XXXI.

getoveryourself or you should know when to stop are not the same pieces of advice

but you are not listening to me you are looking at the image of an idiot on the screen

an idiot boy Bolaño says—right in my ear—the image of an idiot boy—and i am overcome by a feeling of wonder at how great it would be it is to be a female art

a female artist a woman first, second—they are not the same pieces of advice—you could—one justifies another—produce the most overtly sexual and sexualised imagery

you would not be guilty of sexuality—and I am fore-betrayed by knowledge, memory, belief one does not justify another duplicitous amongst the victims blending in, before a page of prose looking for even yet the flight of a bird & birdsong, time blurred like the wingbeat of a sacred kingfisher [writes Adam Roberts] and

my stomach drops

into shallow pans

tripe-white

of my open hands (even yet Fergus Barrowman, replied, some of the lines are simply bad)

facing a page of prose: sometimes life is shit: one justifies another and I accuse the extinguished theatre I mean professor removed from positon by concerted and personal vendetta—what one feels now the other will. INTIMIDATION seemed right closest to our theme but you should know when to stop

the recoil is lost it is political and so it is born: and once it was a child and knew getoveryourself for not having to be a female artist, of a woman first second—at the same—the integrity of the personal gesture of sexuality now the integrity of the gesture was lost

it would not be reproduced, it would not pay to reproduce and once it was a child, and at the same time it is the memory of things, not as they were, thought to be heading in a certain direction, ends unknown, all of a sudden going in a wholly unexpected direction the integrity of the gesture was lost, and the reduction to ends and desires the image of that idiot boy on a screen I see my memory at two removes extinguished theatre I mean professor and yours but you are not looking

and in no wise would it be true to say these two manners of appearing followed one upon the other but that in somewise I know not were they concurrent also Adam in The Thing Itself the thing itself might as well figure thought in the image of the hypocrite not the idiot

we are so many people in the manner of a lost world given the word or gesture of the appearance of victims and I amongst gathered together who don’t who can’t and who cannot recognise a crime who gather together in their want and in their lack of recognition and who do not ask who answers for it, for once it was a child and knew, but that in the want and lack of their recognition its answer goes unquestioned its question goes unasked

which is their question and i amongst and it is like the memory of smoke in a dream that on waking is the image of a face in sand that on looking you look does not ask anymore

XV.

sometimes I feel I can take more away than they can

but it isn’t true Is it

the story ends the song goes on the dirty pacing on goes

the end the start the knot the kick at you they

are not your clothes

arms cross over

uncross cross over

uncross on goes

man in his quintessence

I feel I can take you wait

than they you wait father is gone

mother gone

in her

they have cut me in half

arms cross over

uncross you wait on goes a woman

a woman stops in half

like this there is no more

with Andrzej Wirth, Aleksandra Konieczna, Roma Gasiorowska, Tomasz Tyndyk, Agnieszka Podsiadlik, Robert Wilson, Rafal Mackowiak, René Pollesch, Jan Dravnel, Carol Washburn, Miho Takayasu, Richard Raack, Emma Lew Thomas, Helena Waldmann, Marianne Frisch,Hans-Thies Lehmann, Mandie O’Connell & Thomas Irmer

dermo

It’s an incredible project: part dance, part secret, part ritual. Heroic in its unsustainability, its unrelenting absence of logic tears like a cannonball through our understanding of the value and meaning of art – why we need it, how (and if) it functions, who it is for.

I.
Spend the evening pressing flesh and spending money.
That, after all, is what it’s for. And,
well, money’s money.

Fat and fatuous, a fatal
combination—when not being
utterly, utterly charming.

Stretching to 3 or 4, I’d say
and a slap on the wrist.
Hang back,
honestly,

hang about, squeezed tubes in a rasp,
and the spitting, the spitting image
of suited shades loitering around
in the afterlife,
all on tenterhooks,
the very dregs,
too keen
with flickering porcine eye,
too keen by half,
a-trot in the half-dark,

one little pig, 2 or 3, 4
at a stretch
belted and buckled and gaping on,
buttoned and bottled
and raising a queer sort of
high-pitched sound,
not quite human,
a-squeal in the dust-yard,

the harsh cross-light of history, I’d say,
the torture-chamber herself,
steam and quite unmistakable smell
of freshly cut carcase,
a nose for blood,

5 and no more, tubes full
and the gutter-grey suddenly
a luminous shade of hope,
a pink-eyed shade,
falling over oneself,
over and over
as if entirely bereft of the scaffolding of bones,
fresh to the trough,
through the sublime carpentry
of our unmaker,
sliding down stairwells,
crossbars,
collecting splinters
in the hoof of the tongue
that pop like bubbles
on the roof and gums,

the heart sucks and quivers,
shoves the hub and heel
with the delightful infinity
of going against the drill pattern,
all the old numbers,
gown flapping open
at the cuffs and ankles,
streaked with heaven knows what stain,
ardent stain, no more naked clothed
than cut open by the gaze,
chest and armpit,
touch is the subtle retractor.

And the horizon deepening,
the departed on the farther shore beckoning
or, who can tell,
impossible clouds looming.
It has been like this always
but you have not noticed the lips on your partner,
his chest heaving and sobbing,
that apneia

her self-awareness quickened
by the sudden attention
of a, can it be? an oldish man,
to make it harder on her,
he is spitting forward his false teeth
and sucking them back,
to make it harder on him,
he is now retching into her lap,
now looking up into her eyes,
her lashes nothing flying can escape,
and fearing his gorge rising,
sending his questions flying,
and she is asking
what is the question he has for her?
but it is vomit

it hits the stainless steel at a bad angle
and splashes onto the friend
who receives as a gift,
who, quite unbelievably, saw it coming
and got him into the nearest mens

she is not there when he gets back.
The old man has taken her home with him.
Only the male interest remains.

The subtle retractor is brilliant at extracting information
under the disguise of chance,
a chance meeting
with the torturer after many years,
buying sausage at the same store,
thinking, I am not in the same torture chamber
I was before.

Only to feel the years rush away and the dryness
in the throat return
and the blood pumping in the guts again
and pinching of the tubes, throbbing,
a rasp and boot stamping down.

How out of place I must seem! You think,
at the delicatessen counter of the supermarket.
But it is not a private feeling.
The electric saw that cuts him cuts me.

Her lips that speak also refuse.
They lead to the rallies
and the rallies lead to the arrests
and the arrests will never stop
until names are named. They
refuse.

The lips that refuse are removed.
They are removed in hospital rooms.
Not in butcher’s shops.
The light is flat,
sometimes at sunset a luminous pink
and the scent of fresh flowers beside the bed.
On the lavatory table.
The best of care.

The first surgery will cut off the tongue.
The second will take the teeth from the upper jawbone
and remove the lower jawbone in total.

The last surgery will join the skin where
the mouth was to allow a small tube,
no larger than a straw,
for food to pass down.

The whole procedure will be perfected
by erasing any trace
of there having been any surgery at all.

Without lips the subject will
look on without mouth.
And the flowers will be changed
beside the bed.
The curtain will be pulled to protect
her dignity.
No pain will have been meted out.
In the absence of words, all words
will have been reduced to
a simple whistling
from the hole
where the lips had been,
a high tone for excited
while a low one means relaxed.
A singing-along with everything.

The whole story will stay in the eyes
but the eyes will be in the background.
In the foreground will be the monstrosity.
The monstrosity will always be in the foreground.

How lovely to be able to give to the young
what their dreams and visions spell out
to them without benefit of hindsight or
experience.

Another one’s nose was removed
without the least trace being left
in a perfection of which
even the most consummate artist
or the best cosmetic surgeon
could be envious.

Not no nose to speak of:
one with no nose to speak,
one with no nose at all.
An immaculate disfigurement.

I have thought about these things.
About terrorism as the atom bomb
of the poor. And the murder of a young
child. Erased.

It was never a young child. It was a sucking
in foul street. We share breath
tonight you and it.

I, I will always be on its side.
You be on yours.
It was never a dairy owner.
It was that dairy owner.
You will never be a dairy owner.
On your side of the counter
are lined up the prime minister
and the camera crew, the minister
for justice, the twelve jurors, and you,

it has slit a neck and the weightless blood
bubbles and joins into larger bubbles
which rise
and float and burst,
according, as it is said,
to the breeze blowing from paradise.
Now lightly.
Now in a steady rain
gently falling on every man,
woman, and on those
who are scarcely even here, their
short lives, pets and children,
the animals left in the mist
of the species which did not survive.
On indigenes in general
count among the fallen
on your side of the counter
everyone after a certain number,
the certainest number
one.

II.
When you look at the face of money—nothing
but when you look at the face of age—living
hard to give it up
smashed in my car
the ribs clawing at the metal
the rods, racks, the pinions
poking here and there
pain like a crisp clear
morning

like a crisp clear
morning
hard to enter into because it is the last,
like waking on a dawn and refusing waking
no bed
no warm arms
no source
no support of life
no home
pain only
only pain
where there’s always room inside
the entry so narrow—
the exit is so wide

a slice even when followed next instant
by the crack of bone-break is different,
a connoisseur can hear it,
a victim feels it
but worse, much the worst—knowledge:
to know a hand cannot be re-attached
and know the ligaments, nerves and sinews
separated, to know the parting of the limb,
the eye, ear, the torn or cut, the split, the
lost organ, to know from this waking
no going back
to habit
the body at a point of no return

your body, I know
your body, your face billows
out from it and I want to take a pin
pop it

Your hands lift your face like wet clothes
try to put it back in place
and hold it, feel it slipping
from your fingers, dripping heavy
as wet clothes, a drapery impossible
to fix back on its scaffold

Your face today so full of self-satisfaction
unlike money: to stare at the face of money
is to feel the blood drain out
nothing come back at it with its privilege
to be nothing joyless
like looking in a shop window.
somewhere in the distance
the sound of boots
steadily approaching

Hell to be got by humans, by human
hands, before the flood
hell to be erased from face to foot
hell to waste all the flesh has put away
for the soul to enjoy
in old age—not to laugh, of course,
the soul is artificial, which is why
it lasts but an instant
burns everything up
even the reason for its existence
the air itself. There it is.

There it is.
There is nothing else. May as well
admit it. A burden. But to get rid of it
would be to assume there’s something
else, something other than this. There
isn’t. Bear it.

The children are arriving.
Hear the boots?
Somewhere a shop window
with all its five fingers
and five toes
a monstrous thing
smash it!
a monster
smash it with a brick!
do its head in!

something’s wrong
something has gone very wrong.

[performed 19 November 2016

at Auckland Old Folks Ass. by Minus Theatre:

Chenby Dien

Michael Ferriss

Jeffrey Gane

Alex Lee

AmberLiberté

Felipe Oliveira

with the assistance of Monique Wakaka

directed by Simon Taylor]

– Minus Theatre at OFA 21 November 2015

Down every lane I was startled by the rustling of vaguely visible transparent forms. I told myself it was the wind whipping a snag of plastic bags, though each time I seemed to catch sight of a half-decomposed cadaver fleeing through the night in a luminous shroud.

– Lingis, Abuses (1994), p. 262

– Minus Theatre at OFA 21 November 2015