Tuesday, July 31, 2012

more on that

Child (again, on video, so much video): The thing that I like the best is that mom and dad never, ever paid any attention to anything we did, as long as we were following their orders and doing what they told us to do.  These were easy behaviors and simple tasks that never took very long.  But at the end of the day, when we were huddled together in our cold beds, we would make our extravagant plans, and these plans would help us to dream at night, and in the morning, the plans were more solid than they were the night before.  And it went on and on like that.  I suppose it's the same with every revolution.

(Scene: The same goddam house.)

He: Even if we did invent the god because it was necessary, we still loved him all the same, and he loved us.  Do you remember the days when he loved us?

She: Anything you say after that is blasphemy.  Just stop and enjoy the fruits of our loving god.

He: And what are the fruits today, honey bunny?

She: The fruits today are fruits.  This big bowl of big and rotting fruit.  It's still juicy.

(They eat the rotting fruit and it is a lot like church, and they look and smell like church.)

(Meanwhile, the children are restless, and staring to move back and forth in their masks and black clothes, and this should look like a ritual that the parents don't notice.)

He: What makes me so mad is when they tell us what we can do with our checkbooks, when the only one we need to listen to is our big hairy loving god.

She: I never thought of god as hairy.

He That's because you're stupid.  God is always hairy.  Don't you read pictures?

She: I know how to read.  (Pause.)  There's a new program in the school, where all the parents who have paid taxes that help to feed the poor children in the school, they get special parking spaces, and from their parking spaces.  Excuse me.  Our parking spaces.  We, the parents, can watch all the poor parents walk to the school to pick up their children.  It's like a parade.

He: I hope they have escorts.  These poor parents.  I hope they get escorted so they don't do anything rash and poor and brazen.

She: It's hardest on the children.  They have to walk to the poor parents' cars, and the cars are far away, and their legs are so small from eating the passably edible free lunches.  They have to walk twice as much, and they don't even complain.

He: They will, though, they'll grow up and complain, just like everyone else.

She: Please pass the sugar cane, it's ripe enough to drink almost.

(The parents drink sugar and the children plot and plot.)


Monday, July 30, 2012

this is moving

there are boxes in the garage that haven't seen air in a year or more.  and when they open, a thousand indecisions come out and start to decorate the house, but without any sense of style or color, they are unsure, and this all seems so permanent.  whatever nook this particular insecurity will live, it might be that resting place for at least another year.  unless we move things.  we will, we will, but we don't know that, not with all these new children in the house.

it takes awhile for the dogs to find the water again, it takes awhile for them to circle once, twice, and then four times going backwards, before they understand this is home.  and they drive the insecurities and uncertainties away.  there are already voices of laughing couples upstairs, and little girls from the graveyard downstairs, and nothing is there to say this will be anything less than an enchanted time and place.

i've been cleaned, mountain and ocean, and the only unresolved ghosts are the ones who have new business with me, the old things are old things and won't come back.  but the new business is a motherfucker.  everything that is unresolved just hasn't happened yet, but there's every reason to suspect it's about to happen, the ones i want to sort out now will take months, and the ones that need time will happen right away, and i'm prepared, which is the worst part of all of this.

i just need time to sort these things out, i'm not expecting any big pattern to get revealed, and i'm not counting on all the magic to unlock after the last box is thrown out, but i just need time to put these things where they are supposed to go.  i'm sorry it's taking so long, i know exactly how you feel, i'm frustrating.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

a house that tilts

It could be like this:

He: Where are the mashed potatoes again, and is the salad ready yet, and where did the lacy panty liners go, is it that time of year again?

She: My word this is the worst day you've had in a long while.  Look, go bring in the children from the garage, we need to air them out.

He: It's your turn.

She: No, it's never my turn, that's your goddam job.

(He brings in the children from the garage.  They are all painted dolls, painted without faces except for the eyes, but not even dolls, they look like they wish they were dolls but really there are people in there, painted without faces, except with eyes,* in children's clothes.  The first time he brings them in, there are two.)

(*It might be better to say, painted without noses or mouths.)

He: That's it, now I'm reading the paper and no one can interrupt me, because we all remember what happened last time.

(Although it sounds like a threat...actually, it is kind of a threat.)

She (talks to the children, even though they don't move.  Their eyes do follow her, though.):  If you care about anything that's just happened please raise one hand.  (Pause.)  Just wave your fingers. (Pause.)  Just wave one finger.  (Pause.)  Just wave something, please give me a sign.

(Noseless mouthless child on video screen, speaking through the gauze or whatever it is on her face that is covering her mouth.)

Child:  Sometimes it's three in the morning and sometimes it's four, but it's never very much variation beyond that, it's always around that time.  The time when the snakes come back.  They cross oceans to be with us again, and they tell us their stories, they tell us that they are very hungry and we are the only ones who can save them.  We don't understand why it has to be us, but we're done arguing about that, we just don't know.  They tell us that there are things that we know, things that we remember, things that happened here long before we were born, things that happened there even longer before that, long before we were all crossing ships on our way from there to here.  They tell us that there are some of us in this world who are in a permanent state of exile.  And this gives us the ability to do things that the others won't ever know how to do.  And it's not our job to teach them, it's our job to remember how to do them, and then to do them.


Thursday, July 26, 2012

this moon

this moon again, this pull again, this is what gravity does to the living, the ones made of water, the ones who have been salted and seasoned to take on these storms, to take these storms in their mouths and turn them back on the one who sent it in the first place, you didn't make this, and you were never not this, all your life you were never not this, so one thing you can do is to take on the mantel of the one who is the center of the storm, and maybe you are also the storm itself.

but there's this, this moon again, it pulls again, this is the weight of the objects and symbols you use to speak back to the world, these symbols were drawn on you, and now you draw these symbols on the world, you're related, related to them, they speak to you because they are part of your blood, the lines on your feet are taking on the shape and textures of a blood inheritance, and this was never not you, these lines knew you were coming before you first set your feet in this world.

and there's this moon, the one that opens up to swallow you whole, to suck you into the hole of the moon, the mouth of the moon is always hungry, and you're always there, waiting to be eaten, when you think your spirits have left you, and the only thing blowing your sails open is a tail wind, the moon is always hungry, there to prove you wrong, you never were disconnected, you just got lost in the rhythm of the waves, and your veins were never sleeping, and never not moving with the wake of the moon, your first mother, and your first mother never forgets you.

until there's this, this moon, this moon comes crawling, comes crawling to you like a child, like a dog, lapping at your feet and asking your dream body why you haven't visited for awhile, and you say, mom, i never left, i've never been gone, i was just sleeping when you came calling, but i knew you were here because the sheets were still wet in the morning, wet with salt water and glowing with blue light, i never forget you, you're written in my fingernails.

and finally there's this moon, the same moon that came that time before, when everything turned different, the day before everything gets lost is always anxious, but the day after is the one that moves like the moon up and down the skin like it's your life come back to itself, getting used to the smell of your new, shiny blue skin.


Thursday, July 19, 2012

if i didn't say it before, or not enough, i would say again that i love the ocean, i love the sea. i love the salt on my skin, i love to lick it off of my lips, it's like it's just like having a new lover, where the new smells and tastes are all over you in the morning and you get to remember by walking through a day and tasting it just as you would anyway,  just as you would anyway, you get to remember them through your mouth all over again, it's like that with the ocean, i am just like that with the ocean.  i don't fall in love any more.  i wouldn't say it too many times if there were such a thing, if i would offend someone, if there were any threat that by repeating it, that repetition would make it not true.  it's not not true and i would say it over because that's all there is on some days, the only thing worth saying, or the only thing worth saying out loud anyway.  i don't fall in love because i am married, long before any of this started, already married, already promised, some time, a long time, some long period of time long before any of this happened, any of this started to happen, any of this started to repeat and happen again and pretend that it was happening for the first time, disguised as something that were happening for the first time.  i don't fall in love any more.  there's something that happens, always a first time, we always think this is happening for the first time, and when it happens again to us again, we think it's the first time, and we think it's the last time, and we tell ourselves this will never happen again.  this is that or not that at all or somewhere in between, this is where i start to wonder why the moon is disguising itself as a woman in a red dress, now sunning herself on a rock, now bumping into me in a crowd and pulling at me like the small waves that come after the more tidal ones, when the water seems still but it starts to ripple impossibly and we're left waking up suddenly and understanding suddenly that we really are at the mercy of water, of all that is water, and all we are is water, and we are at the mercy of everything then.  and to know it might kill us so we try not to know it because it might kill us so we just try not to know it, but everything that is in us, everything that moves in us and through us, everything about us tells us that this is how it is, this is how things are, we are at the mercy, and it doesn't make a difference if we show mercy or if we are cruel, we are at the mercy and nothing we do can earn us any kind of special favors with these things, the real powers and forces behind everything, they have no mercy and never will and nothing we do can get us on their good sides or their bad sides, it's how things are and it would kill us to know that so we try not to know it.  and anyone who has ever fallen in love for the first time, not the first time, the last time, not the last, knows that there is no mercy, deep at the bottom of things, there is no mercy, and everything we do to not drown only pulls us under faster and there's not even any glory in choosing the speed of your own drowning even, there's no glory in it at all, we are born to drown utterly and one day we never wake up but in between the time of drowning and never waking there is water and only water and all is water

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Scene: a cave by the sea

(HE is there again, or never left, he's always there.  & SHE's always there, or there again, not left.  They are both covered with salt.)

HE: This is the message that I was trying to send.

(HE is holding a dead white bird with a string and a note tied to its neck.)

HE: I think I'd like it very much if you could read it while we're both looking at each other.

(Except, oh, this is such a sad scene, except she can't look at him, not in the eye, her eyes are clear and have no color here, she sees somewhere else, and except also except, she can't speak, her throat has a string around it, connected to a bell.)

(The MERMAIDS come singing.)

MERMAID: You don't know, you never ever know, it's strange the things you never ever know, there are lovers and brothers and twins and sisters, and there is only the light of the moon, it lights things by half, the other half you never know, the story that you never know, the shadow of the story lit by the moon, that's your story, that's the one you live in, and you never know your story, because you can never know.

HE: Uh, so there's this.  Also.  The rest is in the note, the first part, the important part.  But this.  There are towers, uh, one tower, in my dream, the thing I see in the dark, there's a tower, and that's where I climb up, that's where I visit you, there, not here, and it's the same as here, I'm glad to see you, I'm so very glad to see you, movies about the one person you need to see, to say things to, to hear them say things, everyone has one person, in towers or in caves, everyone has one, and most of us don't get to meet them in our skin, but that's who we're looking for only most of us don't know it, but, uh, you and I, we know it, but that doesn't mean we can do anything about it.  But it's in every song, and I think that means something important.

(It gets a lot darker, even for a cave, it's like there's no moon, or just a crescent, just a small crescent, more hidden than revealed, but the light that's fading shows that she is more covered in salt than he suspected, she is covered in salt, like someone turning into a pillar.)

HE: I wish you wouldn't do that, because when you're a statue I don't know what to do, except pray to you, like a statue, and wish that you could come to life, like a white bird, like coming back to life, that would be an answer, but it takes a lot to happen before things come back to life.

(But HE is also turning into a statue, a statue made of salt, and they want to wash the salt away from each other with their mouths, like that would do something important, and it probably could, there's no reason to think that it wouldn't, because that's how these old stories go, the oldest stories in the world go like that.)

HE: Everywhere I go, in every city, in every room in every city, I keep hearing stories about a necklace, something that was a gift, a very important necklace, so I wear the necklace, because it seems important, here, by the sea, where my skin is soaking in salt, and I'm remembering things from long before I met you, the songs I heard before I met you, and I'm remembering things from after I met you, and the songs changed in the world after I met you, because now they ring, and it doesn't stop ringing, and I don't ever stop raining.  Like if I rain over you long enough, it will be enough to melt through the salt, and you could start to move like you like to move.

(And the shifting moon plays funny tricks, and it lights up effigies of them, their bodies on the ground, covered with salt, and their mouths open and filled with salt, as though salt were the only thing in the way of hearing what they would say.  What they would say might be true, but it's already been said by them before, but it might be truer now because they've been saying it to themselves for so long, in their prayers that are like children's prayers in the storm.  This is a storm.)

HE: My lips are getting stuck together, and if I had only one thing I could say, it might be that I think we have a thread, and we have to let go of the thread at the same time, or I think we have to place it in our mouths at the same time, and agree to find each other, especially if we're lost, and I know where I am because there's sea all around me, and I know where you are because there's mountains all around you, so I don't know why these nights go by and I can't hear you, I can't hear anything but the sound of a bell, and I don't know what it's saying any more.  But I think it means we have to do something important.

(And he's frozen, like a bell, like a bird, like a statue covered with salt.)

(A thread, covered with spit, is spun from the looms of mermaids, spinning the world into motion, spinning songs by the edges of the sea, the place we he remembers, the place where he has his heart opened and put back together by the things that live in the sea, and if the chambers could speak, they would speak her name, and if they could not speak, they would still hold her name.)

MERMAIDS: You never know, you can never know, if a kiss is hello or a kiss is goodbye, and that's why the most important things in your life, the things that touch you the deepest, you remember every kiss, and you never, ever know what they were for, what they say, what they want, and they become spirits, like children set loose in the world, and children, like kisses, never, ever stop wanting.

(SHE unwraps the bird and the note and it rings, it rings like a bell, it rings like a very dark bell, hiding more than it sings, ringing out her favorite songs, like a statue trying to answer a prayer, but there are no words.)

Friday, July 13, 2012

fetish object a

I was not convinced that I was required to grow any older for the moment than the lines on my face already suggested.  I was not convinced that the season's that govern a life in this kind of skin, with its peculiar elasticity and tendency to start to wear thin and lose its tension, meant that I was supposed to begin doing those things that other men my age start to do.  I was also still set on remaining unconvinced that whatever patterns I had grown into were so very well codified or set in stone (there are some who turn middle aged the moment they leave high school and start a life with someone important, there are some who play around, especially in the middle years, because they can't commit and are afraid of losing some tenuous connection to youth, and there are some who become more sexually experimental as they get older because they denied themselves certain things when they were younger, because of parents, or culture, or religion, etc.).  And I was not convinced that my wilder and rougher years were already behind me, and before me there were comforts, and things that I would start to feel drawn toward, favoring a quiet night in front of the television rather than a conversation with someone new in a cafe somewhere new.

I was aware that in my house, there were certain warrior paths that could lead a man well into his older years, and there were also obscure creative paths that were also fraught with the same possibility of a long life without much opportunity for calm comforts that so many hold dear.  I was also aware that there were certain expectations, here as anywhere, to marry again, to start another family somewhere again, or to find some kind of peace with a solitary life of work and ritual and occasional moments of soft bliss.  I was also aware that my favorite spirits were the ones who ruled over love, and ruled over the fire in the head and the heart that makes us make things, and after a certain number of years, entirely able to teach the next generation how to make things.  And I was very happy with my favorites.

There was also a strong and invisible pull from the forces that want us to be happy, to be settled, and to be sure.  I was convinced for a very long time that I could be sure, and the others would not be necessary.  Being happy and being settled were good things that happened to people I loved, but they were not meant for me, that they were paths that I was not built to travel.

So it was surprising to find myself thinking deep into nights that followed exhausting days, thinking about what it would take exactly for me to decide that this was the right moment and the right place to start settling down.  And I learned that I still felt that settling down meant settling, and I knew that I was not meant to settle.  I would have to make some kind of decision, a vow, where I would give myself over once again to the role of the eternally exiled, rootless and able to grow in any soil, but not for any period of time, or I could decide to be the magician that I was always becoming anyway, and that gave my gypsy soul a little bit of calm and a sturdy place form which to begin making something new out of myself again.

There is a house in my future, there's a woman there who lives with me, and there is a daughter who is becoming an adult who comes to stay, and there may be pets, and there may even be plants, but it's on a road that's connected to some other roads that I have to travel first.  In this house, everything may be as temporary as anything made from bones, but the people who live there will have feet that are married to the floor of the earth and the top of the mountain and the bottom of the sea, faithful entirely to all at once, and none in particular, and this is where I start to dream.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

this is not here

i'm going to try to whisper someone awake, because i've been up since spring and i'm still too restless to sleep.  i'm going to take the remnants of a last memory, a stub of a cigarette, a necklace, and five tears i keep in a vial with honey and river water, and say all of my secrets until these things start to flare and ring and make sparks in the dark.  at the very least, these things will keep me protected, make me ready for the next war, keep my spine straight and my belly tight.  i'm going to try to speak the new myths into the mouths of virgin oracles, and hope that they get my present confused with the future that's ahead, because there might be blood, or there might be more crying, or worse, there might be memories of heartsweat on heartsweat, the kind that can make the most sun-soaked enchanted day grow pale in relief, and there might not be relief.  i'm taking out the wolves and the foxes and the wild dogs and let them just try to sleep by my bed, and when they get weary, i'll move my face so it's in line of their tongues, and let them just try to sleep, and when they are so drowsy they start to see stars inside the room, i'm going to feed them the tears and the honey and the blood, and let them start to tremble until they tell me new stories.  i'm going to bring the salt from the tears of mermaids who lost their heart's desire inside, on the back of my neck, already thick with white salt, so the visions of these dogs will have no choice but to sing me to sleep with the songs of the sea.  because i want to sleep but i'm afraid i'll miss a visitor at 3 am, and i won't hear her say my name in the dark in the sparks in the dark, but will only know she was there because she wrote my name on my back with her fingernails, while i was sleeping, while the dogs were sleeping, while the bottom of the sea talks to me, and tells me secrets that i will have to keep whispering, trying to whisper someone awake.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

more songs

these are sweet songs, and these are the sweet days, the ones that we want to remember when we are cold and the silence is unbearable.  and i want to be someone who says i want to wrap this around my finger so i can carry it with me, but my stomach is a factory of knots and i'm nervous about who i'm turning into, because i don't know if it's something that i'll be interesting in sustaining when the moon turns red.  i suspect the hot august nights will bring back some things that i did not expect, and i suspect that i have something burning somewhere underneath my comfortable bones that i have not been able to address, because there has been a desert of silence for so long, and that house that i adore is cold, i don't see your traces on the furniture, and my daughter is so far away from me.  but i talked to the sea, and the sea talked to me, and she pulled things out from under her collar and placed them on the back of my neck, and i didn't come to talk to her about you, but i talked to her about you anyway, because she asked me to.  i told her, it's something like her, someone like her, i have things i need to do in these bones and i don't want to do them alone, so please send someone like her.  and the sea asked me, who is like her?  and i told the sea, no one is like her, she is the only one like her.  and i told her that all my desires were in my hands, and my heart is not filled with longing, except for this one small thing...and the sea said, this is not a small thing, and this is a golden thing, and this is nothing you haven't told me before, and nothing we don't already know.  and the sea said, don't look for her traces on the furniture, everything has been cleaned since you went away, but you can see her footprints on the floor, because her feet are covered with my sand, and sand stays on your feet no matter how far you are away from me, but no one who touches me is far from me, and no one who touches your charmed heart that deeply is ever far away from you.  that's the origin of your own goat song.

Monday, July 9, 2012

old songs, new blood

What this city does to me.  It's open like a breath of cool air, and as tight as quarters can get, everyone wants to keep their space marked, because there isn't space, and there's a sense that it's all about to run out at the very last minute, and we're close to the very last minute.  This ground can hold a lot of blood, though, and everyone knows it, and hardly anyone talks about it.  But it can hold a lot more blood still. I don't want to see all the ghosts that are here, and it's hard to see them for the sun and the traffic and the endless stream of trucks carting around the things people need for food and shelter.  Outside of the comforts, then, there are ghosts, ones I don't want to see, especially the ones I've already dealt with a long time ago.
But I'm flying through traffic with leather on my back and Yewa on my license plate, and all it takes is one song to send the ghosts flying, they come flying, you come flying, looking like you did when there were fireworks in your veins, flowers in your hair, and lava coming from out of the mouth below your waist, and I start to wonder what happened to you, and even though I don't really know, I also know that you probably don't deserve it.
And it sounds petty to think that I got healed by someone who didn't look anything like you, someone I didn't expect, but it ended the same, there were these things, these things in a path that make up a life that got in the way, so when she didn't want it to end, she didn't do anything to stop it.  I stop nothing that leaves, don't stand in the way, and don't try to bring it back, but my dogteeth rip at it and try to keep it close, but only long after the balloon has already flown up, after the string has already broken.
I can't do these things, the same kinds of repetition that once made up a song that I couldn't forget.  Now I don't mind if I forget the song, but there are some days I just don't, and this is one of the days that I don't forget, I just don't.
I wish I could tell you all the stories that are written in the dirt under my nails, and in their cracks, and I wish I could hear all the things that happened to you between then and now.  But there are too many other oceans calling, and too many songs that I haven't heard yet, and they come whether or not I let go of the strings, and I'm not missing out on anything.  So I guess I need you, buried in my chest like the bones of a bird who's not afraid of her own blood, but sometimes runs from her own shadow.  And maybe you need me, because I was born to be your shadow, and we deserve to be haunted by each other for the furious ways that we loved each other.  

Thursday, July 5, 2012

4

they said there was going to be rain, but there's the moon, as bright as night can get, fractal diamonds through my spotty glasses, like a firework measuring out the weeks that turn into a month, caught in an endless repetition and a graceful and furious finale.  and the sky is spotting, clouds that gather like a ring of birds around the same moon.
every other fourth of july has been an endless walk, a long drive, and too much sweat running down the back, not enough water, and too many places to stop and wait, and stop and wait.  it's always longer for children, because they have less specific things they're waiting for, and it's all much more urgent, but the adults never understand.  but this one felt different, the rains came and cleared the area, and the one drunk hillbilly chanting america looked like he was doing it with irony.
there are independent heartbreaks all over the world tonight, countries with new leaders they didn't elect, or are not sure of yet, and it all seems so fragile and balancing on a beam that can't hold much weight or waiting much longer. and i'm preoccupied, talking with my daughter about the quality of the sparkly fireworks, and agreeing about which ones we like best, in between jokes about how to prepare unicorn meat.
i'm sorry i ate chicken, but it was all i could do, i can't eat shrimp, not twice in a month, certainly not twice in a week, not with what's up ahead.  and oshun's water turned into a river again, and covered me like i was about to be born.  but i'm already born, this is just a repetition.
but if i had a wish for this up ahead, i would want to ask her questions; is this slow and easy romance, the kind that comes without strings or urgencies, or their own particular knots, a sign of slowing down, or growing up, or is it just a nice place to rest before another epic stanza in my own epic poem starts up again?  and do i have to wonder about copper witches every time i get closer to the ocean again?  and if i'm less curious about the bodies of strangers, does that mean i'm satisfied or just getting old, or just growing up, or is it because i've learned some things, and less concerned with the particulars of rib cages and more interested in the source of the thing that moves the finger over the body in the dark or in the light?
these stories here are complete.  some will continue, and some will not continue, and some will come back, and some will decide to stay where they are, but they're complete, and i have a handful of threads to take with me to the ocean.  i might lose some nights wondering which ones are older than me, which ones are broken even though i can't put them away, and which ones are always shiny and new, but i'm looking at my hands, and getting used to the new weight of bulk in my shoulders, and am entirely trained for a new adventure, and something unexpected and obvious is about to pull me into the undertow of something entirely new.  i'm homesick for it, the kind of homesickness that only gets cured with a decision to wander, in my own bones, with my own blood beating in my ears like the sound of a river or an ocean, or the water from the moon.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

canine teeth

because my teeth are thick with the dust of 18 months of hiding in the desert, and finding shining secrets here, and things that make me smile in the dark,
because my teeth are thick with a hundred meals from a hundred nights of eating at the last minute before the night becomes something else, garlic and oil and twisted pastas from two continents, a thousand secrets about food that i can't speak, and a thousand ways to mix ingredients that i don't understand, coupled with the constant craving for knowledge about the secrets of fire, and i don't have the words to even start to spell the secrets with my tongue,
because my teeth are thick with the things that unfold when i spill my heart and listen to hearts spill over tobacco, those furious smoking nights where the words i love you come through letters and not tongues, those calm simmering nights when there is only small talk about the day behind and the day ahead, and those restless smoldering nights when smoke begins a song about what we might be able to do with just one chair, and those brave and clear nights with clear smoke by cars in parking lots just when the heat is starting to lift, just a little, only a little, it only lifts a little and it's never very long here, so we always have to act fast so we can act slow later,
because my teeth are thick with the layers of salt that come off of wet skin,
because my teeth are thick with milk and coffee, a thousand drops that fall through the hole in my lips, the space where faltering things come faltering through, an endless interruption, yes this is nice, this is very nice, but there's always this, there's always a hole in my mouth where the world comes pouring in and out, it's my wound, the one i claimed for myself, it's the one that never heals and stopped trying to heal, this is the hole, this is the story, this is why my mouth is always open, and it's always this story that gets told in a thousand directions and it never gets old, it's the story of the bottom of the sea and i have to tell it in cryptic forms because to speak it again would be a lie, because it doesn't mean what i think it means, and i don't understand it in the way that it's open to be understood,
because my teeth are thick with salt water, the salt of the skin of lovers who come and go, come and go, back to the sea, back to the desert, back to the forest, and back again to the sea, and it would be easy to say that if i opened my mouth long enough, you would only hear that i love the sea, i've always loved the sea, the sea belongs to me, and i belong to her, but we're not always in the right time and place to be together, but i always go back to the sea, and when i do, my teeth are thick in just the right portions of sense and inspiration, and then i don't have to speak so fast or so often, because it's a slow story that is told in time, with themes and variations of a very old love story, denies the ages of the people involved in the story, it seems as though we are all destined to keep meeting again, but it's a rhythm that is beyond me, and far beyond my control. 
because i lost control a long time ago, but my teeth are thick, because they hold threads, and despite the calm and furious and smoldering and restless beatings of the waves on these rocks, i never did lose the thread.

MANIFESTO OF CROSSED ONTOLOGIES Everybody (and by everybody I don ’ t mean everybody I think I mean one person, and I mean you, in par...