Ken Baumann - Solip

And since a pill can throw a body into The Great Fathom, The Place In Which All Resides, Nirvana, A Temple Among Innumerable Leaves, I say Fuck The Pill and Let Us Rot Inside Ourselves, Be Trapped, Because Without A Call There Is No Road And No Reward, and For That I Am Grateful.

And I already relayed my comedy.

What then is left in the digital guide? Who can you find in boxes? What's to buy? Where's to go? Do palm trees sprout in nation states? Do the refugees build in prayer? Do mud leaves lie unordered, left in stacks, not being thatched into roofs? And who counts everything? Where are the records kept? Will the ink dissolve? Will the ink—

Member the motor took.

I can't keep carrying these things; stigmata. The little lapping ocean — topcube, roof to another — below, though, promises to dry whatever rain has been bestowed; make the paper dirty and smudge the pen. Well, god, I'm just stuck.

Sniffling. Hugging myself.

Must strike out all the softness. Record: Rely on me. Kemp me bare.

Wait. Phantom draft. Surely mistaken. A notion of wind is… null. But what it brings me to? Yes. Hand. Yes.

How quickly I forget.

The paper chase. The paper chase! It's already in my gut, goddamnit. Churning there. Outlasting its host I'm sure, winning champion medals and crafting an electric current, like a big wheel stuck in saltwater. And I could chase it with a sword. A metal rod. Conducive — conductive! — to my audience, I'm sure. Another antennae, this one lockable by X-ray and electromagnet. A beacon to industry I'd become. A hero, a champion of fidelity and technology; a truly modern man and thoroughly oiled filly.

Bear with me. Bless my internal logic. Bless it now for it's all that sinks. Our anchor. In time of storm it is our anchor.

Vitriol from the mother mast always promoted bitter sleep, but sleep. From the fearhead, wavetaker, we were hit. From the mother mast we were hidden in orange satin and left to daylight. Doorway maritime battles. Skirmishes without hit, sink. Water left running after the mascara seeped down into the pipes, ran away from the fevered fingers, ran away from the howling mouth. Take a hand into your hand, bring with you a flashlight. Make shadows. Make faces.

I feel the fingers of wonder. They are pregnant and laced with indescribable color.

Laughing! Laughing.

To focus on teeth: Oh you know sometimes I wish my teeth would grow in. All the way. Fuse in the middle and become a plate of teeth. Tall enough to always force a bare, a smile.

Talk of plates: The ones below us. You assumed — us an abandoned term, an abandoned stretch of grammar. So: Me! Talk of plates: The ones below me. Talk of plates: The ones below. Talk of plates: The ones. Talk of plates: The one. The one plate. All one plate, with fissure. Heat.

Remember the days of profession? Of both kinds. One in the same, really. Does the sickle form a soul? If so, only in crescent moons.

Remember the days of temperance? When the minute hands didn't melt down into stripped, clean-on-the-edges sludge. When the tale had a tail. How the mouths were soft, then. But were they ever soft, son? Are they ever hard, daddy?

And then to humble oaths: The roar, jet screams. Lawns left of at half past street, fading completely by the commercial zone. How, from above, the earth looked like a strobing. Finally. An inarguable pattern.

And how, like in a combustion engine, the spaces between explosive motion — when captured — all caught the same frequency and idyll light. That was the secret. That was the entire secret of an entire age.

Let us rest.

Will I hear crickets?

Two feet through the door and she's saying where is the haircut? Where is the haircut? Where is the haircut? Where is the haircut?

I have a slipshod temperament; a proper dementia. If you want clean lines, learn to ice skate. Here is mud. And if you finger it enough and if the rain is becoming hard enough you can probably find, in your greaseline palms, the further: I cannot promise a codex. I cannot promise that from now on there will be a return to framing. Said: I cannot promise that I can continue to speak. I cannot promise my lips to you, dear. I could tear them off for you? I could create such wonderful bouquets for you, darling. If I had just the, just the right angled flowers, the marvels. I'd promise you, a promise, they would pour forth from my hands, dearest, they would pour until you could take it no more, until your eyes could not contain all the light I packed in vases.

A lull. Ahh, without the hand in sight I'm given too much. Branding libertines in dreamtime. Torture porn? On all walls, blazing and daily monitors. A larger cube and a larger cube, nest eggs, surrounding and surrounding and all enveloped in each other with nearly enough space in between for separate and circulating atmospheres, each a box, like this box, growing more and more full of higher and higher transgression. Placating. The matter at (hah!) hand.

Can you feel the contours I'm setting out for us? There is a large basin that we must dry out and seep into and lie within. See?

How lowly! To neglect the matters at hand, namely: Thing. Paper. How can one even begin to speak for oneself without an intimate knowledge of the miserly suffering of oh! Others! Weeping fantods. Exhausted mewling. There is but one answer for those of us lucky enough not to scrounge for food or fend of rapists with engendered arms: Speak! Speak from the thresholds of all the Others! Speak with their heart in your throat, arteries pupping blood from your lips in parallel to a sad, such a sad and beautiful song. Let me begin now! Why all the nervous circling? Ahh! Let! Me! Are you watching? Eyes. Yes. Begin! THE PEN. How roughly I'm handled. The nobility I can scrape together from piecemeal moments, rememberings of myself in promised times, golden golden golden, keep me alight and illumined and trekking, always trekking forth into a brave and exponentially brutal reality, a reality filled with STARK conditions, but, here, watch, because I'm allowed to MOVE YOU! Here I am TRIUMPHANT! INSPIRING! My capacity to do something! Ahh! Look here because I can write! See the ink? BRAVE! And I'm held until I snap shut again. Okay: Bravo! Moving on. Address the players. THE PAPER: Blank I am. So lost and blank. And fragile. Easily ripped. But then after a long term of handling I'm kind of set down softly with some newly pressed paper around me and suddenly I'm not so lonely, but still crying. A CELEBRATION OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT! Okay, and then some more. THE SHIT IN THE CORNER: I stink. CUM IN THE OTHER CORNER: I'm spent — a diminished return. THE SKIN FLAKES: Musical number! THE SLEEPING SPOT: Obtuse but likable. THE AUDIENCE ROARS!

When Jesus cries there's far bleating.

So hip these days, to be of wavering number. A one man zoo. They pry at the bars, I bare my teeth and retreat. This push pull forms a sort of suction that attracts the local birds. Swallows dive inconsiderately. Popcorn is thrown; they block the view! And oh, well, I can't really be presumptuous enough to believe I can refute piety without getting pious. Another trap. Thank you, non-atom. Thank you, pictures, windowless facts. I'm feeling sprent through campuses. Total — in one sense — gateway drug.

You've jeered I think. I can smell you. So: Stand, scuff back. A pardoning. I'm going to lose the you.

See how long I can do that?

I fear my eventual transcription. How will the space be assigned? Will there be space? How else can you fill a blank? None of that stuff; light's in high demand.

Bulb breaks in his hand and a seep of crimson fleurs. Motions blend from that place on.

The wall with no doors is of no concern. I hope this is as certain for—

Only flesh.

You must people the void. You must? How could you leave it? How could you? There's motion implied! All around. It has to be in the space. This is no deep space terrain — wait — this is no unimaginable fold — wait — this is no — stop here. This is no.