In the Beginning, Fiction

Now you say no more words but you don’t really mean no more words, these dreams of going wordless are playthings in the air, concepts without volition. You are compelled to use words to express what it would be like to go wordless and be wordless, you are enmeshed in process and voice, without these things the experiment ends, you become voiceless void as opposed to singing void or speaking void. Except this isn’t true. There is the music of silence, within silence. Without a single word, you continue to pulse and hymn.

You say no more words because it is something to say, a way to get started on using more words to constellate yourself, to orient your innate trembling. Mapless, we wander. To wander, mapless and wordless, what would that be like? Would you improvise by the light of the moon? Here’s another way of looking at it: You are lost in a labyrinth. Would you agree that you are lost in a labyrinth? You pause, consider your situation … yes, I agree that I’m lost in a labyrinth. Okay, so now that loss inside labyrinth has been established as your circumstances, your goal is to find your way out of the labyrinth. You use words to do this. You believe words, enough words, the right words, daring sequential combinations as trail and proof, will eventually lead you out of the labyrinth. The thing is, and this is what you refuse to admit, this is the bane of denial—the very words you are using are what the labyrinth is made of. Without the words, there is no labyrinth. In other words, no words will save you. Silence is the way out. Silence will destroy the illusion of a labyrinth in which you are trapped, of walls closing in and all that existential jazz. Your greatest fear is the silence. Why? Because, without it, the labyrinth can remain labyrinth and you can remain trapped, desperate to find your way out. And you can use words, many words, found words, lost words, to engineer your escape. Beware of metaphors. They will mislead you. Words are not to be trusted. Especially when banded in groups. They say that in the beginning was the Word. But they didn’t finish the true sentence. In the beginning was the Word … and it betrayed silence. Or, to remix: In the beginning was the Word, and this was the beginning of fiction.

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Bathwater Blues

Our destinies are molecular, uniformly bonded, an immaculately charged cluster fuck of singing clinging particles wedded to a liminal bubble bath … that is the beginning … we are not alone … we see god drop the soap, intentionally, perhaps the precursor to a gag, and watch her slip under to retrieve it, when she remerges, face caked in frothy foam beard, we laugh and laugh, god is a champagne rabies monster, we laugh and laugh till our sides ache, till it hurts so bad, we consider drowning as a viable port to dreaming … so this is what it is like to take a bath with god … recognition and awareness recall that old glittering adage, all roads lead home, so if you were to slip under the water as god did, your eyes may become dreaming eyes and your breathing dreaming breathing.

where is god the champagne rabies monster? has she gone? did she take the soap? it appears it is just you and the tub and the water and this is how the resounding what-ifs begins, how the inconceivable becomes a minor plague, and as you search for the means to drain the water from the tub you wonder if this is what is meant by throwing out the baby with the bathwater, in other words, you’ve contracted the bathwater blues, its timeless riff and melody causing many everywhere to wake up weeping motherless, god the champagne rabies monster is the ventilator through which the weeping breathe, but where is she, what happened to god with all her wonderful antics like sporting a beard of bubble bath foam, where’s the gag, and alone in the tub, you find yourself contracting and expanding, contracting and expanding, a fear-inflating pufferfish with amnesia,  and not knowing what else to do or how else to do or why else to do you begin singing—I’ve got the baby bathwater blues—and the echoes of your voice, coming from a far distance, splinter you to no end.

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Hymnal

On a molecular level, we are fucked.

Perpetually, repeatedly, renewably. Fucked.

The world is an unceasing orgy, everything

touches everything, nonstop fondling

and hymnal friction between pulsing meshes.

Your very breath is a shore leave sailor and kissing cousin,

a polygamist engaged in measureless trysts.

Affairs to remember, affairs to forget,

it doesn’t matter, it is.

Everything touches everything.

Graffiti on ice caps, tear-mapped children

waking weeping to motherless lands,

my breath mirroring a net

for your breath to snare.

We etch in the air,

our fingernails growing glassy vines of light.

Eternity not a noun or prefix or afterword.

Eternity the borderless bed spread out to host

the everywhere everyall clusterfuck.

You are at the heart of sheerest orgy,

a seed pitched in the crotch of its panting nexus.

Whether you like it or not. Deal.

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Not in So Many Words

On a molecular level, we are fucked. Perpetually, repeatedly, renewably. Fucked. The world is an unceasing orgy. Everything touches everything, nonstop fondling and incestuous friction between particles, the pulsing frisson of meshes. We are nets that hold nothing and touch everything. Your very breath is a sailor and kissing cousin, a polygamist engaged in measureless trysts. Affairs to remember, affairs to forget—it doesn’t matter, it is. To think about it too long might make you feel sick or disgusted or consequentially wrong, so you isolate and declare yourself immune to whatever it is your cells are doing behind your back. You close the eyes behind your eyes, tell me no secrets I’ll tell you no lies, to imagine yourself vividly entwined to the everywhere everyall could bring on nausea of existential proportions. You want your mystery to remain shapeless, because, you reason, the shapelier the mystery the more dangerous it becomes, why run the risk of mysteries shaped like hourglasses or bulges or bugles or legs of lamb? You will maneuver as adroitly as you can to avoid conjugation with the lady breathing down your neck a hundred thousand miles away, or ignore the man falling asleep in a fetal position dreaming motherless dreams as he sucks his thumb in time to a melody forgotten upon waking weeping. This is the world. On molecular levels, we are bonded, we are fucked. It moves beyond human, beyond us. Stone, lizard, pollen, polyp, newt, cumulus, cauliflower, stardust. Everything touches everything. Graffiti on ice caps, my breath mirroring a mask for your breath to wear, the tears of stained children etching scarry stories into hearts … to remember … we etch in the air, our fingernails growing glassy vines of light. Eternity is no stopgap. Nor is it a noun or prefix or afterword. Eternity the borderless bed spread out to host the pulsing pines and needles of an everywhere everyall clusterfuck.  You are at the heart of an orgy, a seed pitched in the crotch of its panting nexus. Whether you like it or not. Deal.

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Splish Splash

Our destinies are molecular

an infinitely charged clusterfuck

of singing particles

wedded to a liminal bubblebath

in which god drops the soap

and slips under to retrieve it

when she reemerges

face caked in a frothy foam beard

you laugh and laugh

god is a champagne rabies monster

you laugh and laugh

till your sides ache

and consider drowning

as a viable port to dreaming.

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Pulse

Pulsing magnanimously,

we run on, unfinished,

the edges only rumors

duly dispelled by the raptures

of liminal motives.

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Sphinx

The broken pulsing fingers of rain,

cloning time, tap spates of symmetry

against my window—

This, both cause and effect,

upon the glassy passage of hours,

dwindling, singing, undeciphered.

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Succulent

Moonlight is edible.

If you don’t believe me

watch the mouths of children

at night.

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There is No Curtain

Forever

and ever

is the asking price

and promise

the singer made

to the song

conjugal atomic bliss

siring the I

that right now

is speaking singularly on behalf

of the song and singer

forever

and ever.

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Born Blues

I am

the foster child

of rampant insular lyricism.

In it

I was raised wild

and came meekly to regard the moon

as a shotgun blast

from the mouth of eternity.

I, setting core to task, get greedy, rabid,

blood being a magnificent lure and cakewalk

for werewolves on the prowl.

My pupils enlarge at the sight

of unremembered lyrics, wounded, bluesy,

coming out of the woods

to find suitable placement.

I am, left behind myself,

a scorched earth child of second winds

and orphaned nonsense—

birth being a terribly continuous ordeal

of outgrowing origins.

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