The doves are sleeping
On the mind’s wake.
Their beaks in tufts of feathers.
Of flesh, keys cadenas
White I persist
In the white doves of piety.
I persist sorrows.
My beak twisted deep down
Into waiting rooms, doves
Of the pulpous forgetting
Of myself: Finite.
My aseptic papers. What beautiful graphic sculpture. What cleanliness. You could lick the page. Likewise with the surface of ice of the Unfounded. Amós goes to the bathroom. His pajamas still light green. From where I watch, Amós looks like just an elegant pair of pajamas. Initials AK, interlaced on the lapel. Confusing as a monogram. So many jagged prongs. Amanda’s idea, most likely. He hesitates on the doorjamb. Locks himself in. An instant of vertigo and he puts his hands on the tiles, leaning his forehead against the chill. He can hear what Amanda says to Míriam, the one he calls hot butt.
Amanda: now he says that he’s only okay in the bathroom, watching the ants.
Míriam: you have ants in the bathroom?
Amanda: those tiny ones. the worst thing is spiders.
Míriam: you have spiders in the bathroom?
Amanda: of course not, Míriam, Amós says there are, that they’re geniuses, brilliant thinkers.
Míriam: you better call the doctor.
Amanda: ants spiders childhood dogs sows and mathematicians. leave him be, in a time of madness, a time of death. Standing, near the sink, in front of the mirror. He unbuttons his pajama shirt. Runs his fingers over his thin chest. It’s hot. A fever, he thinks. And that paradise in his eyes? Paradise? Splendor and emptiness. How did the Unfounded plan my death? Birds and roots. The highest and the deepest. Shall we look for a tree for our wings? For our growth. I remain mute. I read somewhere that they split the vocal cords of guinea pigs. So that you can’t hear the screams. The howls. I remain mute. Throat swollen with screams but I am amputated. The slit ends nevertheless blackened at the tips, sounds softer than pianissimo, fingers over shamrocks, tiptoeing so as not to disturb the sleep of men. Is there a face exactly like mine? A croaking hoarseness, as unable and despairing as mine? Vertiginous-precise landscapes done with a Japanese paintbrush, and in them I listen to the sound of my own crippled gait. I cross the rectangle diagonally. Beside your portrait, Life. The facts. Acts. Sometimes we cling to the stones, other times we merely rest upon them. Some stone or another tumbles down upon our face if we gaze On High. We pass over to the other side. Of the triangle now. It wasn’t the flesh that was harmed, no. Stones and shatterings. The sinuous slowly invading the rigid hypothetical track of equations. An S of sweet seduction. Of Shadow, of Sorbet, of Solution until, a thousand steps later, feet are burned in dunes of sun.
Designifying
I am digging out screams
Burying height and hauteur.
My whole soft-hard
Also spies the wall. Unhinged
I test the climb
And explosive words
Pressed into the stones: pound, dredge
Knifed in front of the mirror.
I’m in the yard behind the house. My mother’s house. I didn’t tell them I was coming here but I came. There’s a vine-covered arbor. And with straw dirt and bamboo I closed off the sides. The depths. I should have said my good-byes. Amanda and the kid. The station. The train. I should have told them about the dark-gray despair streaked in black, a viscous substance taking me. I hoped the Unfounded would pierce the ribs of a tiger and in that gesture transfigure my own landscape unto the infinite. My poverty is the dryness of spirit. My solitude is to have remained the prisoner of that which I felt on top of the hill and today I find only links of sand, currents of dust. A stray bitch appeared at dusk. She’s yellow. She must have just given birth. Her teats sagging, her ribs showing. Her brown eyes have the vehement glint of hunger. There are sparks that escape the flesh in misery, in humiliation, in pain. The sparks show in animals too. My mother brings us food and water. And searches for words: Amós, it doesn’t make much sense to have the house up there and you back here, seems like it doesn’t make sense, that is if things are supposed to make some kind of sense. Guess so, mother.
I feel like I know how it is.
Really, mother?
Your father once explained it to me without explaining. It was early in the morning. He got up, put on his boots. It wasn’t a nice day at all. He looked at you in the crib, you were six months old. We were young and your father was handsome. Everything seemed all right. His eyes went blank for a moment as though you and I were no longer there, as if he himself were another person, his mouth gaping like he couldn’t breathe and he said all at once: it’s such an effort to try not to understand, it’s the only way to stay alive, trying not to understand.
Doesn’t seem like dad. You sure you weren’t with another man?
She laughs. The earthen floor. There are woven mats spread around. Big boxes. Mother called two men to come thatch the roof of the arbor. A vine roof is a bit much, son. Is he your son, ma’am? He seems sick, wouldn’t it be better for him to stay in the house up front? He likes to be right here. Strange, ma’am. I named the yellow dog Snorey. Long hoarse creaks in her sleep at night. I have paper. Pens. I draw Snorey snoring. I draw the boxes, the mats, I look at myself in a piece of broken mirror and I draw myself looking at myself in a piece of broken mirror.
A minuscule heart trying
To escape itself
Dilating
In search of pure understanding.
From the other side of the mirror: I felt so tired but needed to keep walking no matter what because the gallows were just three hundred yards away and the guys escorting me seemed to be in a hurry. Couldn’t I just have a little nap? Look at this, the guy’s gonna get hanged but he wants to catch some z’s first. You’re gonna get to sleep for all eternity. I know, but will I even know that I’m sleeping? And sleeping now, I’ll know I chose to sleep, or rather, if you want to know, that I need it. A little further and then you’ll sleep.