I had slept for some time when you decided to come by and let me know about a number of things I had forgotten. Your intent seemed kind but you told me a number of things I had forgotten that, when added together with the things you forgot I had forgotten but I remembered I had forgotten, was large. A large number of forgotten things. How large the number was is unknown, but it creates a mass that spins rapidly inside you and threatens to pull down the books from the top shelf. Particularly the volumes pertaining to metallic elements such as tungsten or iron and also indexes of perfumed oil.
You told me these things with such a degree of nonchalance that you didn't notice when I began to resent you. I watched you peeling the candle wax with your fingernails like I did when my brother was being baptized and I was forced to hold a candle that I didn't want to. I peeled the images of lambs with my fingernails and I didn't know why it wasn't lit. I had never held a flame before and I forgot his name for a moment. He was the innominate "brother" figure and you were a fleeting inkling.
When you had told me that your sister was having a birthday, you put the candle wax from under your fingernail in your mouth and you chewed disgustingly. I could hear the bones in your temples cracking as you chewed that pliable wax and I tried to think of a metaphor this could be representing. An allegory for which this was holding the place. But there was nothing except miniscule air pockets and involuntary sucking noises that occurred on the remote sides of your teeth and gums as your thin cheeks and temples flexed like a pink organ and you swallowed candle wax.
I had stopped being drowsy then and I offered you a small cake from my cupboard, from what was our cupboard, but you said you weren't hungry and you gnawed your nail with enough force to bite it off in small, peeling sections. You put those fingers into intimate locations before. Those fingers popped a champagne cork last year. Auld Lang Syne. You kissed my hand and my nose at midnight and my mouth at one after midnight. You touched me nicely and vigorously. We didn't sleep until we were exhausted and clutching nakedly.
When the dog came over, being depressed, you pet the dog. Because you pet the dog, you reinforced the dog's depression and as a result, it lay at your feet, just like you wanted, and it sighed a canine sigh. "Lay down now," you said. And it did, and you gave it a biscuit. Fuck you.
You drank a bit of your seltzer water. Who drinks seltzer water? Not anybody normal, I'll tell you that much.
I wish I had said those things to you after you told me that I forgot my mother's birthday because then it would have seemed like a joke and you would have come to touch my face and put your broken fingernail next to my ear. You would have said something that would redeem you to me and I would have forgotten all of those things I hate in you. But instead, you refused food and I packed a suitcase and pretended to talk down to you like a farmhand or a ruffian. But I didn't do those things. I forgot my luggage in the other room so instead I sat and loathed you until I fell asleep in this armchair. You woke me up by not noticing I was asleep and that I hate you.
But I do, I do, and you eat your oatmeal dry and mealy. When you told me all of the things I had forgotten, I remembered (which in itself is surprising) that we are not different people, and we are not different people, which explains why I hurt so much when I say I hate you. I hate you. Comfort me and my ugly limbs, extremities.
12/29/11
12/21/11
Chyme
The first time you got up in the night
to shamble around your bedroom and knock over
expensive vases I didn't realize you
were not awake and you were never awake
when you kicked off the blanket and fumbled in my jewelery
box, feeling for a gold ring to drop in your mouth
(and I would hear it clink against
your teeth as your lolling tongue swirled
in your head) and, swallowing it, when you crawled
back into bed, your feet (cold from the bare
floor) touched my legs, which were a tactile
form of echolocation that helped you
to fumble up to my stomach, where you smothered
your face (or at least you tried) as you curled
your fingers around my hipbones and dug in with your fingernails.
That gold ring slid down your throat by way of
muscle contractions to rest in your stomach
in much the same fashion it would if
it were in the black of a stone well
and I never said a word.
I never told anyone about that well, that ring,
even you.
When I touched your face and said you were a sleep
walker, you strode away from the place you were
(the relatives watching your every action)
and you went outside to the in-ground pool, which
was frozen, and you tore back the cover
to stamp on the ice until it broke.
You cut your calf on the shards of ice and
you sat in the chill water, soothing your wounded leg
until someone brought you a glass of wine
(some relative brought you a glass of wine)
and you agreed to come inside and be bandaged.
But I really don't need to remind you of that.
As ether perfumed your veins (by way of your lungs)
and your eyes slid shut your hand went limp
and unconscious,I thought about how I could have
done anything to you that I wanted to do to you,
including reaching into your open throat
to root out the useless chyme and reclaim that gold
ring that, by then, was likely corroded and disfigured
beyond recognition or repair.
If only I had done it sooner.
to shamble around your bedroom and knock over
expensive vases I didn't realize you
were not awake and you were never awake
when you kicked off the blanket and fumbled in my jewelery
box, feeling for a gold ring to drop in your mouth
(and I would hear it clink against
your teeth as your lolling tongue swirled
in your head) and, swallowing it, when you crawled
back into bed, your feet (cold from the bare
floor) touched my legs, which were a tactile
form of echolocation that helped you
to fumble up to my stomach, where you smothered
your face (or at least you tried) as you curled
your fingers around my hipbones and dug in with your fingernails.
That gold ring slid down your throat by way of
muscle contractions to rest in your stomach
in much the same fashion it would if
it were in the black of a stone well
and I never said a word.
I never told anyone about that well, that ring,
even you.
When I touched your face and said you were a sleep
walker, you strode away from the place you were
(the relatives watching your every action)
and you went outside to the in-ground pool, which
was frozen, and you tore back the cover
to stamp on the ice until it broke.
You cut your calf on the shards of ice and
you sat in the chill water, soothing your wounded leg
until someone brought you a glass of wine
(some relative brought you a glass of wine)
and you agreed to come inside and be bandaged.
But I really don't need to remind you of that.
As ether perfumed your veins (by way of your lungs)
and your eyes slid shut your hand went limp
and unconscious,I thought about how I could have
done anything to you that I wanted to do to you,
including reaching into your open throat
to root out the useless chyme and reclaim that gold
ring that, by then, was likely corroded and disfigured
beyond recognition or repair.
If only I had done it sooner.
12/18/11
I used to be a brash young man.
My parents were lowing across the flatness of Indiana. They cut hair. They turned wrenches. They drank beer. They ate pork. That was who they were.
I was rocketing into the sunset, traveling over the plains that had been created a millennium previous by slow and heavy glaciers.
I learned things and I became more important than I used to be, growing from the inside and shedding like a serpent. My old self could have been eaten for nutrients but it would have not been necessary thanks to the amount of prey animals. I wormed into a snake hole and gnawed on my fingernails. They were flaky because of nutrient deficiency.
Vitamin B deficiency caused deep ridges to form horizontally in my nails.
Zinc deficiency caused my cuticles to bleed at random and hangnails became chewable.
Iron deficiency caused me to become winded every time I climbed a staircase.
And every time I drank coffee I went partially insane.
I forgot about my parents and I envisioned myself growing a spine, rigid and straight.
I experienced death, which is unremarkable. I laughed, which was brash.
I invented stories about myself that included me being related to royalty, me being royalty, me being possessed by devils, me being on my last life in the karmic cycle, me being on a train in my dreams, me being an inhabitant of two universes at once connected by the brain stem, medulla, etc.
Even though my corpus callosum is a mass of tissue, like the rest of my brain, it is somehow more powerful. It connects the two hemispheres of my brain and, somehow, bridges the gap between the two. The corpus callosum is liminal. It was here in my brain when I went to France in my dreams.
I don’t hate my brain. Je ne deteste pas le grande gris. In my dreams I spoke perfect French.
Having experienced a degree of success at the hands of travel on the metaphor of a rocket, I decided that travel was necessary for me. This fact did not directly result in a rootless existence, but it contributed somewhat. This fact was a facet, like other facets.
From an early age, I found jigsaw puzzles tedious and infuriating. I enjoyed coloring books, which, from a psychoanalytical standpoint, could be interpreted as a cousin to jigsaw puzzles. This can be seen in the way in which completion of the activity occurs: filling in. Using colors or pieces. Prescribed or inscribed. Standardized tests dominated my existence as a child and this does not leave me feeling bitter.
I was a banal kid. Most kids are secretly banal.
Charlotte, North Carolina: You were never a part of my life.
Tucson, Arizona: You were never a part of my life.
Seattle, Washington: You are a mystery to me.
Idaho: You were never a part of my life.
I came to the city in search of mazes and liminal areas. I liked to walk around and so I did that often. I still do. Large bodies of water call to me. They say my name very quietly.
Sometimes I like to call my parents on the telephone while I look at large bodies of water. Rivers and lakes.
They tell about the goings on of the county and of my different relatives. I look at the water and I think about untilled cornfields and how they are both essentially the same thing. You can’t walk on them but you can swim. If you try to breathe inside, you will die and get lost forever.
The corn in Indiana grows higher than your head and requires large machines to harvest the kernels. They look like huge, mobile oilrigs. Essentially, they are that.
Whenever we finish speaking, I always make a point to say I love you. It is always sincere. I never learned to swim.
But none of these things have to do with the fact that, above all, I enjoy wearing hats. I have only three, but I enjoy them equally. This is not a metaphor for personality. It is a statement about my enjoyment of hats and that I like to wear them.
My parents were lowing across the flatness of Indiana. They cut hair. They turned wrenches. They drank beer. They ate pork. That was who they were.
I was rocketing into the sunset, traveling over the plains that had been created a millennium previous by slow and heavy glaciers.
I learned things and I became more important than I used to be, growing from the inside and shedding like a serpent. My old self could have been eaten for nutrients but it would have not been necessary thanks to the amount of prey animals. I wormed into a snake hole and gnawed on my fingernails. They were flaky because of nutrient deficiency.
Vitamin B deficiency caused deep ridges to form horizontally in my nails.
Zinc deficiency caused my cuticles to bleed at random and hangnails became chewable.
Iron deficiency caused me to become winded every time I climbed a staircase.
And every time I drank coffee I went partially insane.
I forgot about my parents and I envisioned myself growing a spine, rigid and straight.
I experienced death, which is unremarkable. I laughed, which was brash.
I invented stories about myself that included me being related to royalty, me being royalty, me being possessed by devils, me being on my last life in the karmic cycle, me being on a train in my dreams, me being an inhabitant of two universes at once connected by the brain stem, medulla, etc.
Even though my corpus callosum is a mass of tissue, like the rest of my brain, it is somehow more powerful. It connects the two hemispheres of my brain and, somehow, bridges the gap between the two. The corpus callosum is liminal. It was here in my brain when I went to France in my dreams.
I don’t hate my brain. Je ne deteste pas le grande gris. In my dreams I spoke perfect French.
Having experienced a degree of success at the hands of travel on the metaphor of a rocket, I decided that travel was necessary for me. This fact did not directly result in a rootless existence, but it contributed somewhat. This fact was a facet, like other facets.
From an early age, I found jigsaw puzzles tedious and infuriating. I enjoyed coloring books, which, from a psychoanalytical standpoint, could be interpreted as a cousin to jigsaw puzzles. This can be seen in the way in which completion of the activity occurs: filling in. Using colors or pieces. Prescribed or inscribed. Standardized tests dominated my existence as a child and this does not leave me feeling bitter.
I was a banal kid. Most kids are secretly banal.
Charlotte, North Carolina: You were never a part of my life.
Tucson, Arizona: You were never a part of my life.
Seattle, Washington: You are a mystery to me.
Idaho: You were never a part of my life.
I came to the city in search of mazes and liminal areas. I liked to walk around and so I did that often. I still do. Large bodies of water call to me. They say my name very quietly.
Sometimes I like to call my parents on the telephone while I look at large bodies of water. Rivers and lakes.
They tell about the goings on of the county and of my different relatives. I look at the water and I think about untilled cornfields and how they are both essentially the same thing. You can’t walk on them but you can swim. If you try to breathe inside, you will die and get lost forever.
The corn in Indiana grows higher than your head and requires large machines to harvest the kernels. They look like huge, mobile oilrigs. Essentially, they are that.
Whenever we finish speaking, I always make a point to say I love you. It is always sincere. I never learned to swim.
But none of these things have to do with the fact that, above all, I enjoy wearing hats. I have only three, but I enjoy them equally. This is not a metaphor for personality. It is a statement about my enjoyment of hats and that I like to wear them.
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