Clay's Blog
Limping Lovesong of the Whore-Pimp in a Nursing Home by the Sea.
Is it the sea that murmurs like this in the ear of a dead horse? Is it a horse or a siren?
What ritual of shipwreck is dragged down by the sea's hair? I'm shut up in an image and an attitude, and the tall waves pursue me. I fall, I faint. Is it possible to faint in sleep, to lose consciousness and no longer recognize the feel of familiar objects? I'm not playing; I'm trying not to die. I have at least the whole of my life to answer a question: who am I? And who is the Other? A gust of wind through the tree at dawn? A motionless landscape? A trembling leaf? A coil of white smoke above a mountain?
I write all these words and I hear the wind, not outside, but inside my head. A strong wind, it rattles the shutters through which I enter the dream. I see that one is leaning to the side. Will it fall where I rest my head to welcome other lives, to stroke other faces? They are gloomy faces and happy ones, but I love them because I invent them. I make them quite different from my own, whether distorted or sublime, snatched from the light of day and stuck on the branches of the tree like a witch's conquests.
Sometimes the winter of those faces chills my blood. I leave them and go to look elsewhere. I take hands. I choose large delicate ones. I shake them, kiss them, suck them. I become intoxicated. Hands resist me less. They can't make grimaces. Faces take revenge on my freedom by grimacing the whole time. That's why I set them aside. Not violently, but I do set them aside. I pile them up. They are crushed. They suffer. Some even cry out, hooting like owls, mewling, gnashing their teeth. In different faces. Neither men's nor women's, but faces of absolute beauty. The hands betray me too, especially when I try to match them with the faces.
The main thing is to avoid shipwreck. The ritual of shipwreck obsesses me. I constantly run the risk of losing everything, and I have no desire to find myself outside again, with the others. My nakedness is my sublime privilege. I'm the only one to observe it. I'm the only one to curse it. I dance. I turn and turn. I clap my hands and strike the ground with my feet. I lean toward the trapdoor behind which I keep my creatures. I'm afraid of falling and confuse myself with one of those unsmiling faces. I dance and turn until I'm dizzy. The sweat beads on my forehead. My body dances to some African rhythm....I'm in the bush and mingle ceremoniously with naked men. I forget to ask myself who I am. I aspire to the silence of the heart. I'm tracked down and give my mouth to a flame in the forest.
I'm not in Africa, but in a cemetery by the sea. I feel cold. All the graves have been emptied, abandoned. The wind that whistles through is their prisoner. A horse painted with the blues of night gallops through this cemetery. My eyes fall out and are stuck in the horse's head. The darkness swallows me up. But I feel safe. I'm caught by warm hands. They stroke my back. I guess at whose they are. They're not mine. I lack eveything and recoil. Is it tiredness or the idea of going back to myself? I want to laugh, because I know that, condemned to isolation, I won't be able to overcome fear. They say that's what anxiety is.
I've spent years adapting to my solitude. My reclusion is willed, chosen, loved. Moreover, I'll get faces and hands from it, journeys and poems. Out of suffering, everyone's, I'm building a palace in which death will have no place. Though I won't repulse it, it'll be forbidden entry. But suffering is sufficient unto itself; there's no need to deliver a mighty blow. This body is made up of fibers that accumulate pain and intimidate death. That's my freedom. Anxiety withdraws, and I'm left alone to fight until dawn. At daybreak I drop with exhaustion and joy. The others understand nothing. They're unworthy of my madness.
Such are my nights--enchanted. I like to set them high on the rocks and wait for the wind to shake them, wash them, separate them from sleep, shake the darkness from them, undress them, and bring them to me wrapped in nothing but a cloud of dreams. Then everything becomes limpid. I forget. I sink gently into the other's open body.
I no longer ask anybody anything. I drink wine and live. Neither good nor evil. I ask nobody anything: my questions have no answers. I know this, 'cause I can see both sides of the mirror. I'm not really very serious. I like to play, even if I have to hurt people. I've been above evil for a long time now, looking at all that from afar, from the heights of my solitude. It's strange--my sternness, my harshness opens up doors for me. I don't ask so much. I jostle everybody. I ask for love. I don't ask for love, but for abandonment. They don't understand. Hence the need to live my condition in all it's hilarity and fog.
I'm not depressed, I'm exasperated. I'm not sad, I'm desperate. My night has given me nothing. It has passed, unperceived, calm, empty, dark...
Okay but you know your not alone, Ahhh and I dont mean that in the " dont worry honey youll find her( it) whatever, eventually, sense.
I mean your not the only one. You know, floating in the stability of layered thought, tapped into the sleepers power, relishing the nite. I am also not sad, but I know of no one who is not desperate. Tho I, like you, take it further. A basking shark, gonna knock your momma out.
The basking shark.