Kyle Muntz - Voices

"Are you okay?"

"Maybe," he said.

"If you had a problem," I said, you could tell me, because (sometimes) I really

am good a being (something) like a friend, so it’s okay- if you say it is- I keep secrets, and I have very little of the kamikaze in the me, the asylum poet, the bourgeois revolutionary; that’s not who I am- or not now, at least- so if you had a problem, "you could tell me."

In life, much of what is spoken goes unsaid.

::::::::::::::::::::

— I’m not sure, he said. It’s just that sometimes…

— What?

— You know, those times you’re doing homework (or you would be, if you

weren’t so busy putting it off) or you’re washing clothes at three in the morning. I picked up some money yesterday, for free, so I guess I picked up a donation, and I gave it to my mom because she wanted to buy something off a cereal box. I said Mom, seriously, you don’t have to do this, really, but she said Shut up Markus, I’m your mother and what do you know about wisdom, you don’t. She always brings up the fact she was alive before I was. She’s so cold.

— And?

— The other day I got off the bus late (I’d fallen asleep late, you know, the way I sometimes do) and on the way home some kid almost ran into me with my bike. I carried my books and dropped them once. It embarrassed me because I thought I might have been forgetting something. Quick interruptions always make me stutter.

— What else?

— I’ve been hearing voices.

::::::::::::::::::::

(Markus speaks out loud but he says very little. I don’t know how

he puts up

with all that feedback racking.)

::::::::::::::::::::

"What do you think they mean?" I asked. Without realizing, I’d stood. I paced the room, from side to side, returning. Ghastly pictures assailed me, old wrappers, videogames. Markus was a real hero at guitar, but very few people knew. There were curtains by the window. If there’d been a wind, it might have blown. Neighbors are a waste of time. They need to rake their own leaves; mow their own fucking grass.

"I’m not sure," he said. Of course he wasn’t sure.

"Are they trying to tell you something?"

"Maybe."

"Like what?"

"That…" he trailed off, "is just something else I don’t know.

::::::::::::::::::::

Veronica held my hand.

She breathed, working hard in the city.

As if.

"I think…" she trailed off, in sequence, "I think I’m leaving today." "Where are you going?"

Somewhere better." She sat with one hand tracing patterns on my shoulder,

another holding me there. Grabbing her wrist, I thought of telling her I didn’t want her to go. We could run away to the desert, to bathe in radial flame, tracking pathways through a sea of superheated dust, hot and lifeless and ours, where the water came once a month, and blossoms bloomed rapturous in tune, a blush, of embers in rebirth.

"Yeah," she said, "somewhere better."

She held my hand. I felt emasculate and possessed. Ashamed.

"Do you need any help?" I doubt the streets take kindly to letting go of beautiful women. She shook her head. I wondered. If she didn’t get away either I would see her again (tomorrow, a week from now) or no one would ever see her again. If she got away everything would be exactly the same.

"I’ll miss you," I said.

"You’ll be the only one."

I thought of laughing, but it wasn’t funny.

I never saw her again.

::::::::::::::::::::

I went with James to an empty lot on the outskirts of town. Someday, I realized, he really might hurt someone. I think James’ goal in life was to become a statistic, the personification of the contemporary urban youth, striking out with steal bats and sticks hastily sharpened near the end. James was the spirit of the city, in touch. Someday, his time might come.

He passed me a can of spray paint, cylindrical, a concentration of message, bright colors, jagged sketchings, language. For seeming so confident, James worked curiously quick, wanting to leave. Someday, I thought, he wouldn’t be confined to dank alleys. There were no police here, though he was afraid of the police. I told him to relax, but he was still too nervous.

It’s no use making statements that muffle themselves. Society the crusher has already disposed of artistry. I say that but I’m a liar trying to call myself an artist. Art changes very little, and I know that too, but sometimes I’d like to pretend the internal really does reflect the external (as if!), and I’d like to pretend we don’t live in a protean ghostworld of statistical semiotic shadows; representation to the imaginary people, the proletarian sea. All things rise out of the ocean: starfish, octopus, our sick, organic ancestors, they’ve taken the sea with them (to land, to land!) tracking pastures in the highest mountain, planting flags on distant stars. All things are infinitesimal in nature. Of them all, the artist is the very smallest.

It’s okay, I said, no one hears, but he didn’t believe me, he didn’t believe. Maybe being an artist, as a rule, my voice can never be heard. Not even here, where there are words on the walls. James couldn’t hear because, being himself, he wasn't listening.

As a rule, I’m right far too often. Though maybe it isn’t an issue of context anymore, but means of expression, of verse, of scripture. If all things are of the people, then who are they to know; in accumulation, all through history, a whole world of silent voices. In the city, the internal and the external are unrelated, a schizoid duplication. Meaning, as a rule, cannot possibly exist.

::::::::::::::::::::

Ironically, for all my

preaching, we didn’t

say anything

worth listening to

.::::::::::::::::::::

If I were to interpret dreams, I’d say I was falling out of the stars, or that the stars were falling on me. Immaculate spears of dream took me in. If I could touch them, they wouldn’t move. No. If I could touch them, they wouldn’t be moving, not at me, not breaking in the mirror.

I guess I’d fallen asleep on the hill. The sky sank its weight on me, and fed me stars. A dark night, waking up on a mountain outside the city- if you could call it that (which you couldn’t). Fireflies phased out of existence. The grass was damp, pressing against my clothes, and I was damp with it, and we were damp together, in unification, the way time changes.

I didn’t believe that. Sometimes I have trouble believing in life, in the individual, or myself, as an individual that is, in relevance to others. Understanding undermines the principles of conversation. I’d been writing poems in the darkness, at loss in a big, big ocean. As if. Renouncing the idea of place hasn’t been innovative for hundreds of years.

If I had a story, this might be where it began.

III

—

in

sequence

.

…

to prove the world

was flat, I

went

on a great crusade.

The rain

came first. First

silence, then the rain, a (taptap) tapping

raindrops

falling quiet in the midnight streets droplets lying quiet

on the pavement quietly tires passing over

to smooth out the rain iron

our sins

into the floorboards

of the city down so low

not even the janitor

remembers to clean them up

any

more.

::::::::::::::::::::

As if

there were order to this introduction. I could say I met her there but that would

undermine the scandalous necessities of sequence. And

yes, I realize I’m rolling myself over, as if I could really make this journey back in time, but I don’t think the rules apply when you’re alone with

gorgeous girls