Fetish Systems by Raafat Majzoub

fetish systems

First published in Great Britain by AuthorHouseâ&#x201E;˘ UK Ltd. This edition published in Lebanon by +236m3

The artwork on the cover is a collage by Raafat Majzoub. Photos courtesy of the Asma Majzoub collection.

ISBN 978-9953-0-2034-1

Printed and bound in Lebanon by Arab Printing Press

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Juvenile tendencies to make things, to elaborate on things, once hidden intentionally – once denominated – artefacts, involuntarily surface to the sight of you.. things I want to tell you, everythings I want to strip for you.. and other things I make up – things I pretend – things I fake to lure you, others I teach myself to keep you, knowing that I want all of you – you, entirely –not for always, for always means nothing – as you change me – as we change, me and you, predictably, into others. Algebraic sums of things – they do not interest me. Conclusions, drench our all with stigmatizing pigments, we wait – for our slow execution as we accept fraternities, promised eternities and ever-afters. Look at me as I construct you – mosaic – of little fragments of reflection. Adjust your brief posture, as I see what I need to see. Your neck a bit higher, your nose closer to mine, your breathing in – your breathing out; mine. Adjust your impermanent presence to suit me, to fit meticulously selected angles I’m calling you. Stay, don’t move just yet, to break one, to break two, to break three, to break for things not accounted for – for cream, for your indulging ephemeral non-presence, and everything in between, staccatos you penalized and a lacking sense of time you would not tolerate.

In our defense, this is a conversation – as we strip into comforting costumes of maneuver. For the sake of perception, let us suspend everything – everything including us and them, whatever we told them and whatever they told us, whatever we think and whatever we think they think – let us suspend everything, until we earn things – one thing at a time. This is not a manifesto, nor is it a call for visceral redemption. This is not a revolution, it’s just you and I here. This is not atheism, because for now – god has never existed. 13

So, I am not sure what to call this. I cannot dictate whether this is a work of fiction, or non-fiction. I am thinking of it as a matter of comfort zone. Fiction is what would take me out of myself into myself to produce an autobiographical mapping of a non-self, or for that matter, a non-existing self that exists because I tell it to – want it to – wants me to. Non-fiction would be the geographical output of my trajectories within this set of suspensions I am allocating as center-stage. It has never been the case since we would exist, anyways, within either – it has constantly been a matter of actualization of opinions and abstractions that would define norms of this and norms of that, where in fact – there could be no real – as fiction dilutes nothing into everything. 15

It is choice, and the choice to make a choice that seems to be bothering me currently. I am one that decided to invest in the acidity of my urine to disintegrate limits and boundaries in how and what happens in and around me, but cavities of this procession to this fleeting present just drive me insane. I do not want to make a choice. I do not want to choose, for to choose is to kill this mutation – it is to surrender to this pretentious present tense – that in itself – does not exist. I admit that I do not have a choice. I would like to not make one, but this continuous super-factory of social production and pseudoperception just seems to catch me off-guard. I do not want to make a choice, but I am chosen to be.

I am and am not. We walk in labels, to identify self and other selves. It seems to be a fear of false reflections, or body dismorphic disorders coupled with cognitive dyslexias, that we might actually not recognize the us in us if we do not choose to be. To be, in itself, is an insult. It is to restrict, to limit, to control. It is to iconify fertility, to sacrifice pleasure and to render thinking to a mere commodity. I have never felt such an urge to “not be”. I do not want to be anything. I am consumed by this question, and then punned ‘lost’ upon not answering. It is at this point, that one is supposed to choose between “two roads diverged in a yellow wood”, but building a tree-house over that tree – over that wood and playing around in R-rated tea parties sounds just nice too.

There must be no shame in over-thinking, overwanting. There can be no blame in pleasure. There is no sanity in claiming a right path, because there is none. Any path would eventually intersect with another, overlapping, big-banging into an infinite array of opportunities, conflicts and voids. You cannot choose a right path, because it moves in another direction than you do. It ages by collision and defragmentation; you age by losing abilities, gaining disabilities and a slow fatigue into a corpse, only valuable at another scale, in a feast for another system, in a different world. So, ‘What do you do?’ – deflates my polymath arena into a white ceramic cubicle, and the sounds of interrupted privacies behind paper-thick walls. ‘What I do’ becomes a consequence of rhythmic flushes – expected spontaneity. I am – now – one of everyone behind locked doors – attempted artisanal execution in secrecy – where the flush knows for a fact that what I am doing – what I do – is to surrender to, not do – to spectator consequence participating in the communal impregnation of a stagnant epidemic sewer. I would at that point, weave myself into believing that I am not a product of a label, but growingly so, a constantly changing consumer and producer of fetish systems.

Pretentious.

I just read what I had written a while back. Pretentious. But then I would need to remind me of life, of choosing, of being responsible, of acknowledging a preset system, and what I see coagulates an epitome of cross-dressing game players in a construct that relates to nothing but itself and reveals to nothing, not even itself. Pretentious is what I might be, but choice, I will have none. So, I have been brought up to make the right choices, to goodness, to be polite, to sneeze before saying excuse me, and leave the table only after it has been molested of its laid out corpses and flamboyant greens. Once I had a god, that I first did not understand, then loved, then bowed to, then begged for, then read, then questioned, then became allergic to, then indifferent, then he mattered again – only at points – in conversations, of how he doesn’t exist – but I would never affirm it, for how I know that I would not make a choice, and between our kisses, that it would not matter. All this pop-religious anxiety has incubated in me this sense of possession, this absolution of no return, that I know that this so called creator is imprinted in my every morpheme. I have never really discussed being a rebel, I would just accept or be indifferent about subject matters – so others wouldn’t find it attractive to tag-tail – block – illustrate etc. This code, signed inside me, I know is a defect. This guilt, this fear of judgment; this eternal questioning of a consequence, this intellectual castration – anti-enzymatic armies leave me blank, yet restricted with a criminal record that I cannot relate to. So, who am I, if not the sum of all my parts – who is this if not the accumulation of events done by, with or 19

against it – what is now if not the descendent of yesterday, rhetorical questions are not for me. Now I know – now – that now is indifferent – that now is the bastard child of the prostitution of self in what is chronological only because we grow old. My past is not my present, I think – I ponder, I might contemplate – wait. When I am asked about a past – mine, I would narrate a story about a little boy, who grew up in a city – choosing his friends in ultimate paranoia – who saw in himself, something he did not understand, who talked to himself and books, who scribbled on maps of the world and planned his ‘later’. This little boy is not me, or is he. This little boy sits with me and talks about what we were – he was. He talks about god and when he discovered his penis worked in magic ways. He tells about encyclopedias, about girls he drew comics for in libraries he used to hide in. He tells me about his discovery of music, and the other. In his thoughts, that were once mine, he tells me about violence, blood in his head – not red, just voices, sounds, smells like caramel. He talks about things I remember, he knows about things I know, but this little boy is not me. This little boy, his little chest, closes – closed – sometimes at night. I remember watching him want to cry, because it felt bad. I see him jumping down the bed, to his parents’ room to feel his mother breathing. Every night, he would do the same – every night, he choked. He would run to her room to make sure her breast was moving, her nose performing - he choked and she was breathing. This thing, this growth, these phases I cannot relate to. This little boy, bares my name- a name I love, a name I hide, sometimes. Sometimes, I love.

Sudden shifts, major shifts, render you different, yet traces of people, you, cling. Ask about me. Now. But now is never. It is never when I could pause to elaborate on this state of consciousness, this state where the alphabet starts with an A, and digits flow chronologically to an alleged infinite. I would wait, to answer â&#x20AC;&#x201C; this answer being formed and reformed constantly â&#x20AC;&#x201C; to be acknowledged and deformed. I cannot relate to myself, he could not relate to himself, he could not relate to herself, nor it could relate to self, self-inflicted wounds that bare no entrance to my corpse, her corpse, its corpse, his corpse, their corpse, our corpse.

I seem to drift, from one to another, with one or another. I know I lie with one and every which one of them, but to myself, I lie the most, for nothing I do or say, I can observe. Nothing I say or do is a reference to me. I seem to willfully drift â&#x20AC;&#x201C; there would be no such thing as self â&#x20AC;&#x201C; no such thing â&#x20AC;&#x201C; no such thing as being. There would be nothing that would stop me from my pleasure, except my ignorance of it, its immateriality, its lack of reference, its comparison to nothing, its abnormality, for the norm is too claustrophobic to savor. I would decide here, to become a descendence of being, something much less than an assertion of self, by critical attempts of definition and redefinition of boundaries, and quote materials quote.

Love was never part of his approaches to things around him. He learned that marriage was the door to this bilationship between a man and a woman. He saw himself a happy fruit of smiling people that sometimes shout, smiling, sometimes cry, smiling. He would never attempt to substitute himself with any of them. He was not him, nor was he her. He loved them both, but he knew love as smiling, he knew love as crying, as early morning jam sandwiches, as trips and as sun. This was not love, and there was enough humanity -he thought â&#x20AC;&#x201C; for him to endure, smile and shout â&#x20AC;&#x201C; cry. Alien to him, were relationships beyond clouds and straight orange purple horizon lines. He knew nothing of heart breaks, heart burns, he knew nothing of losing oneself to blank.

He did not know that she smiled because she loved him. She, light brown hair, eyes that he would later forget, and a smile he ignored, knew about love. She knew that he would treat her well, she wanted to touch him, but he would not touch her. She spoke to him of fairies, of worlds they have never heard of. She spoke to him of nights, of nightmares. She talked of mothers, fathers, of food, of birds, her house and cousins. She wanted him to own her, so she wrote little notes, on little strips of paper, little notes of miscellaneous things, noting life, outside the window, from her eyes – she wanted to touch his eyes. He would not know about why he smiles, when she would run away from him. He would not know of hiding behind benches and gifts and lunches and jokes. She knew nothing of how to touch him where he would notice. She told him about secrets, mysteries – she told him about the dead, and sensing the underworld. She got him curling to fit in the outline of a fetus – his fetal melancholy, in vector, an aura he knew 27

existed only in his head. He wanted more. He wanted to talk about secrets, he wanted to talk to the dead, he wanted to smell them. He wanted to believe her. He wanted to see her lips, alive, talking about her adventures, about how she anticipates the future, how she met his grandfather and how he says hello. She gave him what he wanted. She took his curiosity, in a jar, she took it, in her pocket, fed it of moves, sly moves, chemistry –he later noticed – she fed it off smiles, lies, winks until she knew he knew he would be nothing without this thrill of losing control. She saw, in his eyes, what he had not given her, she saw it, love of something – not here – of something – something in her hand. A carpet, she pulled from underneath his balance, she threw him off, giving him the fear – he begged for - the loss of control, he ached for – the love he had – glass he fumed with steams of anxiety. On the floor, he heard whispers, her whispers in another ear. Then she would turn around and walk away. He was left to be tested, to walk on this glass she only knew about. His steam, now water droplets of slip he felt between his pores. He could not recognize anything anymore. He knew that this belt of teeth, biting his lips, chapters – or not, from her moving lips – she pulled life out of his breathing and breath out of his respiration. With little looks, glimpses and sighs, she told him of love, taught him of hate and mediated a smell of a future – fake – a something, a fear of moments, where he would let his legs free of his hands, disturbing the routing of his imaginary womb. He swore of eyes he would not see. He swore of friendships that would not be. He despised the ground, because on that ground, it was he who learned that trust is the first step backwards – unconscious step backwards into this world of no language – known to nothing, no one,

carpets, just her – and painted images of her – caricatures of him, a mockery of perception, love, love and chemistry and intercourse, a garden of fleas. He made no sense on the ground, for he has left it for everyone else. He lost the grip of comprehension, for he spoke to no one but himself. He looked at her and smiled, and in a couple of years, her smell faded, and her glitter wore out off a face he rarely sees. I tell him I love him, but he fails to render this hiding felt that I seem to cantilever above my head, this masochistic mask of transience I force myself to endure. I am not sure of this being, that I have to choose, after this hand has touched the other. I tell him I have to wait, for there are things I must fix, issues to oil and figures to out. I know I do not exist, but in a lobe where stories reside, fairies and fantasies once were – now departed to a place, where there would be no teeth to hunt and no light to breathe. For a while back, I did not believe in love, I am not sure of myself – now – for no choice will be taken – no confrontation, no repression of guilt, but bouees of exploding phobias and denials of self de-saturation. It must know that I cannot live without it, for I am a man of obsessions. I drive myself into conditional contracts of passions, one sided passions, losing track of a moving train forward, for once my dad bought me a silver watch from a stone cladded shop, to the sound of chanting sheikhs, to the smell of chew – local mastic gum – and on my left hand I realized, I owned time.

It takes a leap that I am not being allowed – by walls I built around myself – to ignite this world of transience I have lost. It takes a spark of cold fire to announce the migration of wall particles from around me to elsewhere prosthetic nests where these hibernating cannibals would reside. For all we know, I am a liar. And in my defense, I allow myself to forget the reference of truth. But this one thing that gives birth to the need to lie, is the appropriation of truth, these rules you put, these rules they put, these orientations of right and wrong - those orientations, highlights and rewards. Constructs, structures I do not relate to, for whatever I might choose to do is mine. I choose to live, I choose to snap out of this system that defies my nausea of choice. I counter-choose decency, I need to explode to pieces of non-self. I am, to an extent, figuring out a sense in this boring repetitive sequence of in and out-bursting of oxygen into me, for I might reach a conclusion whereby I am here to nothing, therefore nothing is what I could be. For all you know, I am what I tell you, for all you know, it is my verbal combustion that defines me, but you want more. You want to see me, you want my eyes, you talk about leading and needing to be lead, leading my eyes to your face, screams and disjunctions of attempted romance, stress of love and power struggles, I see them trying to rip you away of your self through yourself – people I don’t know – people you don’t know.

I see myself alone, with units of rape, I see myself in public scans, I see myself in your eyes, less than what I have built in your head. I see your nose, I see your nostrils dilating. I see seconds that I devoured off yourself with my words and I cry inwards to what I have done, I made a choice, temporary – one you broke so skillfully, stubborn. I am your brother, I am yourself, you are me, I am your lover. We do not recognize, me and you, this – for I block it. I block this, I am blocking you from me – us from this, me and you, for I am delusional, paranoia – this ultimatum, the moment of death – the deflation of expectations, this date with the end, divergence into a binary, a rejection of the middle ground. In my head, it is dark, this room is dark - your silence, darker than when my heart stops in between my different lives. I want to own this flutter you produce in me, but I do not allow it. She knows that I wanted her, for I had known her for a while. We used to play together, I remember flash kisses in my head when we were little. But little ends where little fades, little grows out of proportion, when my facial hair declared independence from my anatomy – and then she came on me. I made her cum on me, orange juice over my smooth hair – juice of her smile, as she asked for the time. My hand, grabbing, moving in thrusts of excited glass – juice off my face, some on her chin –where her finger wiped, licked. She saw it in my face, orange juice cum – on my face, she knew I was eager for her to taste, nectar – my cum – my orange juice pulp – so she pinched my glands where she needed. 31

She came veiled, to me. She asked of my heat, she asked of his heart, she asked of desires, she wanted to know – and boiling, my boiling heart grew massive, expanding hyper-things, threw her veil to show a smile, to lead, to know, to show, to poke. She knew of my lust, and the chase would have rested, but she maintained a ratio of being that pushed me deeper into a hole, once promised exclusive for rabbits. There are things he could not avoid. There are immediate transparencies and suspensions of skin that would strip – malfunction – there are tools – veils. There are things he could not hide, for she knew what she was doing, and they both knew it was not love. Eyes – fixated on the avoidance of mine. Eyes, that would follow his head, his turns of neck – twists – his shoulders lost in rotation. Eyes, she looked at us, and with her tender fingers, touched our lips. She slid her nails downwards, she slides her nails lower to pierce our lip, scratch our skin. She shoveled our senses down to our neck, unbuttoning our shirt, just enough to reveal our heart. We saw, in her eyes, a clown. We saw the smile preceding vampire lucidity. We saw her static eyebrows, her sweat draining face paint, pint by pint down to her cheeks. We saw her coming closer, her lips touching our chest, only to kiss – we imagined. She ate of our chest, she licked off our heart – beats. He tells me explosions happen only with my first time only in my first time. She licked off my heart. In my heart, explosions, in my head – illusions – of her wanting more, so slowly I would uncover my skin, to show more of flesh, more of veins, more of muscle – I want her to know, I want her to suck me off my beats, my pulse, my pumping

pulse. She ate. She fired her arms, snatching my pattern of life-sound. She excavated her tongue off my body and wiped off her mouth with the back of her arm then the back of her hand, as she glared back at me – she – one step back – and a couple more, fired her arm back – switch – turned on the lights.

Lights!

Lights on me, thrown in the middle, amidst spectators on night-view, I look around, to others, not just her, me and her. I am the bull, I am the red cloth, and her kiss, her feast planted the matador in me. Suicidal eroticism amidst surprise staging, in slow motion, I saw them juggling giggles and laughs. I saw their hands, not even attempting to cover their dilated suck-holes. We wanted to walk out of this, but my legs â&#x20AC;&#x201C; numb. I dragged my body slowly out of this focal blocking, but the spotlight followed my drops of blood, me, the bull, the matador, in my teeth, the red. It has been a long time since I let my heart beat as loud. He tells me explosions happen only with my first time only in. I hate labels. I hate explosions in time frames. I hate it when I frustrate him. I did. I am frustrated. He is helpless, but my body twitches to things he does.

I hide, I stay with myself, I walk, touching walls, for they make me shiver. I scratch their concrete with my nails, fresh bitten nails, nails I want them to bite. I scratch their concrete, trim my nails, we flirt. It is there, where I might let myself collapse, it is there, on the periphery of things where I would salivate to the smell of her, him, me, our useless cum on ceramic floors, tastes like viscous sea water. I hide, for explosions burn my eyes. I hide because I know I would look at it combusting, me working between its legs, touching its thighs. I know where I would play. I know where I want to play, and I know where I want them to hurt me. I want to look in her eyes as I fuck him with our hand. I will look at it as it flickers of sharp edged glitters. I burn my eyes, to touch its chest, nipples, breast cage â&#x20AC;&#x201C; ribs. I bite on steel to break my teeth, because explosions are what I need. I want to feel, I need to feel. I will not settle for feeling any less than pseudo-fatal, because oxygen has made my follicles bored, my lungs stripped of excitement and my nostrils - into a routine. He reaches out to the candle, and with two fingers, puts down the flame â&#x20AC;&#x201C; look at me.

I, all of me, all of this, in a frame, an alternative frame – supposedly – but I thought we had made our minds, my mind – that I will make none of that. I am nothing, I am nothing, so leave me alone. This is not an argument of shirt versus skirt, or ink versus type. This is refusing to accept a binary system – this is a refusal of being – where I would be born a man, so not a lizard, so not a woman, so not a pot of tea. I would talk, therefore I would know language, should know grammar, therefore dictionaries can fly, but without wings, eagles would die. I am nothing; therefore his frame doesn’t fit me. I am too absent to deserve it, or bigger that I would break it. Get me out of this window, for I am suffocating. Kill me, in other ways. But, I know that I am the one that is not letting this happen, I know this window is of my doing, this link, this addictive fallacy, I know that it is me that is causing the pain – in me – I know that it is he that is causing this pain, it – the pain – itself – the infliction, me. I can’t sleep, of thoughts of guilt, this pain I crave, this loss of self with no infrastructure of delirium in this system, this rigid system I intend to float about. For before, we thought that we were in control, we thought that it is inside us, this lack of breath, this lock of heart, this conscious distance of another – but it is not, was not – seemingly. I am a hypocrite, I preach what I think I do. I do as a root in contextual distress, I tie myself to things, I reflect off their expressions. Paranoia, one said, paranoia. I laughed, and he wouldn’t hear it. 37

She called me, to ask if she could come over. I don’t know my feelings about her, but – there is this air of constant criticism when I am around her. It is mutual, but I am brutal – she does it to play. I would lose myself to myself humming a tune, or to some music I have discovered – or spoon-fed by a flower, but I did not want to feel or be felt – now, then. She collapsed beside me, on that couch, and made a crackle. She intends to make an entrance, I intend to keep my cool. She talked of things that relate to nothing – not to me, not to her, she spoke of herself and her perceptions, her views, she spoke of my eyes as they deprived me of sight – sleepy eyes, slowly – but she spoke eloquently. She noticed me, to ask if I was more depressed than she was. I don’t know my feelings about her. I don’t know her feelings about her. I saw him enter the room, so I would say hi – naturally, but it was my eyes, not him – it was her, not him – it was me, not him, but I smiled, so she was content – me, turning my back, my face to the wall, that tasted like nothing anymore. I looked back, at her aching stubborn face, to explain how I felt, my ache of this, my aches of that, although I hate to talk about what really makes me flip, what drags me down – but she knew what I was about to say, she knew it well – of its tone at least – a tone she was not after, a romance she cared less about. She shushed my attempts of an escape into another something, that I would function tagless. I regret the truth, I exhaled, I regret a confrontation, this reality that I am folding into a negligible entity – that I would swallow.

to break one

To live in Beirut, is to know that one must accept circumstance. We have become numb – all of us – numb – in a state of trance, where ‘elastic’ would describe our functional execution of our everyday. And to accept circumstance, we would not deny the sense of presence, the legs wide stretched between the tenses – treadmills intersecting in achronological polydirection.

It has become instinct to absorb, shock absorb, trauma, react, trauma, shock, absorb shock. It is something, a trait, that is not a trait that we contain – for so – we all are nothing, for at any point in time we are only liable to that split second of pragmatic context – existing only throughout it, authentic only during it – after which it becomes a memory, a memory we could incubate in communal mourning pits, to build a heritage we attach ourselves to. We claim that we have lost our identity, we claim the right to construct a holistic monotone remedy to unite us – to homogenize us. We are only afraid of our naked bodies in the mirror. We define our curves from our audience’s point of view, from their eyes, from between their eyelashes – so we struggle to title us, to make it easier for them to comprehend, easier for us to make them believe – for our actions and words – not the same. I took her to live in another place, in Beirut, another place. We could not bear it around them anymore. We needed a street without a name, without a title, without a connotation – a reference to a martyr or martyr-to-be. We needed a street without a little shop owned by a big man, for he would only feed us if he fed on us. We needed a neighborhood without neighbors, because they would harass the air we breathe. I took her to live where no one wanted to be – not amidst currents of mandate holograms, not in cosmopolitan fields of divine mines – not where the streets are quiet and the roof meadows are green – I took her where no one wanted to be – I did not offer her the sea view.

It was an old building, no one cared. For dust, age and wrinkles – seem not too appealing to them. Their dust, age and wrinkles - pierced, paved and filled. I looked at her, naked – obstructing – of the window – nothing. She stood by that window after leaving me in bed, lighting a cigarette, she looked out, to nothing. I looked at her – lit – though our outside had no light – no moon – no sun – no gravity – we had no waves to suckle velvet milk off our cloudy sky reflection – to combust in rather lullaby twinkles – that would reflect on her hips – hips I want – mine. She stands still, her skin slightly grows, then deflates – her back stretching and releasing. She, by the window, looks out to nothing – as we look out to nothing – looking out the window, I lay there, in our bed – to traces of her sweat drying off the hair on my chest – hairs on my stomach – hair on my hips. Little by little, her smell grows less and less present, and my body more and more – cold – more naked – more alone – yet she, there, still by our window, to nothing. I remember she would sit on the edge of that window, one leg raised on that edge in front of her – the other dangling inside – her back resting on the side. She would look out – to nothing – her eyes wandering – reading nothing – restless. She smiled to what was outside, as I grow more restless than her busy eyes. I sweat, my eyes sweat for they stress to map her slightest breath, to anticipate her slightest move – they sweat to the distance between them and hers – they sweat for perspective makes her look smaller when she is further away. My forehead, drips droplets, tears – not of joy – not of misery – drips droplets channeling onto my nose, slowly, to curve around its base-

after, around its shaft – my shaft – above my nostrils then below, to my lips to taste – salt. I am looking at her, naked – legs swaying to nothing, for where we live – only wind blows, and when we are together – there is no wind. She smokes, one hand feeding her lips, exhaust she does not exhale. Another hand presses her neck, exhausts me. Her – smoking by the window – I turn to my side, and press a cushion to my chest, I cannot tame my flesh of being alone – now – that she molded herself onto me. I press, to fill the negative of her – in me – I press, to – more empty. I press my face on that – attempt of her – so I would feel pain – my nose, my eyes – they feel a pain – but I smile, I smile because of this attempt - this need to complete an anatomy I considered complete – before. I laugh at what she made – unmade me – little things – big things – images of me – of yesterday – funny things. I press – to suffocate – but it makes me smile – cry – smile – for in my head, she turned away from that window – with sturdy steps, walks to me – I press – she sits beside me, she lets me press. She puts her hand on my side as she puts off her cigarette in her heart. Outside our window, there is nothing – there is no sun – no moon – no stars, so we go by – no day – no moon – no night. We go by, steps of distances we decide, where any length must abide – we slept much less, loved much more, for this place is forgotten – in nothing – because nothing is not appealing – as appealing as their cage. Pretentious, pretentious fuck – I am. She loves it, I love it – fireworks, inside. 45

Their moving, she would slip herself between his lips and this cushion he is claiming his, to whisper notes, of caffeine and fresh baked sunrise – for she makes his favorite. They walk – she before him unlike adam and eve, both naked, they walk to slip between each other in the arms of one another, to the ground they walk on – to a ground, theirs. They would imagine having their coffees in floral ceramics, but they love munching their coffee beans off each other. They would imagine warm croissants and warmed butter flakes, but they love raisins – playing games – chewing raisins, swapping raisin mush – sometimes spit, sometimes swallow. She would act out the housewife because it tickled her fancy, and he would bite her toes – toes he calls butterflies. It was one of those, when she slipped herself between my lips and this cushion I am claiming mine, to whisper notes of caffeine and fresh baked sunrise – for she makes my favorite. We walk, she before me. In my room, it is mine; this is mine, this back, this dorsal liquor – posterior mating choreography. In my room, I touch its back – I take it back, this prose I take it back, to fragments of words – to swings of spring bloom – to outside our window, to nothing. To it, I talk of croissants, raisins, its ears I whisper of my breath, for it does not care for words – it is not the what, but the how, that it smiles to. It splits into two, she touches my shoulder as he smiles. I tell them to sit down, they tell me to relax. They choose their colors, he chose her lips, and she chose his nose. She touched his chest as he grabbed her hair, wine –

the smell of wine – I forget the leash – their leash – to my turns – tangled in a leash - my own. I groan to smoke of friction, in between it – they want this to end – blindfolded – where I do not know. They want this to end – I didn’t – I want to eat them, I want them to eat me. The others wake up – the others want this to end, before I cum. The sounds of things, nothings – not things – make her run – stumble over my leg – she walks, runs, then falls – she jitters to vibrations in abandoned walls, runs then – falls – abandoned walls – where light feels safe to dim dark – she falls – her body cascading to a naked floor. She crawls, paranoid – to wear her heels, for they know her with heels – for they know her poise, for she clits. She crawls, her thighs separate, fur – between her legs – flutters – she raises her hand to open – she opens the door – to open to, her eyes turn her head back to me – they beg of me to end this – they want this to end – blindfolded where they will not know. In those eyes, reflections of the past milliseconds – I see the others drool over steps of us – into a void – a lot – a nothing – Komatsu fetish-mares eating us up – my chest – up – her heart – up – our building, disposed of. Steel eateries eat our lives out, for tiaras crave property – crave new kingdoms, queendoms. Steel necks project steel fangs onto our stairs – our floors – my bed, her wall – into a growing window, a window, growing bigger than its wall, to nothing. Nothing -they leave no trace of her, so between stacks of diced concrete corpse – I imagine blood – to smell the nothing in her – I cum. 47

breathe in

breathe out

breathe

to break two

I slip into white purrs, that hurt my neck – hard, but touch my back – purrs. It slips into universal tides, it floats bubbles forward. I slip to a wet floor, under a burning fire in the sky, on it swaying – afloat – when it stops – the smell of salt. My ears, on its belly – as it hits the water – I – my ears twinkle to the sound of salt – I see slices of sea, touching the hulk. I slip, to fit myself in the corners of its skeleton – into hard corners of molded floor – my cheek sliding – hair rubbing to the taste of salt. Up and down, to violent from silent – it talks of control – of sadistic intentions to a fragility, it asks of me.

I stand, it rocks – to if I might fall – but I don’t, so it – more – rocks. It rocks some more. I hold it to fight it, but it rocks even more – and once more – I don’t fall. I brag, I bloat of feet, reference of ground – so I balance. My balance blows fires, salty fires in me – instincts of preempted vocabularies where I would touch it. I want to touch it, on my own terms – where I could comply – where it would dismiss a tender face, a mask of mine – one. I stand – it rocks to make me fall into the water. Icy cold – I jump. It looks at me, sanctuary – once, it questions me as her own, its own, their own, his own, my own – owned. It doesn’t want to reconcile with me, nor do I with them. It stands, opposed to my float, ripples, flirt with my neck, ripples stretch a necklace of salt, ripples little shivers – my heart. From time to time, when I look, they look back. Most of the time, they would like to touch – would like to feed of whatever doesn’t think in me – they would want to push and be pushed. They, and control, know nothing about each other. Slave and master make no sense, they dust powder cum off with sapphire brooms in French Maid costumes, stolen from Japanese teenagers’ fantasies. They know nothing of pushing buttons, for they wait – attach, then release to be kissed, when then – I can bite – where they sway back involuntary shoves – penetrations – I fall back – choke on salt. Vocabularies are the only signs of close-fetched oblivion. I tell you – to not know is the only way to achieve any mode of knowing. To dictate lust, or to frame within symbols of literal equity or communal understanding – to cage in lingual reference of pronounce-worthy figurines, collective characters and voids – I kill one passion for an55

other â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and for some reason selfish enough to coagulate moments into formful rots, where I can only kill the rigid stem into active fluidity and passive trays.

to break three

Today, it occurred to me. When we talk, when I talk, when you talk - it occurred to me - all of this - an act. I thought of me, and how I flex - in my head, the thoughts of everything - you, an obsession - addiction. I thought of your head, your nose - your head, how you would think of me, as you say the things you say. Today it occurred to me, that this game you play, you play on me - and this game I claim I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t play, I play on you. I have been thinking of ways, for us to know, the other. I thought of things, of your head I want to hear - I was scared of things in my head you would hear. It occurred to me, that this might - just might - be wrong - the shear obsession - this shear dependency of my functioning, on your being - in my head.

Yesterday, today and tomorrow, it occurs to me that this would end - I think of this nothing inside me, after I had substituted my self with yours. To think of things, or to let go - I think of vacuum, I think of you, I think of us - in vacuum, where nothing happens unless self-inflicted, where nothing propagates unless -unless intentionally driven. I think of safety versus boredom, I think of selves, and I disguise my self with one that even cares for this and that, safety versus boredom for it has lost itself to you - for you. I am afraid of you laughing at me, as I look into you - for I look new, I look in too deep - for maybe I make up a deep to look at, for maybe just maybe - perhaps you might not like, the way I look - at things - you - in the mirror, how I look. I am afraid of the sight of you, laughing - for those lips, imprinted - those lips, mine, not laughing at mine. I am afraid of the sound of you, laughing - for your voice, things - makes me feel things - your voice - even when not here, your voice in my head. Heavier, the lighter I get - to cut things, to move things - to make things, to forget, to try to forget - but things happen, diverge or not, Thankyou.

cream â&#x20AC;&#x201C; eye want to suckle on cream, not eat cream

Excess perversion lets me let you know what I want to let you not know. I want to make it very clear, in subtle ways, that there are edges, where I walk. There are edges, but no limits, none. Let me let you know this, as you light, something on something â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in a world you must insist is not mine. I want to talk about things that relate to nothing, things that make me laugh, and killing my worlds, one by one until two by two is no longer fast enough, is not the way to weigh my presence.

Look at me, none. I want none of that. I want none of this shit. You will stop asking me things in three, two, one. You will start talking to me in three, two, one. I am not a box, I am not a where you find things, I bend, to flexes, but I am, because I chose things, of all things, I chose not to choose one, two, three, two, one. I want to go home, now. At home, I want to masturbate. I want to reach – wet, and when I drip, I want to suckle on that moment, this stop. I want this pause to feed little veins, where other veins will be jealous enough, enough to pause. I want to pause, for veins to be jealous of veins – overwork – little veins, for them to – more. Let me let you know of things, fulfillment, let me let you know, how this does not work. Deep breath, in – Keep it in. Keep it in, I want you un-breathing, I want your life in – as you die on me, as I kiss big kisses, in droplets, where you would know, where I stand. Suckle. I want you to suckle on me, on life, on chocolate fantasies, to this. Listen to many things, around me and you, almost seven thousand things, in a little littleness, I would stop now, for threshold, I need to lay back – lay down, listen – I need to lay back on your stomach, may i? Tell me things, even if you don’t know, it is okay. I do not know anything either, but I say things – I tell you things. Your heart beats, heartbeats, listen to me. Listen to how they make ripples on my chest, look – hair frickles, with your fingers, yes. 65

Look at me, I do not care if I will fill you, fully fill you, fulfill you, I want you intense. 67

make anything of what I have made of everything â&#x20AC;&#x201C;

In my pocket â&#x20AC;&#x201C; look, capsules of infinity. Smell, in my pocket, capsules of insanity. Look at me. In my pocket, capsules of finite insanity, look at me, you want one? To count milli-s, young days, modulii of elasticity, I love you, beyond repair. Let me press more, on your uterus, I want to rip it open, rip you open. I do not want your children, I do not want to share you.

Spread. Dip fingers in white red wine, pink – dip fingers in pink warm – dip fingers, fingers gradual wine. Insert – to inert cellars, I would run to break your bottles, glass – brittle. I dive, between your legs, in my pocket, capsules of finite insanity. I want to eat, your – let me eat your caviar. Spread. Dip fingers in white, past. I handle membranes, like capsules – in my pocket, capsules of infinity – capsules of insanity. Dip fingers in red, now. I handle you, like angles fucked her, for you young virile, I will eat your ovaries, I will throw out membranes, spread them to dry – in sunny spring days. I do not want your children, I do not want to share you. Spread. Let me commit to this, wanting to choose, insanity over infinity – both or temporary nothingness. So, red is the color? Red is anything, that is between zero and twenty three. Red is everything that is un-between the latter. Later, I might explain, now listen. Those, gather those sheets of cloth and wool on the floor, flowers for us, flowers for you and her. When I throw myself off that bridge, please take care of her. Take care of her, fuck her and rip off her dyed hair, for she fucks, she fucked – while I was fucked up, loving her. Take care of her, don’t leave her safe, leave her on a brink – leave her on brinks, edges of times, dates, life – cast her slowly out of this that she claims does not exist within. 71

So, red is the color? Welcome home. I want to be left alone for a while, I do not want to be with. Snitch, snitch, snitch – snatch fire, to vapor once water - to blacken once nothing. Snitch, scratch scratch stir – black, to boil. Leave me alone for a while. But you can’t because I can’t let you.

I raised my arm, for you to cuddle, standing next to me – a bit shorter than me, but we like that. You pressed your chin to my chest, you pressed your ear to my heart, you held my hand, pressed it on yours, you held my hand, pressed it on your lips, black boils, black spills. I let you suck, everything bad and everything good, black spilled because of you – and I love it. Mess. Hold you by the neck, four fingers, press on your neck, pull you to where I go. With me, everywhere – leave me alone, residues of black boil – I won’t place on wood, zero three zero six, my open. See this? This is for you - you, next to me, you looking at me, from behind the window, waiting for me to open. You are growing older, I am growing older. We are growing older, for time – has fooled us all, but I don’t care about all – it is us, me – I danced to chants of abundance – lullabies of fairytales – I hate fairytales, and I love them – am I sorry? The door is that way. Welcome home. I used to know, but now I don’t, my home. I used to know who to let in, who to not, and mostly – no one was invited. I used to know blacks and whites, love them both and hate them both. I used to drink of things, supposed to drink me down – I used to drink of things, I chose which cells I can discard. Now I smell you – I smell you, and I don’t let you in your home, me. I used to know things. Seriously, but now I don’t. It’s funny, sometimes I remember things, of us, between us that never happened. We have memories, everywhere, me and you – everywhere. Remember when I was too heavy for you to carry up . . when you broke the wall – when we both licked the blood off my fist when we slept when.

Me neither. 73

But I see it. I know it, I make it – weave it, carpets of me – here and there, I step on, then I walk off and get myself off for you to walk, where I used to know – was home. Tell me about home, tell me about things I know – knew. Tell me why this door, locked – actually…that I know. I used to know who I would want to love, for I did not love – ever. I used to know who I wanted to smell, for smell was fume per puff, not odor – I wanted to touch smooth, not skin – sweat … sweet sweat, you, I know it – mine. This was for you, it started for you, now it’s mine. I started for me, now take me – but, I used to know the value, that value of me – now no. I need to look into your eyes, colorless eyes, I want to see how you look at my pores, my droplets, my wet lips as they realize they are bare. I need to slurp off my sweat, for there is no time for me to evaporate, as you glare, stare, glare, stare, for … these lungs of mine, they stop to the dance of yours. Let us wait, till when – what for. Let us explore things, alone – alone – till when – what for. I would think, would think again, to think of what I would think of this, but I would not – think. I would pause, for you, your disgust, for what I have become, for maybe this is not who was yours, once. Let us wait, for maybe, just maybe – this one time – I would…blue. Look at how I look at myself, I am craving our intoxicating – dense.

to ceramic cheers of face

For my birthday, you will take me to Venice. You will row row row our boat, gently down the street, as if merrily merrily - merrily merely, life was just a dream, you would kiss my forehead, but not look at me, before we drop up, our bodies of sly sex, extroverted selves, our both – both true – I, masked in plastic, and you, in blood. I walk, to show myself, plastic self, I show latex friction, I offer nights of self, but self, not selves. I look at you, you in blood, marvelous, I look at you, you in blood, marvelous, my…mine.

My plastic, I rub it to his cock, to her cross – my plastic I walk to feed of menstrual shit I adore. I suck – periodically, pacifist vampire – those who cannot pray, those who cannot endulge in plagiarism of his words, them – they – these temporary tick tock bastard childs, of two nymphs, an apple and a snake. I adore, I suck, through plastic, for I cannot take it in, I know of me, I need to know of me, my face clean, my house – my self, I knew. Water vapor and it does not smell nice. Look at me. Water vapor, water vapor and for some reason, it hurts like hell. Look at me, row row me, merily, please mercily please, down anything, not a stream, look at me, plastic crumbles – in tears time. But I will not cry, for I am a man. I will not do many things, for I am a man, water vapor, please, my house – my self – I know nothing. I know nothing, blood, please. For my birthday I know, you. I knew you, but now I know you. Water vapor and it tastes like salt, look at me. Please, listen to little things, impossible things, but little, I promise. Yes I am mad, but now I am free, now I can let you know things, seriously, know things, I am free, ask me anything. Bird Yes Dolphin No, nothing

Of course I know what you mean, yet – water vapor reminds me of things, eat my plastic with your bare hands. I sit on this because it is not a chair. My plastic reminds me of things, and other people. Of course I know what I mean, when I tell you things, when I blush I know of things. Two things, I know. I know of butterflies, I know of moths. I know of butterflies you think you send, I know of moths you think I am, I know of butterflies in my stomach, born in my heart – you know of moths in your closet, you know of this annoying sound of me and me and millions of me, amongst others of eggs and such, all around to bow to one beat, of half another beat of little things? May I ask you – of the size of your beat..and how long it beats, per second, per night, for beats, I want to dance to beats, of which I used to breathe to. Hello, and yes I do have a name, but not in public.

In private, as – now, my towel wraps supposed private pieces of selves I sometimes own – I dry, after a shower, alone – in private. Now, as I write, it becomes I wrote, and once drops… off my thigh – now gone. On my stomach, I just lay there, I think of my towel, and how I want to tip it off, so it would feel a little colder, and the hairs on my skin erect – it reminds me of things, of not being alone. I grab my cushion, you – slide it under me, under my head, my arms – armpits trimmed twenty three minutes ago – although I don’t like them trimmed. I think your last drips of spit, in my armpits – lay, now I chopped off, last drips of spit – because I should get over my cushion. No, nothing, I just needed a change. Twenty seven minutes ago, I shaved my beard, then scrubbed it with soap until my face went numb, you like to rub my face, and I like my face numb. Doing things alone, a bit nonchalantly takes away nectar, off my lips – takes away nectar from prospective licks, now it all tastes like rocks, before being stepped on – by you and me, my hand your hand, these rocks rock flaccid puddles in the sea. See? I told you I can do it. Ten minutes ago, I stepped out of the shower, thinking you drained away with my hair, sweat and facial sense, nine minutes ago – I was thinking that one minute ago I lied to myself. Doing things alone, I tip off my towel, bend my knees, to pump – myself, up. My hands, hinges – I get up, to think of other things, thin chances of my success, I walk – to open the door, outside – to open the door, inside – to open the door, to anywhere – not to leave, but to know how to stay. 81

I want to take my camera and leave here for a while, I want to accidentally drop my phone and step on it, then instinctively, elephant stampedes – wild horny elephants – run towards me, their tusks penetrate the air around me, fertilize it into wind – elephant stampedes, grey flat feet munch pieces of the ground, plunge in resonance with this frequency of self – to step on my phone, for I do not want to talk to people, and other things – including you. I need to – now – get lost, with my camera, where we would only talk of clutches with ticks, I would press its hulk, sweat on it, then wipe the lens blur with my shorts – shorts I would take off – alone with my camera – and whatever we do, stays within my focal, its focal, whatever we do, is mine and its own – whatever is almost nothing, in my inside, where nothing synonyms everything.

i have red wallpaper, for you

a.m. “making a point is enough to universe, but never a shape - shape and universe are not of the same family of things -shape is too..here..like time – which is supposed to be described as intangible, time, although..i think is… i mean - now and now and now are me..thus me and time - if i go, my time goes, touch me to touch my time - simple - as for universe, also - ok i have it clear in my head - what it might be, it has the same analogy - put me and you in a roomthis room is supported by me and you - proportionally - i go away, you stay - the room changes, becomes equal to only the half supported by you - you go, there is no room”

This might be the universe, I’m not sure though

Not even sure who you are, not even sure if I want to, but one thing is for sure, all of you – are not one. All of you own little parts of you – seeds thank you in me. You told me you like red, once, but now I sit to think of it, my hands smell of glue – and scents – in my head – of you, I think that maybe, this red, to you is sky blue. Flip a coin; flip my coin(s). It’s funny how we talk, but never there – it’s funny how pictures we draw in each other’s heads, - it’s funny how they make sense – no anchor in stories we tell, with brushes we tell, of colors we tell. My tales grow in your head, when I tell you things, selfless seeds – I suppose, colorless. How many times do I paint, in my head things we made – of dough, clay and smoke – I paint times, of which colors show, to the naked eye – of dough, smoke and clay. Twenty three penguins would act tomorrow, in front of six kings of eighty six jungles, I am content, yet this is - empty. It crawls up my letters, from I paint times, to blanks and blues, blues in my hair – off my forehead, if sweat. It crawls down my letters, from the naked eye to what I paint, wanting to be a letter. It wasn’t. It is not a word, so why bother the assembly? I am building this up, again – looking at myself, not you – in the mirror. I am trying to -again – try to look at myself, how I look at me, not you. I am building, this, up again – looking in my eyes, count the freckles of what you call frazel, what you make green – what you kiss, hurt my eyes – because your lips – suck freckles – suck my freckles. 87

Kiss me, lower – not there, I want to see – your forehead. At some points, I want to tell you all about nothing, other points, I would love to tell you everything – now I feel like I need to point out, again, that everything is nothing, so I want to tell you things, points. Today, in my head, thank you. Today I knew that I know what I know, and all the rest, I don’t. today, maybe a bit yesterday or the day before – it is evident enough – that, I want you to teach me things. I want to be lead places of no name, places of no space, spaces where no one knows things, no one knows about me – you, no one knows about smells of things, your nose, no one – today, I want to be lead where you haven’t taken anyone, or where you have taken everyone, for they seem to be the same place, on the surface of dreams, lower – not there, I want to see your forehead. Redundancies, conduct failure to communicate. I cannot talk to myself, so I type – of times and places I must be in, must have been in – must have been – where other places seem aloof. I am telling you, what I have told you, before – lying on my stomach after a shower as you watched. But now, cushion, alone – I bend my neck to scratch my chin – shaved – I bend my neck and squeeze… not you. How explicit can this be, how explicit can I be, before it crumbles in front of me – how explicit will this be, before it breaks into little things, that – little things that call me from other rooms, because doors let them – before I crumble into issues, little things – that I mask myself behind – I want to crumble into nothing – as I told you – everything, I want to crumble into things that find water

between me, myself and us – how explicit can we be – with eyes, placed in series, to transmit nothing – how explicit is anything, how true can this be, without a question mark at the end, who would know I am asking no one but myself, who would notice – that you are me, would you notice how high. Sometimes, it doesn’t make sense anymore – this poetry I savor in things that hate my savoring. I do not know. I refuse to know, and all this threshold flirt with asymptotes of clitoral explosions – just don’t. I do not know. Babies, confront my professional pedophilia – clutter of mind. I do not know. Anymore and no more sound pretty similar. They pass by me. They pass, and each man – his smell of coffee. Fresh coffee, though – some drink it colder, coffee – some like it slow. They pass, fake leather, I sit outside their nests, but not, fake leather – I am in. I hide behind diagonally draped curtains and as it vibrates, I look at them; their lips talk of things I cannot care less about, their hairy lips – men with moustaches – flaunting flairs, zebras – proof of testosterone. They pass by me, think of their wives, I think of epitomes – orgasms – I think of veiled women, their pubic hair – they pass by me – spread open, my lips…softer. These men, I see, I hear – in imaginative intuition. I smell them, Marlboro fucks light asparagus cum in their canyons – their wives, open airport garages, their wives, flesh-makers human-factories, sinners with no pride of sin…sinners of pleasure, not – sinners motherhood crowns 89

– their holes untamed, inner walls somehow scratched, bearded lips struggle in clitoral disasters – where everyone loses, when hairs of men who forgot their mothers, slurp spit – for coffee. As I, on fake leather, she enters – red hair, the red I hate – short hair, the short I hate. Her head jerks up jerks down jerks, her neck prolongs and retracts, turtle. Her mouth works on it like – as it must have been vital for her exhale inhale exhale inhale – gender, sandwich – she gobbles. Black dress, with her hands, she grabs it and closer falafel drips, closer, blackness – her dress, drips white slide, pickled roots – her roots, pickled – down her chest, on fake leather – coffee. Drips, drip down her chest as her chest camouflaged in black, they talk, yet – yesterday they wouldn’t have. Hairy arms, men as wives and their wives that dry – cum no more, redhead redneck, he comes in, smiles at her walks past her makes sure she smells tobacco between his thighs, she gobbles, bites, faster – white drips – falafel, white drips off her lips under her short red hair, to his collapse – on her, fake leather…he smiles. Tobacco.

post-memorandum

to detach, I remove things from myself, off myself – detaching to remove things to keep distance from things, that rephrase pieces of me, us; thereof. I tell myself to lay down, or to lie down – but also to lie to, because I need to lay down – and all of the above, alone – with above, the ceiling. In my room – transience, in seven days, I am leaving. I tell myself to look around, to touch everything simultaneously, I tell myself to touch everything in parallel – so I would intersect with myself – flesh sections and communal erections of me, us; thereof.

Interminable intermissions, here – where I stand – it doesn’t end – the in between – the ‘and/or’ the negation, elastic frustration sticks – made in me, by me – us, interminable intermissions constant-constant constance -not constancy- of permanent transience. How far will you let me go. How far will I let you – how fast, how slow – how much time will it take, before this lack of question marks, abundance of questions how much time – before you mark off this. I flirt with things, to change their units of measure. This is how we go about our heterogeneity – this is how we embellish our homogeneity. I fondle other units, mix and match – to mismatch – mismatches of senses, sensual absurdia, because we like it. Things, dying. I heart things dying. I lungs things dying – this slow – slow, then sudden – into nothingness. I walk, things dying – if not – I want them mine – then later, discarded – left dying. Pleasure is all mine, the. All around, listen. I, we – he and she, are born to summon lips, invest in hists, I – we, forgot about the need to flip backwards for a coffee, before we slept – I look at her as she hides her right lung she calls a chest, and left lung she admits a heart, a lung I sucked, a spit of a heart – a lung I made her excavate to find a him, she had never named. I love them as they die, I love them as they – stand stiff – their pride and prejudice, they admit ego – they fall in love with virtual reflections of themselves, then die – but they need to be broken. They do. I need to get broken, come.

to break for

Taught to insulate, taught to thoughts of difference, of conscience – talks of portraiture, of imagery, of icons – taught to know, to not guess – to not plunge into talks of blur, or to reoccur mistakes, taught to take the self seriously – in frames, window panes, displays to shine of crystal crisp, taught to not look in the mirror – for it is a mere reflection, of educated posture, chivalry – factorial production of portraiture, imagery and icons.

Awake. Awake, try for once – to walk. In sense, in the sense that sense means logic, we will make no sense. In sense, that sense does not intend vocabulary equivalence, it derives vibrations from the nectar of things. I am as I was, as I am being – I inhabit tense, I look at you. You are as you were as you are being – in coexistence, in mutual consensus with us. Look at me. Awake, to walk out the door, to walk in the room and out. Awake, leg curves drives of thigh – hip ignitions onto the ground. Awake, leg curves drives of momentum upon attraction to lower reference, upon connections to time, laws of tense, recent recordings of hip ignitions. What is the skin called, the skin between your fingers – as you spread… fingers apart – the part where light slides over, into your palm if you want to – my palm if you want to. What is this called, as it draws lines between bumps of flesh further into you, towards you, finger slips off tips to core. How close can I breathe, does it bother you – humid near this skin between your fingers, these lines as they branch from your tips towards my lips – my lips, as they barely touch. What is this place called, where I rest my chin, on your palm as it becomes your wrist, does it bother you, my beard – untamed, for I have dwelled here for days, counting your days off lines of no name. Some of those, they creep under my chin, they continue inside me – others end before I inhale their engravings in your crust. For that, I cheat, I kiss them, to make them grow – I will be here for days, if they grow – I will let them be your lines of smiles, lines of perversions, lines of thrusts and hyperventilation, 99

if they don’t – I will teach them life, in its rawest, I will preach of pain and satisfaction – I will bite their ends, extremities, carve trajectories, your lines – open for tales, where after they bleed, after you cry, they will respond of arousals, candid proliferations into me, they will coagulate into lines of pleasure, lines – intense. Your hands, I touch your hands bleeding hands with my hands painted in drips of your juice. I kiss your hands, bleeding hands with my lips to paint them with drips of your juice. I have been on you for days, you have been in me for days, my arms forgot where else to grip, your body knows I am here to stay, when today – you decided to repent my spit as enzymes to mend your wounds, you decided my body drips of sordid flush into your graceful veins – that my pagan obsession with fantasies of you must remain between me and my skin, that a piece of cloth will hence you divine. I, my hands, in polygamous fidelity for yours, tend to caress what they cannot see of you, touch what they cannot name in you – I, my hands – to kiss you now – must tap twice on my heart, for we must not touch. What is the cloth called, the cloth covering your mind – as you hide… us apart – in places where no light slides over into my palm if you want to – my palm when I need to. What is this called, as it draws lines between my flesh, into you – towards you, finger slips off core to tips. How close can I breathe, does it bother you – humid near this skin between your fingers, these lines as they cut your tips off my lips – my lips as they barely touch. What is this place called, where they promised you – if you wash yourself of sin. How does it look like, what

did they say – how much nicer than my prayers to your palms, how different does your sweat taste, where they promised, after you are washed of sin. Do not answer me, for my cerebral brothels cannot compete with orgasms of geometric abstractions in monopoly. Do not answer me, for it must be a thrill to have denounced the thrown I built you with materialized freckles of time – for another. Your hands still bleeding, my lips still seeding time into your lines, you wrap my sheets around yourself and shy away from what released guards of gender to dissolve walls, to show you safety – in arms suspended to sustain your flux. I am frustrated, my wings snatched in all directions, my eyes dilated. This veil, you sow on yourself – what does it hide you from. Is it meant to deflate my inhale, to imitate gravitational fornication on my wings as I used to fly above you to see the tip of your nose, between threads of our hair. Is it from me, or for the staging of your play to uniformly sabotage the gunpowder of your constant flare. I no longer demand to know coordinates of your judgment, for somehow my saddle has erected two pounds of hammer knocks on wood, for my eyes will not recognize you when they smell the taste of our prospective cocktail in history books. I told you once, of when I let myself crumble. I told you, of lies I want to believe. I told you, of things I tell no 101

one. You told me once, of how you need to know me. You told me, of lies you want to cease. You told me, of how silly I was to stutter. I tell you, that I have let myself crumble, of lies becoming truths, of secrets behind my rigid smile. I tell myself, of what I have left of you, memories of roses – memoires of warriors in photo albums. I look at what is left of you, stills slipping off two dimensions – jarred stares back to back, as you look at me – not to pose. Days tag-tail, in a caravan – to days when I whisper – to beliefs of breathing lamination – sudden crisps from two dimensions, where when you look at me, you are comfortable enough to sigh – then look away. I whisper, like I would to your nose, of last night’s dream – and tomorrow’s nightmare if you ever leave, so stay. You twinkle, like you would, of last night’s delusion – as you itch your nose, of my heavy breath, of tomorrow’s threat – if you would leave, so stay. I have been obsessed, for some time – I have been obsessed with your reflection, off my mirror, your imitations off my improvised showcase – as I stare in your eyes, play with my hair – your beard, try to make you smile, so you would not leave – for now, play with your hair, like I play with mine, my beard, like I play with yours – I will smile, so you would not leave – I will stay, together – only to, at some points, look down to where my toes curl in angst – my fur erect in denial of this mime monologue of a conversation – at some points, pretend to yawn, so my eyes shy away between lids of thin skin – for I cannot stand us together, calm. Hours tag-tail, us looking – you do not look bored, but you must be – of my silence. I can never bore, of the curves where I would imagine tears - off these eyes, that look at me. I can never forgive – blunt interest through this looking glass. Behind you, I can see my room – you, not

here with me. I see my room, smells of rot – of wet dreams – a perimeter, an offset of my body, forgotten. What is wrong with him, for his heart knows. It waits, to wait – to secure perimeters, offsets of their bodies, limelight. He is wrong with him, his steps devise instable prints , he thinks stable – for they are temporarily silent. Minutes tag-tail, in the name of things – I am not stable, we are not stable – you, here, stable reflection, supposed identical of myself, look at this place around you, look at this half mess, this half ignition of nonchalance for the sake of another self, half self – look at what you have done, I have done, to this timid erection – puffed, for this – break this – wall this, mirror into the ground, where I can walk on this, step on this – this to hear it crackle under this foot and that foot, this pair of feet I call upon naked, because I want external crackles of you – inert in me – to feed on my flesh, to rip both my arteries and my veins, as my anatomy decides you must travel to my heart – as it pumps you closer, reflections in the dark of my arteries and veins, as each lobe rips open, rendering both my arteries and veins useless, rendering my heart generously gushing reflections of itself, arteries and veins, and memories – stored reflections of you in broken glass, imagery and portraiture, stable reflections supposed identical to myself. Seconds tag-tail, and still I talk of things I do not do. Here, it is louder than before, this broken wall – opaque void, where I cannot look at you – my heart, both my it and my lungs sense nothing yet, of placebo hallucinations, of reflections of you in me. I can still breathe, but I might as well stop, to test this need for air. I can still remember you, but I might as well stop, to test if I still exist inside of me. 103

She died when I was in the shower. I was younger. She died and my eyes were not yet prepared for this moment – of never seeing her again. For a while, photo albums and stories of how we used to play sketched out her green eyes, her light brown hair, her smile, and how she danced. She died, kept herself grounded at a point in time I was destined to move forward out of, and as I slipped older, her eyes became of a fading shade of green, her hair – maybe blond, maybe brown – she stopped smiling like she used to, and I think she noticed that there was nobody to dance for. As I parted further away from him, me – from where she grounded herself in time – all I could remember is her green eyes – and that in many pictures, she smiled. – This suspension, declaration of independence of tidal groves of yes and no makes me lonely. At times, it feels empty to be void of dogmas to cum on, fallacies to digest and gods to defy. This suspension, declaration of possibilities unleashes the desire of the universe and the satire of the tool to conquer. With loaded rifles of self, nothing brings me closer to the illusion of bliss but the bleak seizures – my trembling inside – as I pretend you’re whispering a series of things that relate to nothing, encompassing everything.

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