Ken Baumann - Solip

Tertiary space. How light might come in.

I have run a gamut of plague, or akin of plague. First: Little hives. Then swollen tongue. Dry eyes. Unconquerable thirst. All this in rapture, obviously. Then: More thirst, mighty as before. Then boils. Blisters. Tongue unswelled and reswelled. My throat felt the tongue go and went up with it: Swelled shut. Fingers bent when I couldn't see them. All the time I couldn't — can't see them. My lips shook. Ears oscillated, spun around on each side of my head. Like plates, and that was awful because putting your ears to the floor only revealed the—

I have to reconcile these things, don't I?

Should I put me on to the other? Should I talk?

My faith is in you, dear creatures. Please please.

Should I mark?

Like a plummet to the sun, it's all so gone.

My color prohibits much going.

I can plan, though.

I can plan.

Or better to stab myself. Stabbing myself, I guess.

Although: What if I remind myself that eternity is simply thinking?

I can only while standing and only while warm. Edicts in a mother tongue out of a father. Pleas. Whimpering belongs to the dog.

And sheltered!

A just, grass square. Border patrol set up and off-dutied. Sleepwatches. Lit from and under some orange. How cavernous we felt. Like wind.

The magnolias—

Better at spacing myself out, saving myself up. Rounding up the pennies. I can't slip out with wet fins if I'm jarred and stowed. Like the old ones. So I emerge in vinegar and wait awhile. I can announce myself and return fresh. There will be a center, held by a massive rally, during still night. Quiet and freshwater eyes will lift themselves up, pan up, to the night sky, and heaven will not only be waiting, heaven will—

Or fucking myself in the corner.

Scraping the skin of.

Like the newly red ring around it and all the gagging. The smell in the trunk after three months of that blanket stewing.

See?

Here, Step into my—

Two losses make big wins. Big returns. You just have to move back and forth between them.

Ahhhhh.

You see it now?

I'm ratcheting.

And I feel your eyes.

You're clicking. Back and forth.

Big returns.

See the film?

Pardon the interlude. Watch—

There's a difficulty of stomach, somewhere. I could address it. A churning, simple enough. Wherein the insides eat and ate each other. Wherein the lining began to fade and stuff spilled in. Wasn't much to do for him. Ease his pain, like war. No self-needling, though; we administered. The boy suffered. We did all we could, lest he save himself with the alternative treatment, which was a nightmare in itself.

Me: For the sake of this interview, could you provide details?

(sigh) Well, I suppose. Starts uhh, with a hose. Thick. And that hose is industrial strength, and works under all sorts of high pressure. The boy would've had to take the hose into him. Understand? And let the hose feed a sort of paste — a starch. Loaded with tracers. And the magnets come and pull at the color and there's your, there's the monitor lit up and you can get a map, where it's going. But after the hose you have to seal him shut—

I couldn't resist!

With the slightest pressure I can confine a path of destruction to a pinpoint. Smart bombs.

I always say my genetic disposition. I always say my geographical disposition. I always say my sexual disposition. I always say my faithful disposition. I always say my political disposition. I always say my disposition.

One of these is not like the others.

There is a lineup, stark faces. Eyes like rough sewn denim. Devoid of glint. A ma'am behind glass. A mister beside her. In between them, the glass and the lineup, there passes a judgement in which one is deemed to stay forever, or a multiple of forever or for some time, in a space, which is determined, designed and built by another one with the ability to uphold and record one's history of upholding written on paper, and the one past glass, judged, is the one who lives inside a space made by another who is taught how to design spaces like this. It stops here.

Oh! Hah!

Are you comfortable?

Time-lapse and a sleep switch: Invest in those technologies.

Also, space is not painted.

I may have mentioned this before, but its hard to track your own dog days.

Death, though—

Dirth — I'm wandering. If the sun hit my back I'd go forever. Dirth — I go casual only from your ears. Dirth — if you listened somewhere else, or with fever, I wouldn't — dirth — is it time again for royalty? Dirth — royalty seems to run, lately. Dirth — dead ends. Dirth — like X. Dirth — seven bits of something and then you're dirth — here it is — one too many.

Chocolate cake or slice of pear? Chocolate cake or slice of pear?

A distillation, fermenting myself: Trust me! Trust me I would cry for it! For you and only you. To get you trustful and appreciative of each other!

Fuck that latter part. Poison breeds poison for a reason. Seasons pass.

I have gone on too long about light.

Men and women lie in ice water. Their animals weep at home. Their electronics flitter out. Their grass dies. Their trees split. Their water browns. Their numbers switch.

Pen and paper.

Or if I speak too directly, you'll know the ruse and refuse it — you'll shut of. But but but you can't because how direct can I be while I'm still coding? I'm not dual channel. You're dual channel! I'm piping this all the time. If you see it in layers: If you see it in cake—

There is a mistake in the frame. There is a mistake in the painting. The mistake in the frame and the mistake in the painting inform each other.

Neither can sell.

Or bribes.

The legal process: Necroprosthesis. Assigning new limbs onto old bodies.

A picture of the cave is in every dentist's office. You can find them.

Or an indirect route to malaise — a middle year woman, pale sculpts and plains of cheek, high irises. In the kitchen, in between bouts of cold tap, the noise catches up to her in a television way, and it's not distress but a call, beneath everything, the real layer exists, it's just behind enough of it everywhere, and if you start to tear away all around and in the walls then you will find it.

Not alive, though.

More in water. Falling inside large bodies and smaller rivulets. Feet slip and shoulders overtake—

Perhaps I should eat shit?

You tell me. (can't resist)

If this box is spinning or circling with me in it, then that fucking hand is the gravitational lynchpin. The box is being straitlined out, away from the other boxes. Or not. Presumedly — one can presume — there is enough space assigned to each cube's path to allow for massive stretches of shakeless carry. We all orbit. The hand though, the hand gathers at a center and spines into all the cubes like a fungus. A two dimensional hand, someone's sketch, exists, outlying all the cubes, their dance or flight or XXX, and is infinitely less capacitive, but is able yet to reach into each of our privacies and ruin them whole.

A holy order of salvage.

Acres of wholesale, waved away into a sluice dump.

Please do not assault me for answers.

To feign an answer is to play a dismemberment.

I do sing for hire. I'm a high tremor.

I've extended an invitation to dance more times than breathing to you.

Take—

Can you bring anything with you?

No.

Can you leave anything behind?

Here?

Yes. For right here.

I can—

Light!

Light!

Color!

Light!

Light!

Light!

Light!

Light!

Light!

Light!

Light!

Light!

Light!

Light!

Did you get all these?