Ken Baumann - Solip

Plumbed.

In some slice of time, static and spark swells the air; my top skin feels lifted away from me; detached from the muscle, pulled outward and all at once. One inch out, a one inch expansion. An empty air between the separate skin.

I see myself back there — NO MEMORY — I often see myself—

Hovering. Stasis. I'm in the office of my tormentors. I'm in the box outside this box; the former leading to the latatatter. I'm stuck in the air, the office air amber and I am bug. Myself, a copy self, sits across from another: A man, himself. Glasses. Mustache. Pleasant enough in the Brown coat and White shirt and Red tie and, he first—

So.

So?

So.

Tubelike, sucked back out.

Here I am! Here I am, pappy! Back home. Puppy in tow.

Stop reenacting what's told?

Ocular trauma; a great Greek tragedy

Can we ever?

A Roman oratorio; a symphony of absence. The dark so long, and not oft punctuated, as to become impenetrable and all hanging, all framing. A heaven in the mist. The formless mirage. Forever. Until the hand.

NOW it opens into a white lotus, peels and fills, the hand, I only question the horrible chimes that come with it, once it moves, its fingers are more curling and make my jaw quake and then molars, I can only squeeze myself so shut, the hand unwinds as if unwillingly pried, I can only pray, there is a pale of it, its real, level to sight but even if I'm laid down its level is set right, above me, or beyond the floor, there is no space, as it uncurls, and is, a pale gravity, and the chiming is rapid or fades

I'm caused a space. Oops. Our first. Post fuzz.

I can't tell you how it goes away.

So to the soles of feet which are black. Surely, they must stain the whole floor with whatever it is that leaks. Seen it, surely. The black stains, pads and the heels, stained. The grime that must be layered. Or.

Is it better/best to salt the wound before or after infection?

Before! After!

Others promise a transparency. A line. A vista of faith, shared by many. Men and women build a house that is recognizably unrecognizable. They live there. It leaks at the seams. Then what goes. They cry at night. We have to move forward. The scream. They are bewitched by hard light. What they do not know, those housed, is that light moves under what is gone.

A house, a home, a hovel. Hi. And in it this homily. There's clear up and wisps of information seeping. I can turn around, I can turn back and dive again. And if I do — we're diving. Stars in periphery. And now we're here, in the much feared void. Void. It is easy to say hello, because the void says hello right back. Try it, children! (hi) Continuing on. By now we've been crushed and folded within what is invisible, and that's fun, it's fun. We are left okay to sink, diving no longer an option; whence the laws move! They and we are begat. Travel onward takes an indeterminate amount of time, if you — we — I—can call it that. The suck is inessential and two-dimensional. We'll get there — KEEP IT DOWN BACK THERE — and, one cannot say for sure but one can feel: The nexus is as near as it can be with all known. Nexus. A plane of practice. Myth achieved.

Here: A royal bloom—

Spit out amongst, mass, and now the dust floats and bubbles, great storms, fire of heaven and clumps of iodine. Swollen with births. New cancer.

I can only light fire with my belly. Again: No promises.

Replication is nice, a goal, just feinted short of imperative, death drive. If I could, I can, when I break a piece of myself, it could plant, somehow I will plant it above ground, treat with water pooled in my naval, and watch it grow: To have fathered something impaternal. Impersonal only in the wheel of caves. Dark would let the child's love keep in his eyes. Perhaps, past the toddling stage, I could proffer him to the hand or the becoming, put him through the wall, swathed, gently push the light back. A fair deal — an agreement — could then be struck. The hand could encore, to shake! From then: My oh my, a new era in cellkeep. I promise that. Even if the child grew and bared fruit: Layer paternis, daddy Genesis, would stay kempt. Mulch!

Your father not your father. His blood not your blood. Your father is a stranger; his blood to know, alone. Your mother is here so hear your mother: Your heart will not seize. Your family is a brick. Your body now a salt, eroded. Your family is a blood, your family is a run like walls.

I was told—

Omission.

I think enough about a scaffold and a rope and my head becomes them. Designing, building. Curving interiors rid of dust; splits and spits. Maybe now I build the platform. Supposedly they start from the ascent:

Boots on the wood, a curling coat from years of no use. Slow approach. The hand on my left arm. A footstep on the first step heard and I take it. Up a number more than four and they stretch, maybe along the guard's upping rhythm I must to follow. Maybe a gum chewed and a verse between them, the guards. Two or three and a priest. He takes me up on flat ground. It's a plateau. One of more. I can see from it. My breathing hot and clean and moving away too soon out of the black cloth. I am up here, a head almost cut and cast sliding on the smoothest air. Heavy feet, they say. Laughing would echo and find tracks to clap in the big space holding all. Seen pictures. Warehouse hanging; not the act but the place in time. I am being served, we are all serving, and there's our community. A prophet started saying or keeping me seconds ago. What if my sides split open and pour forth? The guards could bathe in it. If I've given it to you, you could uncap me and all you'd see is a little gallows.

Open and sick and blinking so much so, or in which you feel your blood slick through your legs and pool in your toes. This is a map marker. Consult the legend: IMPRISONED. Entombed?

I'm beginning to become a connoisseur of my own sweat. I can taste the folds of not sweet on my buds. I haven't yet eaten from the body elsewhere, otherwise. Tired. The diagram and description is boring. I'll tell you why: I've done it a thousand times.

A tragedy:

A boy is born in the ides of March. His father dotes, his mother finds him ill. No siblings; one born, none mentioned among the family. A day past the birth event comes the naming: Nice Name.

Nice Name is snipped then cries but stares, all under the close watch of the father, a grandly man, and his withering wife, miserly life.

The day comes for Nice Name to be taken home. Greedy nurses prepare him. Father packs the mother things in mommy bags. He is near the door, glasses dripping off while he waits. She is frail, you see! I see alright, now let's go. Our son is waiting.

That's it.

I can't consult some internal ish. Bumps get stuck and loopy, not referenced, nor rooted, simply stuck. To sit with any burp for as long as I have sat with some is to lose. Nothing sounds familiar. In a field there rises; if I could only name it.

Children's Hour. I feel I should fill in some philosophy, or a more formal advice; channels can be changed. Here to. Let it be known that a man in a box is yet a man. A man buried is as lonely as he will ever be, and ever was. Walls move if you do not watch them. Never take the pill. Highly regimented diets of air will sustain us. Troughs are to be watered and pigged upon. Mountains climbed are no less immortal. The back of the hand is a ravine that should not be crossed. Never touch. The unremarkable sound that faints in your bedroom at night is glass shattering. Swallow when spoken to. Spit when exhumed. A tar-stained rope will never do. A year's worth of salt will build upon dank newspapers left quiet — ignore the patterns in the smeared print — they only forebode. Askewed and stern, default. Let the noises crowd each other; like tea leaves. And turn to the stars. Diviners are to be held in faith. The most graceful motion is a slice. The most noble motion is a feint.