Ken Baumann - Solip

We'll take that right out for you.

All of it?

Look at what I'm doing.

Swipe. Swipe.

My bible burns of culpability. It sings like the thrushes.

Might be encouraged to sketch. To map, plot, assign some depth. Detail the shit in the corner. Render a clean page, the lack of flies. Dot vertices with precision. Sculpt the air.

Agnosticism as foreplay. Coy little girls.

Or the pond in the northwest acre, the tank. The barbwire line run across it. The first time alone, crossing a pasture full of bramble and cactus and arriving near dark and seeing the long black snake twined in the barbwire, perched and looping. Dreams of fires diminished.

Sutures clipped off and served as candy.

Man-height towers, individual, spotted grey and lining the horizon. Castle keeps. A maiden in each. Small black windows empty of broadcast. The maidens kept off, in power saver mode.

Hmm. Mmm.

A compulsive man in an institution. Committed. He wanders the halls, per regular history and suggestion. He rubs his hands together. Sometimes the skin sloughs off. Often his fingertips are dark as cut beets. Prowling. A gentle one, though, the nurses say. They pass one another, casting shy glances his way, as if he's the only one with any dignity. Like an animal in the snow. Haloed. The man spends his days walking, and in the evening he is fed his pills and food with care. Spoiled, the other captives think. Spoiled one. Baby. In between their howling they come to the windows and watch him pass in the hall, unsupervised, frequent and floating. Time passes in crosswise brown shadows. A clock settles — orderlies descend, the monkeys howl, the man is bound and carried away, struggling, put out. Rough. Hands lay him on a silver table and strap him down. Leather still warm from the grip. The men over him blocking a small light. The orderlies pause, then pass out of the room. Moments. Left to himself. He touches the cold metal, his hands, his ass, his back, but his hands matter the most, they feel cold the most, more importantly they feel bare. He wants them covered. He cries for it, he cowers. The rounds quicken. Breaths catch infrequently as he sops back into his skull. His fingers unmoving as the rest of him shakes. Unmoving. And from the innards of the ward the monkeys cry—

Are you surprised I haven't peopled this room? I have, though. Look: Anna (hi) and Charles (hi) and Catherine (hi) and David and Christopher; their eyes are opening.

It is unbearable to imagine those pale and groveling, the lot on the streets. They couldn't even eat after seeing their own skin-stripped forms; their horrible moss of veins.

Chew. Oh my god. Rancid rancid rancid. Keep going. Down to meal.

The Third Difficulty: Taste. Nights we would stare down at plates forbade. Kept clean until the simmering crockpot was dropped among, we were left to dig in with our hands and risk the grime underneath our fingernails shaking loose and dropping into the boiled, or our skin pickling and blistering white in tubs. A soft scrub will do, from downstairs, up from his chair. Gulping and hoping for a near miss of footstep. Leave the stairs, daddy. Leave the stairs. This coming from the little XXXXXXX. His hands were small and mealy. He puffed into rooms. Or the shaken soda treatments. The meals out were few and tense, the lot of us mannered but all at unsafe distances. The tables were always circles, and I wondered even then if the strange hosts were in on something. But better to use utensils. You're kept scrappy for a reason, the red carpet moaned. Don't get use to this. So we would swallow and little ourselves, hoping to go powder, and sink into the tablecloths. In the evenings we could lay down alright. Quartered with due respect. Left to ourselves until dawn. Belied of chores. Snoring. I made sure to stay awake past XXXXXXX and make sure that nothing erupted. It was in those nights I took to the spinning nausea. How I couldn't close my eyes without feeling amid sea. Land-locked yet surrounded on all sides by valved and rolling waves. It took years to figure or find a salve; I had to bunch the blooming gag into a black mist. Let it all twirl, let my stomach disconnect from my spun head. Separate entity. Gather up what I could and not focus on the motion; constant falls from the bed, as royal had set it high on blocks. But the mist, seeing, helped. Helped me but didn't save the little one. If there was a common ancestor among us it was saved in the boiling pots laid out before her. Before the high-on-high descended.

Before a swallow let me hold it in my mouth, let it bleed while I list a list of appeasements to myself, provocations to the hand and those outside: Here is what you've given, here is what you've taken away: Contractors and their bloodwork. Humane societies. Border patrol. Spark plugs and topiaries. Budding young breathers in open relationships. Automatons. Glossy paper. Stock. Employee penchants. Underdogs. Overseers. The sweat on fluorescent light and cupped condiments, stacked. What to eat and improper burials. Ritualized sex, mass murder. Hysteria and strikethroughs. Parking lots and pantheons, gag orders. Rotten honey. Champagne flutes and communion. Careful consideration. Suspect prostitutes on middling avenues. Housewives. Guilds. Anorexia nervosa and stop-loss. Mea culpa.

Gulp.

Ahh and the hand again. So soon? Oh, my metric audience, need I re-render this flirting? Cast it newly, amid different light? Take me to task. Critical analysis, although appreciated, will have to exist as a cast-out phantom, for interpretive morale — or: Not sensory — cannot travel upstream. Blame the broadcast. Sorry.

Anyway: Here a hand. The Hand! I must formalize. Why didn't I? Perhaps the paper taste. Campfire sentimentality. A breach. Back clear. My motivations doubled? To eat or not to eat? What to do when the blood is real?

The Hunger Diet.

The No No No Diet Diet.

Now. Now I must concede:

God.

Uhh.

God is empty and only big when first.

Clean.

Laugh track.

Ah hah! Oh the drama! Look at him fuming! His cheeks read red! His lips a purple! His ears a convex current of steam! Let's hold him down and fill him with opiates.

Comedic timing is the password and the puppet string of mind.

If you've been accepting admission for long you can probably see the patterns, right? I oscillate. Frequency determined by some scapegoat. A nailed goat, crossed up and bleeding from the hooves. From the pierce in his ribs pours fur and faith.

So what to do in my vacation home? How to put my starter wife to work? Where are the kids? Where are the kids? Is the crack in the foundation moving? Are the cupboards on a slant? Is the milk sour? Is the car crying from the brake pedal? Are the bicycles rolling flat? Is the sky ever red?

I've swallowed my Jonah. I've swallowed my reed.

To take large communion in temple of the sun, nearing phosphate. To hold in. To pore blood. To spin mission and all inside.

Yes I've taken the home into my body yes. Yes the body cannot beseech me yes. Yes the home is buffered from my breaches yes. Yes the rain cannot enter yes. Yes the home will not tremble yes. Yes the body is a shelter yes. Yes the home is an earth yes. Yes the home is an earth yes.

Beetles, mewling, crushed into paste. Scrawled to make the scarab text. Torches curl ash against set-stone walls. Incant. Incant.

You have been indicted by all history. Your charges read thus: Preach when you can. Lie down on the hour. Place the hay near the potato skins. Be red. Feel the sun. Harness the creature with hair for eyes. Bring in water from the slope. Discard all periphery. Maintain arthritis. Contain the privileged, use their bribes against them. Place your feet beside her when she sleeps. Lower yourself.

I used to tap out war games on the wall. To remain close. Fake an amateur knowledge of other codes. Arc my fingers for the trace fire. Call in support.