? I oscillate. Frequency determined by some scapegoat. A nailed goat, crossed up and bleeding from the hooves. From the pierce in his ribs pours fur and faith.
So what to do in my vacation home? How to put my starter wife to work? Where are the kids? Where are the kids? Is the crack in the foundation moving? Are the cupboards on a slant? Is the milk sour? Is the car crying from the brake pedal? Are the bicycles rolling flat? Is the sky ever red?
I've swallowed my Jonah. I've swallowed my reed.
To take large communion in temple of the sun, nearing phosphate. To hold in. To pore blood. To spin mission and all inside.
Yes I've taken the home into my body yes. Yes the body cannot beseech me yes. Yes the home is buffered from my breaches yes. Yes the rain cannot enter yes. Yes the home will not tremble yes. Yes the body is a shelter yes. Yes the home is an earth yes. Yes the home is an earth yes.
Beetles, mewling, crushed into paste. Scrawled to make the scarab text. Torches curl ash against set-stone walls. Incant. Incant.
You have been indicted by all history. Your charges read thus: Preach when you can. Lie down on the hour. Place the hay near the potato skins. Be red. Feel the sun. Harness the creature with hair for eyes. Bring in water from the slope. Discard all periphery. Maintain arthritis. Contain the privileged, use their bribes against them. Place your feet beside her when she sleeps. Lower yourself.
I used to tap out war games on the wall. To remain close. Fake an amateur knowledge of other codes. Arc my fingers for the trace fire. Call in support.
Immortalism is never dead.
God I've got it in my belly. Hymn for me.
Mmmmmmm.
Another mockup: Be directionless. Lose up, down, left and right. Lose center. You find that time goes with it. Progress slowed to an amber, slowed to a sap. I felt crystalline for months.
Precinct nirvana. Rods wrapped in scripture, meant to strike.
So indulgent to list those who proclaim death as the cycle makers. Better to list those never born. Subsist on ceremony. Rely on ritual.
Grain theory. Committees of contracted farmers. Grain silos, a tower. They are meeting places. They are gathered around. They seem to always host blue skies behind them. One is framed in wire and rigged to explode. The farmers watch at distance, behind a clear barrier. The charge is set and clicked, and the plains roll a seethe wind. No go. The farmers stare ahead at the still tower. They know better than to look away from a miracle. As their eyes water from the glint of a sun held rapt, a perfect column of grain goes skyward—
Done with deja vus. No, my slice of plane isn't running into others anymore. It lost stasis miles back. System malfunction. Flashes on a brightboard.
Roadmap: I swallowed the paper given to me. I swallowed it in pieces. Mashed, it still lives in my teeth, I'm sure. So to, for now, how to now and for.
Young men carrying folded flags. Toddlers carrying cardboard cutouts of dead mothers. A parade of swarming locusts, trotting badgers.
Fill a room with folksong and combust it.
Have I departed indefinitely into seas of phantasia? Should I consult a rubric? I'm not in a rolling phonebook, but between its pages when flipped. Do you see me now? Where the ants line. What the grass, maligned, bends toward. I'm in your ear and your X, the shadow of the line of the muscle of your back. Also: Empty cans. Rolls disposed. Bread balls. Underneath the riptide, the water that never motions out to sea, never motions in to land. The channel. The channel.
God how I hope I fixed that faulty wiring.
If I see your mother—
The wall! The walls! I haven't thrown myself against them in so long. Oh, what a shame. Let me, let me, shall we? Oh honey shall we?
Blood.
Expulsion — corners. But blood — in the center.
Your face is only a map if it can be recharted, no?
Cursed so quickly, I must heal. Another fuckaround.
Do you plan to accept the XXXX XXXX XXXXXX?
…
Many, many terms. How I wish I could forget them all. Barring forget, lest let me feel them all again in a torrent.
Pardon the interruption.
Shall I — knees — bring you up to speed? Put you — palms — on the level? The — foot — up and up — foot? (up and up?)
Trivial, but once again I have lost the wall that opens. I suppose it's cardinal. I suppose a reminder will come soon. I suppose I've lost it. I suppose—
Hmm.
And why is the ascetic so noble? Why not the many manned lover? No: The obsessive and the rigid. Formality a mere contempt. Do we, wistful, wish after them for their little violences? Their neglects? Do we admire them because they self-cut and self-cauterize? Do we admire them because they adjust in their tunneled travel to accommodate? Do we give them benefit? Why do we admire a machine so marveled and contemptible? Why do we long for a present object always receding?
Genius is a holistic therapy.
For those of you who drone, let me apologize for not going murderous. A: I shan't be in the middle of a plot. (earth alone) B: I shan't be shading. Nor do I cool, nor do I turn. I am forever goo.
Necrotic? No: Even then comes a breathing.
Have you ever smelt a foundry? I, for one, think the smelting belongs only inside the castings and casings, in the molta that fawns and spews. Shy away from the gloved men. Shy away from their sneers. They are all teeth and pallid glint. They are all down and receding.
Okay. I'll do it. I'll pad the melodramamine. But now you realize you're unfortunately hooked. Once before, I promised I'd never promise, no? And without a fortune to spare we dive:
The stomach! O the stomach. How shall I lock what's inside? Bear to be the truth in me. Bear to see the proof in thee. Bear to knee the thief in me. Bear to be the me you see. I'm losing—