Ken Baumann - Solip

Goodly, the concerns of the imprisoned are neither cultural nor transient.

Spiders.

Return to form. Breathing again, sitting while my legs are numb, and holding a holding paper. Holding. A paper. It is small and palmed. We are together now; a union I recognize. As one part and another of each other, the paper, its trees, and me, mine, my eyes. We are linked! Chainless, but linked. We share in a slave song that inhabits our bones not for our benefit but for proof of concept. How about the mouth? Laid upon.

Heavy knuckles.

Hmm?

Chin down, peering over, brown rim of his glasses or hands. On the desk. Somewhere. Mine, maybe.

In a room.

Heavy hands.

Invisible ink. A hat brimmed with hairless hair, only dirty and seen when washed. An all or nothing proposition, surely; I put the paper down and rub it around and the grime leaches, the hand comes, and the paper stays black, remains, a bodily brine; or: A message. Revealed! And then placed back on the tray? Back with the hand? Or no! With me? Benevolently or indifferently looked upon; looked upon at all; oh let the poor boy use the light off of love to see the little message, cough, I mean, it's arbitrary after all — entertainment! Or: Let ye who hold no faith look upon Him, and find that He is good? Ringing from something lickable, the world will never know. We could, though! So, too, for, us, is, a, man, made, in, tomb — tomorrow.

Now there's a word that has lost its meaning.

And now for a little night music: Bread as water, water as feast. Feast as fodder, fodder as east. Yolk in brain and brain at least, udder for harp and bother a ceased — inhale! — under as farther and father as X, ill is scorn and tilling is fed. Four a quiver and numb anew, to ruin the ruins of razed make two. HALT — coming to a stop: Jury a witness. Sheep a wolf. When they cry FIRE! you see—

Cotton.

Memory, like a roadway, is emptied by plague.

Maybe I should have inked first, had my skin tainted. Tinted. Designs — de-signs. Marking and disfiguring, transforming skin, at least the upper dermis. Permanent to-do lists (get out) (don't get in in the first place) — dreamed misnomers laid upon. I could've at least imagined them, run my hands over myself and imagined them there, black outstanding. Perhaps I could've left a key.

Waiting is the name of the name of the name of the game. Third strata myth. Somewhere someone somehow counts black stones and white stones, placing them in lines. Evolving a hermetically sealed lot, free of lost causes and human wounds. Stones. Stones in a line. What is simpler? Safer? Cleaner? (why?)

I will paint a picture of my father the first if you agree to lock yourself set into this transmission. Transimmion. Bipedal blues. Okay? Okay:

Royal, or XXXXXX, liked to punch the air in front of our faces until the patterings of pressure made us cry as hard as the hardest did. XXXX, second eldest, knew the effect and purpose. Bloom, with a voice as significant as the largest tree or oldest stone, would: And that's why it's best to attack a thing in its infancy. Polio was a beauty.

Hah!

Your promise means nothing to me. I cannot hear it. Resume.

How about a culinary guide to paper? A canon for alphabites? First leaching.

The third moon is the soon moon. Gravity is grave, a flux. Unshaken. Not to be XXXXXXXXXX—

How better to bring you into, bring you in here? This is my concern, after all. I want you breathing in my breathing. Smiles. And smells! A tepid response. Well, you're only listening: At once and all at once it is awful. Was awful. Whichever hairs sensed ahead the dank boxly summit are now fried. I am a cleansed machine. In, and out. On my count: In.

And—

Out.

My low activity keeps the musk down.

I could tell you about the see-things, caused by prolonged exposure to dark, by prolonged starvation of light; light can be eaten. I've starved. A part of me was eating all the light of now and then in secret moving me. I have reached a plateau, and am middling, because the swamp phantasies have dried up. The hand, when it appears, makes all torrid. But, prior to its folding, in my wet period: Small hands emerging from hands, birthed and sprouting from all our fingertips, men with half a mouth enormous and full of teeth in retro, money floating and combusting in sharp tones, tar rain, the floor wet then upside down, my feet phosphorescent, my toes wrenched, oddly spaced claps at the highest resonance, ear quaking, everything in sequence, cancerous wire balls and mesh, bottles on the walls, the roof, wobbling back and forth in super speed, a man above light and smiling, the cell heaving out its carried by a double procession, elderly beggars marching toward something furnaced, black char, porridge spotted with white eyes and maggot eggs, white pouring from my ears, rainbows. Exotic locales and dance numbers. Slave extras. Nods, the feel of them. Here were some of the safer that I can recall. The rest will be away, please.

Some talking will always melt its forebears.

What, then, of a pen?

Overlarge mantises could be inspecting me. I imagine them matronly. Their arms folded, their heads swathed and their chests smocked. Green machines, full of mirrors. Medusas in clouds. Knowing, in vitro. Preaching telepathically but untouched by my silence: CONTAINMENT IS NOTHING — ALL IS CONTAINED — WHAT IS NOT CONTAINED IS NOT — trailing off as we override again.

You see? The sacrifices I make for—

Again, shall I reground? Should I bit myself, teeth the steel? Wishes and demands. Transient. I can slow an ocean only once. (no)

It's the experience of all young men.

…

Is it not?

A com — promise. Promise: I stop reflecting merit, you start listening.

Corn fields inhabited by the smallest men. Hunter hawks, starved and goaded into flight. The men curtailed, population monitored. Small bands of survivors thrive and pulse under moonlight, navigating by tactically quenched flame. The hawks moan in the morning. They rattle and dive with less and less frequency. The survivor bands learn the shadows and water and rare rocks. The monitors, backing their hawks, read the scouting reports and see victory. They move on. The hawks follow. At night, a safe month later, the smallest men emerge. They stalk the rows between the stalks in a timeless state. Left alone, they cry. They cry and touch each other. They see their mothers.

See the space between the corn.

I have something to say at an angle. I also have rare jewels. Buried somewhere.

A catalogue of catamarans for sailing types. Arranged alphabetically—

Closest to me now is my father. The closest yeoman. He held his estate and his rights as he held me; none could breathe.

Patter myth. To tell a lie nobly. Creation story. Birth parable. Earth mother, matriarch. Murderous father. Fetal brother. Golden touch. Sweetly sung, sinking boats, washing men ashore. One eyed things of strength. Lore. Fable. Ghost stories. Blood. All intoned in blood and delivered to another, passed as calmly as food.

If shot through a bully prism, we glean from the lean of the light this tale: Abraham. Closest man: Father. I could substitute but would do so without accurate aim. Closest man, a yeoman as well. Well enough. Fine and—

On the mountain. His son before him, back bare and pale beneath a fluorescent sun. Bending. In prayer. His legs clothed in rough fibrous pants, potato sacks. Shoeless. Hair cut as short as a mothered knife allows. Told now to pray upon the mountain, immediately, questioning the immediacy only once. Then stepping from his horse and handing the reigns to his father and finding a clean stretch of dirt to kneel upon. To bow. Now performing. And his father, rushed, eyes bleeding sunned tears and holding it. The knife less a blade by the second, the second regularly quiet, god allowing. A rage that stirred him into bleating vomit, to the mount. A returning cry. Questioned only once by his son. Blamed on the sun. As all proffers, true to the air of it. And now with the tool, held up between his hands, not in them, him weeping, but without speech, a last mourned wash to bestow to the lord a formed heart, one worth salve. In response a mountain as calm as it could be in the threshold without miracle. Royal, without crown. And a. And. And—