Monday August 28th 11:18

Lift, pull. Cutting yr teeth on the effort.
What can be written? He watches his pen as it slides across the page, making curves, falling leaves, the leaf with your name. The condensation on the page must mean something. Watch, look into it. The muscles of the hand are taut, forearm pulled tight, then: relaxed. Fascinated by the human hand. The way the object is balanced in the crown of the fingers, lifted, caressed, safe in the circle. What does it show? Enclosure, pressure, exclusion, removal, denial, silence, utter quiet, doubt, shuddering in the dark. Is this all there is on this page? Looking around, finding nothing, walking without a map. Verso. Recto. Rolling up the sleeves. My eyes are looking at the sky, counting stars, toying with the ideas of astrology. Where does one meet the other? How does time come into play? The snow, anxious for the enclosure of snow, to walk down a quiet street full of muffling white mass. To walk down the street, and not feel exposed. Warm, safe in the blank cold. My fingers and toes nullified in the freeze. Time will bring all this. What else will it bring? Clap of the hands and the turning of pages, a breeze making motion where there once was one. A voice in the winter, saying a name that I should know. My voice, saying my name, reminding a stranger of something the stranger should recall. The jolt of memory, that sad slow strangulation. What can I ask? What can you answer?
****
Conversation over a small round table for two. The two mugs of coffee sit close.
--what's your name? (How can i get you to share it?)
--how old are you? (Tell me about your past.)
--how can i make you smile/laugh? (Crack the ice in that cruel heart of yours.)
--what do you aspire to? (Where are you headed? Can i follow?)

The mugs empty themselves in time. No one notices.
*****
Lying in the woods at night. Counting leaves above me, black leaves in a dark grey sky. One, a voice, two, a longing, three, excitement, four, worry, five, an organization of words, six, on and on, until the sun comes up again across the hillside. In the morning, I can see my breath and, for once, i don't mind.
****
Remember riding on the bus. Where were you at this time? Was i even remotely human? Was i completely mad, swallowed up by arrogance and solitude? Never really had a home, and wanted it that way. No job, no money, don't know how i scraped it all together, riding south to see..., riding back north again to see..., going out east, off again on again, back to a room barely mine, my essence barely there, the walls papered with stupid, endless typed pages. Mattress on the floor, a blanket my grandmother knit. A record player, guitar, typewriter. Happy existence or sad? Hopeful in its simplicity? Are you near or far in this fatal point of history?
The road at night. That's what i wanted to be. I wrote poetry about the texture of a kiss, a dizziness of saintliness, typing up all night, drinking buckets of cappuccino, burning candles, all alone in the late evening, the house asleep, everyone but me, pretending to coax out the universe through childish fear and theatrics. Theatrics: now, out of doubt Antipholus is mad. No doubt, this may be true, bu play it all out for me.
The last night, we all stayed drunk until morning, walls bare, my future a mix of death and jubilance. Askance, my crooked head, astute, my broken heart, a past i wanted to bash with a stick, but no weapon strong enough. In the morning, walking out into the sun with a sore, bare head, playing a guitar and singing a song, sharpened with impossibly hopeful notes. That much is bearable.
***
Walking onto the stage with a broken arm: a meagre attempt at pathos. Is this the play i have written? Here comes the chorus:

There once was a man from Levine
Who invented a fucking machine.
Concave or convex,
it served either sex,
and a bowl to collect all the cream.

The audience sings along. The hero of the plot is wearing a lion's costume in an attempt to frighten away a competing suitor to his lover who is dressed as a sea horse. The lover, unknown to the others, is dressed up as Kaiser Wilhelm and is spouting out endless verse of Schiller:

...The thoughts that rushed across me in that hour,
The words I sang, I'd fain once more invoke;
Within, I felt a new-awakened power,
That each emotion of my bosom spoke.
My soul, long time enchained in sloth's dull bower,
Through all its fetters now triumphant broke,
And brought to light unknown, harmonious numbers,
Which in its deepest depths, had lived in slumbers....

The sun sets on stage, and several people in the audience reach for their handkerchiefs. Satyrs frolic and clamour about the forest. Dionysius howls in delight and drinks with both hands.
***
The clink of glasses in the warmly lit gallery. They come to look, he wanders in, heart beating, looking for a different kind of exhibit. Do i belong here? he thinks. There she is, leaning forward in the chaise lounge, looking at the photograph on the wall. She is wearing a bracelet that he doesn't recognize. He shudders. Where did she get that? He crosses the room and clinks her glass. Cheers. The brush of fingers.
***
The movement of the brush against the skin. Paints his arms orange, fingers blue, dips his head into a bucket of red, splashes white over his heart.
This space desiring inscription. Make me, write me. it says.

He hesitates at the can of black paint.

"Don't make me resort to this," he pleads aloud to his solitude.