In the sky a dilemma. Fountains rush by.
Home from the tournament beasts seek quiet.
Writing covers the desk.
Your colonization of the infinite
is a romantic departure.
I ask you to permit the image
and the alteration of time.
-from The Red Gaze. Please excuse the lack of proper formatting here.
“To see is to see something” (MP, 436).
In the morning, the something folds open as soap bubbles, indigo fleur-de-lis, a ribbon tossed around the linoleum floor like a harmless snake, and I’m washing the imprint of these things in a porcelain sink, and thinking that I could do this everyday and I do. I’m making sea glass engagement rings in my sink with salt and soap as I scrub them like tides. If I did this everyday, like I do, I could really become quite efficient at all this making and unmaking, could be quite efficient at quietness: speckles inside foxgloves’ openings, their stems just straws set in a blue jar above the sink. Quietness: warmth of the yellow sponge underwater. And company: chairs around the kitchen table, their paint wearing off into a lovely shabby chic–it’s not easy to find home, but-
There’s a kid with a bloodshot smile at the door and now he’s in the house trying to sell us magazines. He’s trying to win a prize for selling the most magazines. How to fit him into all of this? Isn’t that the liberal question? And do I need a magazine? My privacy despairs, and harps into capitalist critique. And then, when he is gone again, rejected, I think, Where is our shared house? Where is the hollow of resolution?
Vapor in the sky pretends a dome–I’m drawn.
I’m drawn to seeing (something) into it.
I’m cabbing through a humid city elsewhere now. Elsewhere of mosques, mausoleums and museums, the streets unnamed. We’re in the chicken district and I can look up to see skyscrapers of open air cages leaning into each other. All the exposed chickens have cock’s combs, swollen and flopping–they’re all roosters un-crowing. The cab driver points out the man who owns this business. He happens to be walking by in a trench coat on this summer day. He’s pointing to his roosters who are ready for harvest. And when he passes people on the street, he swipes them with his index finger, and they hardly notice until they see the red mark appear like a rash on their shoulders or forearms. I’m watching this man and thinking about all the fishes in the ocean, and the dishes I’ve left in my sink. I’m watching this man and as I watch him he begins to turn green. My vision is a filter affecting him, making him sickly and bright, dense as light when it turns to a plant.
The urge to be at peace. The urge to make it right, to wake up. It’s not, and cannot be, to make him go away.