Ken Baumann - Solip

Immortalism is never dead.

God I've got it in my belly. Hymn for me.

Mmmmmmm.

Another mockup: Be directionless. Lose up, down, left and right. Lose center. You find that time goes with it. Progress slowed to an amber, slowed to a sap. I felt crystalline for months.

Precinct nirvana. Rods wrapped in scripture, meant to strike.

So indulgent to list those who proclaim death as the cycle makers. Better to list those never born. Subsist on ceremony. Rely on ritual.

Grain theory. Committees of contracted farmers. Grain silos, a tower. They are meeting places. They are gathered around. They seem to always host blue skies behind them. One is framed in wire and rigged to explode. The farmers watch at distance, behind a clear barrier. The charge is set and clicked, and the plains roll a seethe wind. No go. The farmers stare ahead at the still tower. They know better than to look away from a miracle. As their eyes water from the glint of a sun held rapt, a perfect column of grain goes skyward—

Done with deja vus. No, my slice of plane isn't running into others anymore. It lost stasis miles back. System malfunction. Flashes on a brightboard.

Roadmap: I swallowed the paper given to me. I swallowed it in pieces. Mashed, it still lives in my teeth, I'm sure. So to, for now, how to now and for.

Young men carrying folded flags. Toddlers carrying cardboard cutouts of dead mothers. A parade of swarming locusts, trotting badgers.

Fill a room with folksong and combust it.

Have I departed indefinitely into seas of phantasia? Should I consult a rubric? I'm not in a rolling phonebook, but between its pages when flipped. Do you see me now? Where the ants line. What the grass, maligned, bends toward. I'm in your ear and your X, the shadow of the line of the muscle of your back. Also: Empty cans. Rolls disposed. Bread balls. Underneath the riptide, the water that never motions out to sea, never motions in to land. The channel. The channel.

God how I hope I fixed that faulty wiring.

If I see your mother—

The wall! The walls! I haven't thrown myself against them in so long. Oh, what a shame. Let me, let me, shall we? Oh honey shall we?

Blood.

Expulsion — corners. But blood — in the center.

Your face is only a map if it can be recharted, no?

Cursed so quickly, I must heal. Another fuckaround.

Do you plan to accept the XXXX XXXX XXXXXX?

…

Many, many terms. How I wish I could forget them all. Barring forget, lest let me feel them all again in a torrent.

Pardon the interruption.

Shall I — knees — bring you up to speed? Put you — palms — on the level? The — foot — up and up — foot? (up and up?)

Trivial, but once again I have lost the wall that opens. I suppose it's cardinal. I suppose a reminder will come soon. I suppose I've lost it. I suppose—

Hmm.

And why is the ascetic so noble? Why not the many manned lover? No: The obsessive and the rigid. Formality a mere contempt. Do we, wistful, wish after them for their little violences? Their neglects? Do we admire them because they self-cut and self-cauterize? Do we admire them because they adjust in their tunneled travel to accommodate? Do we give them benefit? Why do we admire a machine so marveled and contemptible? Why do we long for a present object always receding?

Genius is a holistic therapy.

For those of you who drone, let me apologize for not going murderous. A: I shan't be in the middle of a plot. (earth alone) B: I shan't be shading. Nor do I cool, nor do I turn. I am forever goo.

Necrotic? No: Even then comes a breathing.

Have you ever smelt a foundry? I, for one, think the smelting belongs only inside the castings and casings, in the molta that fawns and spews. Shy away from the gloved men. Shy away from their sneers. They are all teeth and pallid glint. They are all down and receding.

Okay. I'll do it. I'll pad the melodramamine. But now you realize you're unfortunately hooked. Once before, I promised I'd never promise, no? And without a fortune to spare we dive:

The stomach! O the stomach. How shall I lock what's inside? Bear to be the truth in me. Bear to see the proof in thee. Bear to knee the thief in me. Bear to be the me you see. I'm losing—

COULD WE — I—postpone the bodily business — SHITTING! PISSING! — to another — relegate it? Could we — I! I — take myself into a low mode of coma dome, manufacture a steady somnolent state? NO, NO — what about a total tear of all that's known? HAH! HAH — or a plug? WHAT? — a plug! A PLUG — yes, a plug. I could keep myself plugged! I could back and back and back and — STOPPAGE? YES! Now we're — I! I! I! — getting, now we get it!

Boiling down the billed words; take atoms in sludges, thick against the back of the throat and as bitter as any mercury, here or not. Truly — membrane as my witness — complex. Little reactors, we are. Bumbling along, nudging each other in lane changes as the space splits infinite inside us. Remember: Mimesis is our great grandaddy, our big mother. Lest our copy painters cry dumbly, let us sing them genetic praises! Let us share our genetic expressions! Let's fuck.

Coyly I return to plugging myself. Should I? Dour days, folks. Dour days.

All-night telethons on grain-fed televisions. Speaking in reverse. The blue condolences. Soft touch withdrawals from a hemmed neckline. Under tray, on mute. A mountainous terrain, aural, phonic — escalating screeching. Cash appeals in front of us matched with the staving sort behind. A familial and familiar sideways nod. Brother eye lock. Pulled into the ween box. Behind us a range, behind us a teleplay.

Burn the senate with no one in it.

A sweeping orator:

CAN WE NOT AFFORD THE DEAD A SIMPLE GRACE? A SIMPLE REGARD, WITHOUT SENTIMENTALITY OR STATURE? ONLY AFTER WE ARE LEFT WITH THEIR LIQUID MAY WE THANK THE WORMED FOR THEIR FOUNDATION AND SILENCE?

Totem counting. The whole tribe run together and crowded, flinching, investigated.

I'd bring up the rare musical loops if I hadn't brought up the rare musical loops.

Does the hand want me to use myself as a spigot? Does the hand admire thirst? Is thirst ever seen?

Once, I found fears of gas chambers.

Knees like knuckles, patterned with bite marks. Tooth mosaics.

Repeat.

How do you feel?

…

And now I don't describe the paper because I can't.

Under beaded whip or metal flak, hand drawn, I would probably profess to cyclicality. Under local anesthesia, I cry light.

Can one be axiomed without jury? Without trial? What about hung and supposed? Superimposed? Plotted?

You see, I leave the questions when I weave. When the thread comes together the hand disappears. Godly, I know. But even this is among itself, and trapped, so help me sing.

Ain't a performance without a frame. Ain't a shoe without a sole.

And in the valley there were kings. And in the valley there were kings who rode. And in the valley there were kings who rode pale horses. And in the valley there were kings who rode pale horses into flame. And in the valley there were kings who rode pale horses into flame beside red lakes. And in the valley there were kings who rode pale horses into flame beside red lakes, mountains weeping. And in the valley the kings knew of metal and knew of stone and had dominion. And in the valley the kings laughed. And in the valley the stones sang. And in the valley the kings awoke in stupor. And in the valley the kings were visiting fairies. And in the valley the kings knew themselves. And in the valley the kings were made of rock and made of steel, and kept the fairies to themselves, and fired the lakes from all sides, and wept horses, and buried mountains, and felt themselves alone and red underneath a great weight that is always becoming.