DEAR LOVED,

I LOVE YOU.

LOVE,

UNLOVED

Dearest Unloved,

Here I write with a different voice, no less shit, no less cleansed of all shit. It is a different voice, that is, a different brand, re-branded. It is the sliding voice of an infomercial microfiber terry cleaning cloth. I begin with stains, and finish with a sparkling clean white page. Every letter I repeat the chore.

What happens when these voices, yours and mine, mix? When thrown into the same bucket, my cleaning voice and yours which always turns the water murkier, muddier. Begin again and again.

Is this the voice you yearn for, this cleaning voice? I open my mouth and you open your mouth and my voice slides down into you to scrub your insides, to rub your esophagus, stomach, intestines red raw. Do you cough blood, bleach, pink bubbles? Your teeth are whiter than mine and gleam like bathroom tiles long before or long after Norman Bates has paid his visit. But they were clean long before they met mine the blackness of which is hidden only because they’re all black. There’s nothing to compare them to. A black tooth grin requires a number of white. If we had a punch up we’d be a perfect chessboard.

Domestos breath, what do I put inside your digestive system. What invades your respiratory? I don’t want to see you perched on a toilet like an air freshener. I want to cough into you the same blackness that invades my insides, but somehow as the words dance through the air they arrive at the back of your throat, tumble down your ears all clean and cleaning. You had a car crash and I was the clean-up unit, not a sparkling sliver of glass left on the bitumen.

A picture postcard. All the fragments of car and horror tossed onto those same conveyer belts which run non-stop tumbling their loads into who knows what brightest bright abyss.

Saved, sold and buttoned up unicorn? You try. Daily you sew yourself tight, only for the stiches to come undone again. You aspire to state of taxidermy, to become a mannequin riding a horse off into the sunset. But you are an upside down Christ inside a womb on a donkey. You stink of amniotic fluid spilled into rising ass fur. There’s too much life in you. You’re an upside down Christ hiding beneath a cape in an art gallery, a castle floating in the sky above the homeless. You’re a homeless Princess with your never-resting hands down your now more normal shorts. You have no one to save, God left can’t be found even back stage.

You have only the tricks of trapdoors on stage floors (or down shorts) somewhere to go following your perpetual disappearing act. The stage floor like the skin of a bursting belly that never quite bursts. Why sew? Commit instead a caesarean. You with your pianist’s hands, craft graceful arcs into the stage floor and let in a little light, let out a little black. Displace your smile to your belly. And what when voiceless? When I manifest as The Spirit of Silence with eyes deader than those of a Damien Hirst shark? There is neither filth or cleanliness in this silent aspect. What voice when voiceless?

I have forgotten your voice. I can only remember it bounding about my ears like a slinky come alive and gone mad. A beheaded Orbitty Jetson spraying great arcs of scintillating and shadowy blood all about my ears. You’re a true street artist. Joseph Beuys cane and the whimper of coyote. Your voice is like a meal, a feast devoured through the wrong orifice. Your voice is like the voice of a child asking her mother where death comes from. Oh unloved. Air Freshener. Mannequin. Object to place on my mantelpiece. You gave me a trophy once, and it sits there still on my bookshelf exactly between Robert Coover and Joseph Conrad. I won! I’m the best!

With performances of heartfelt indifference,

Loved.

OH LOVED,

PLEASE KEEP WASHING ME, ……………… I WANT TO BECOME CLEAN. OH FUCK, WASH ME WITHOUT THE SOAP OR WATER…………ANTICLOCKWISE…….. AND…………ANTIWISE. I KEEP SEEING YOU…… AND IT’S NOT YOU THAT I WANT OR HAD. IT WAS YOUR GHOST, PRE-DEATH. YOUR GHOST DOESN’T LOOK LIKE YOU OR A DOPPELGANGER VERSION OF YOU WHICH IT ONCE DID. YOUR GHOST IS A VIBRATING LANDSCAPE/OBJECT/BILABIAL CLICK TRACK NEARBY SEAT BELT IN A ROCK GARDEN. CAN’T READ OR LISTEN TO POETRY NOR SILENCE MUCH RIGHT NOW…………. UGH………. OH………… … . .. . ……. I HAVE COME TO BELIEVE YOU ARE POETRY…………………… NOT IN IT, NOT PARTICULAR EXPRESSIONS BUT THE SHAPE OF IT ALL IN GENERAL. THE GENRE, THE CLASSIFICATION……………. EVERY POET WRITES YOUR FORM. EVERY POEM IS YOUR PORTRAIT. DID I WRITE THAT? “EVERY POEM IS YOUR PORTRAIT” CAN I DELETE THIS PART OF MY LIFE WHERE I SPEAK TO YOU IN ROMCOM-VOM PIES. CAN I BLAME YOU FOR INVOKING ME? ARE YOU JOUSTING LUCIFER’S CHEAP CRUSHED VELVET JACKET?

DO I JUST REACT……………. MERELY BECAUSE YOU REJECT ME? REJECTION CREATES AN AURA OF HIGH VALUE & LOW VALUE. PERHAPS THIS IS ALL THAT IS AT PLAY. THIS IS THE REJECTION HALO…………….. AND I AM NOT IN LOVE BUT MERE OBSESSION, SPURRED BY THE CORRECT DOSES OF REJECTION…………. ALLOWING ME TO BELIEVE I AM LOW VALUE AND YOU ARE HIGH VALUE. I WOULD LIKE TO THINK THIS IS ALL THERE IS………………….THAT WOULD BE NICE. ……………………………………… ……………………………………. THAT WOULD BE SIMPLE. IT COULD BE A FULL STOP, BECAUSE NATURALLY LOGIC WILL SOLVE IT, WON’T IT?

THE MORE SILENT MOMENTS OF THE DAY, FEEL LIKE THEY ARE CAUSED BY YOUR SPIRIT OF SILENCE………. YOU DO NOT APPEAR………. YOU JUST SHAKE ME OUT OF LANGUAGE OR PURPOSE FOR MOMENTS, YOU SHOULD NEVER BECOME A MAN. KEEP SHAKING ME WITHOUT YOUR MANHOOD, I WANT YOU SEXLESS, WITHOUT YOUR TANK ENGINE O HITLER YOUTH EYED DAMIAN HIRST SHARK TANK WATER…… OR IS IT FORMALDEHYDE.

YOU WERE HERE: THERE YOU WERE THROUGH THIS FENCE, I SAW YOU, THROUGH THESE COLLECTIVE PAGES EDGING/ENDING NEAR THE PLANE WINDOW. THERE YOU WERE IN THIS BLACK AREA IN THE PROGRAMMED CITY FROM ABOVE. YOU WERE THERE, THE ONLY YOU I LOVE IS THE YOU WITHOUT YOUR PRESENCE. I DON’T NEED YOUR VEGETARIANISM, CIGARETTE FUMBLING OR CORRECT PUNCTUATION. YOU ARE NOW A FOREIGN FEELING NEAR ME WHEN I LOOK OUT, IT TAKES SOME OF WHAT YOU’VE GIVEN BUT IT NOT ALL YOU, NOT A BODY, NOT IN THE MIRAGE OF A STRAW BODY FALLACY. I CANNOT SUMMON A BODY ANY LONGER, I’M TOO SENSITIVE NOW, A BODY WOULD DRAIN TOO MUCH FROM MY CHANNEL.

I KNOW THERE IS NO HOPE OF YOU. I GIVE YOU AWAY, WALK YOU DOWN THE ISLE WITH OUR ARMS LINKED, MY STERN COLLAR GUIDING YOU AWAKE, AND I HAND YOU TO THE CHUMP AT THE ALTER, I DISPLAY A PATRONIZING SMILE…….. I WANT NOTHING OF YOU ANY MORE. I JUST WANT TO FEEL YOU IN MY BODY ALONE AS I DO WITHOUT YOUR DISRUPTION.

YOU ARE THE ASSIGNED EMOTIONS YOU TAKE FROM THE OBJECTS.

I AM A KNIGHT OF RESIGNATION.

YOU CAN LIVE OR DIE NOW.
 IT DOESN’T MATTER, YOU’RE IN THERE, YOU, CASTANETS MY EARS.

YOU [THE BODY YOU, THE ONE YOU MUST ENTERTAIN] ARE A LEFTOVER, I AM A LEFTOVER. SINGLE PEOPLE…………………… SINGLE FOR A REASON BECAUSE WE ARE UNSTABLE, PARTICULAR, PERFECTIONIST, WRONG FITS. WE ARE IN THE SEWER OF THE DATING POOL NOW, AND WE ARE NOT THE GOLDEN SHITS WITHIN. WE, UNTUNED STATIONS ON THE NOD………………. I KNOW THERE’S NO “WE.”…. .. …………….. . . . ………….. I AM NOT AT THE POKIES, PUTTING IN COIN AFTER COIN IN HOPE…. BAKED BEANED IRIS, FIXATED, MONOTONE FOR THE “BIG WIN.” I HAVE MORE THAN YOU, A GOLDEN RESIGNATION OF YOU BUT SUCH A YOU.

I WISH YOU COULD SPEND TIME, A HALF MOMENT WITH THE SPIRIT OF SILENCE YOU HAVE UNWILLINGLY SUMMONED ON YOUR KNEES CLEANING. I WANT YOUR WASHING ACTIONS. WORK IF YOU WANT TO WORK. YOUR DIRTY LAUNDRY, THE LAUNDRY YOU LET ME SLEEP WITH ALONE IN YOUR BED BEFORE I MET YOU. IT DOESN’T REPEL ME. I WILL HAPPILY BREAK MY TEETH ON YOUR DIRTY WASHING.

I KNOW I REPEL YOU AND I AM AT PEACE IN THE HEAVENS WITH YOUR DEODORANT IN THE CLOUDS. THE ENAMEL GATES GRINDING ME UP A MUG SHOT.

SOMETIMES I SPEND SO MANY DAYS IN THE STUDIO ALONE. I AM FULL OF EXCUSES AND NO REASON TO WANT TO SPEAK TO ANYBODY. WHEN I WANT TO SPEAK TO NOBODY, YOUR SPIRIT OF SILENCE APPEARS, ROLLING IT’S EYES AT ME, TRYING TO READ…. WITHOUT EYES, WITHOUT BOOKS…………… EVEN IN PLEASURING FUSION OLFACTORY OF PERIOD BLOOD WITH VARNISH……… YOUR APPEARANCE GRAZES ME, DISGRACEFUL ME. YOU ARE SO…………………………………………. OH………….. I’M SORRY I THINK OF YOU, PLEASE FORGIVE ME AND GRANT ME GRACE LORD IN YOUR EMERGENCY EXIT LIGHT …………….. ALLOWING YOU, YOUR DUTY, WASHING OUT THE GROWING CORPSES HAIR FROM THE SOCKET.  

PLEASE KEEP SCRUBBING. YOU WILL GET TO THE EGG, HOLD THE TUNING FORK TIGHT.

I WOULDN’T WRITE TO YOU IF I HAD SOME HOPE… I WISH YOU SUBSTANCE THAT HAS BEEN IN EVERY MOUTH AND ALL THE FIRM HANDSHAKES………

DONKEYS INTO SUNSETS, DEEPLY YOURS,

UNLOVED