square white world

I was seated in a clean, high-tech restaurant very different from Saigon, the Vietnamese restaurant two floors beneath my loft on Grand Street. … Bare white walls instead of painted palm fronds, pink linen tablecloths with laundry creases. The waiter handed me a long stiff folded white menu printed with the restaurant’s name, L’Imprime. I opened the menu and saw Human Hand listed among Les Viandes. Human hand, I thought, that’ll be interesting, and when the waiter returned, I ordered it. It came almost immediately, two large, red, neatly severed hands covered with what looked more like the rind of a ham than skin. Nothing else was on the white disc of the plate. I cut a section from the base of the left hand’s thumb and put it in my mouth. It seemed a little undercooked. Then the sickening realization that I was chewing a piece of a hand struck me, and I gagged and spat it out into my pink napkin. I shoved the plate across the table and hoped that the waiter would not notice that I did not have the stomach for this meal.

— Peter Straub, The Throat, 2010, New York, Anchor Books, p. 48

It is as though some old part of yourself wakes up in you, terrified, useless in the life you have, its skills and habits destructive but intact, and what is left of the present you, the person you have become, wilts and shrivels in sadness or despair: the person you have become is only a thin shell over this other, more electric and endangered self. The strongest, the least digested parts of your experience can rise up and put you back where you were when they occurred; all the rest of you stands back and weeps.

— Ibid., 51

The world is full of ghosts, and some of them are still people.

— Ibid., p. 75

In heaven we lose our characters in the perpetual glorification of God, but in hell we continue to be ourselves.

— Ibid., pp. 191-2

The Minotaur would be like a fearsome God hidden at the bottom of a deep cave, his traces and effects scattered everywhere through the visible world.

— Ibid., p. 219

Know what I believe in? Seeing and not seeing. Understanding and ignorance. Imagination and absence of imagination. … I’ve just compressed at least sixty years of reflection. Did it make any sense?

…

Guess again. There’s a lot more to it.

— Ibid., p. 233

… there is another world, and it’s this world.

— Ibid., p. 237

XX.

do you see the bird cross the path the rainbow on the cup the chainsaw behind the curtain the thin boy the screw perilous bridge the leaping heart the choice of many the flare of absolute conviction the style of noone but yourself the slouching police the distracted mother the ignorant the soft screenlight the milky fingers in the milky face the blue dapple the green diode the dabbing palp the paddling in buckets the pus burst the gangrene flood is it the nitrous laughter flush complete recognition so I agree I strongly agree I slightly I curvature of night I paroxysm of spine I access of weakness and and exhaustion I rub the edges off the eyes lose all abrasion the face smoothes the critic cuts the wrist the only wrist to ever hold you the wrist falls the words defeat limping we run after for a survey for a souvenir the sample jar half full is it and half again and half in our economy the craze the care the flight no flight where to name is to name again chemicals break it down the elements to praise the elements

Old gods do die, and new gods do appear.

— Under Tiberius, Nick Tosches, 2015, p. 34

I delivered my words with poetic grace and force, a single line in the dactylic hexameter of Homer, ending with an ancipital foot … It was … the rhythm and not the meaning of these simple words that struck with might …he who controls rhythm, controls.

— Ibid., p. 66

Asmodeus is called by the Book “the worst of demons,” …Except for the Satan, to whom allusion is made here and there in the Book, there is little concern in the Book for demons. And I wonder, if Asmodeus is said to be the worst of them, and he could neither seduce nor rape the woman Sarah, what menial piddlers these imagined demons must be.

— Ibid., p. 134

There is only one business. Call it what you would. Deceit. Greed. Filth. It is all the same. He who does business is he who lies. He who does business is he who steals. All business is shit, and he who does business is he who wallows in shit: eating it, regurgitating it, and, all the while, squealing deceit.

— Ibid., p. 236-7

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

— Ibid., 253

Know thyself …

And then expel thy self … Real thy self. Let loose the shame of thy self.

The words of Jesus. The words of no other.

— Ibid., p. 257

XIX.

Karen says Old History Now

I only care about the present well three things

at this time

in this light

we can say

in Deleuze on Foucault places things in reverse order

friends do

we can say one can say it is said at this time to say on

the limit

of the sayable

 

and in light of saying this in this light

I make a little poison to put in

friends do

this chalice

not enough to kill to pass from my lips

to yours I slip a little in

now a sip

 

these things through being said to say

to say this now

to see this now

to feel the poison take effect

take hold I make a problem

three parts

I practice

a charm

 

hidden in a fold of skin

hidden

between your lips

 

a secret passed from one to another

the other’s small touch of madness

I am forced to write in secret

 

Caetano said today Caetano said

the most transgressive

you can do

is play quietly

 

force public recoil

in private

in private recoil

from public sanction

 

I dreamt you’re a cunning man was repeated thrice

you’re a cunning man

you’re a cunning man

you’re a cunning man

if you know so much

and bit off his lips

 

why do you love me so

am I

not difficult to love

 

the turn the rest move away they turn

to their backs I yell

I feel the poison take effect

difficult to listen

love

a very rich speculation

friends

to whom I can say

this is the time

and these are the stakes of the time

 

take this cup away

XVIII.

the tongue coils across the beach you can see its pattern

can you

17 thousand bucks just to put the two pipes together

licks inside

rim of the bay and at another juncture

the tongue curls around can you do it like this

you can scream if you want to

but you cannot change back

 

why with everything over everything I thought at one juncture I’d say everything

still leave pain intact

the still the leave impact recoil or kick 17 thousand bucks

just to put the two

the just the put the pipes together you’re talking in a voice

everything over

at the unknown university with everything over

everything still

still you can

 

say tuesday why does he kill me with his love

say tuesday why does he does he

accuse me with his love

say tuesday why

use me with his love

 

the just just the two I could say everything I found your hair

a short pin with a berry red top the second most powerful man in Auckland

short

statuesque

you can see its phlegm

XVII.

What about the days we choose to live

Lima’s words

The idea of destiny is a phrase that says

they are coming to get us

it is completed by another

go out to meet them

in Gamboa shadows lighting fires in caves

or is it Bolaño again

lost images

poems and

a lump smells

recoil we do know at least a part of us does

questionable girls

because a girl rolls over

because of a mistranslation the part with no

regret the role of the girl is

in question and

old gods do die and new gods do

appear

appear

Jesus in a hotel room Tosches’s Jesus girls

pay to take him in mouth a part of him

Nick’s word irrumates

a part of us remembers paradise

 

but I told him the date and then said

that I had been running across the street

to help her

when I was hit by the car

Straub is it so strange in both Peter S. and Bolaño

there are casement windows

 

a lump smells

a life swerves

a green stares up

at

lunch

her legs