1. |
||||
|
[The front door continues creaking open.]
FISH: You can take the front bedroom if you want. I might sleep on the couch tonight, just for-- Ella?
Hello?
Gone, Home, Alone.
Devout on the morning couch.
Curtains where the cocoa grew,
Frosted grass is in my view.
Sunlight through November pane,
I am safe again.
I am with a friend.
Television telling something,
No one’s listening.
Gentle radiator clanks.
The family I have to thank.
Boots and jackets by the doorway,
Hearing people sleep and snore.
Quiet meditation,
This is a place to hide.
Utter alone ‘til my parents are home,
“No one should pick up the telephone.”
The telephone.
Hello?
Hello?
Is somebody there?
Where have you been?
Well, you missed Thanksgritting, but I forgot to eat that day and then it was over really quick. And anyway, Christmas has better cookies--
|
||||
2. |
Vis⎵t the fa⎵ily.
02:35
|
|||
|
FISH [cont.]: What happened to your mouth?
Christmas is cuddling and coming for someone.
Christmas is coming for you.
Christmas is listless September to June, November until it is through.
Christmas pours over you.
Christmas is mistletoe thistles and bristles, kissing your uncle and puzzling tradition.
Christmas religion.
Christmas is fiction.
Christmas is muscle you exercise yearly.
Christmas is wishing sincerely.
Christmas is false positives, lost hostages, hot nog and mint.
Christmas is whistling through windows and pinching your warm clothes.
Christmas knows.
Christmas is endless.
Christmas is strong.
Christmas is seven months long.
Christmas is power over each other. Try hard to love your brother.
Christmas is spreading such holiday fear, the fourth of July won’t come near.
Christmas is spirit that follows you home and cuts off the phone, makes sure you’re alone.
You light up a fire.
The TV is blaring.
The neighbors are staring at the lit-up pine spire of cables and wires and pining desires, black ice under tires, it’s dark in your hallway, a knock on the door and it’s raising your heart-rate, you drop to the floor but the carolers barge in and charge you, the pious and merry imperious choir all crowd in a circle around as you cry on the ground and it’s drowned in the sound of the song that they’re howling.
“Christmas is coming! Christmas is near!
Christmas will knock at your door!
Don’t you try running when Christmas is here!
Christmas will find you for sure!
Stay pure!”
FISH: Merry Sis-miss! Can you believe all the presents Santa brought you? Go ahead, open one!
Here, let me help.
A Lego movie theatre!
Ooh, a plushy! What is it, a fox?
A journal! Some of the pages are filled out. Maybe it was Birdbrain’s.
Oh. I didn’t see this one.
[FISH opens THE PRESENT.]
What is this? Firewood?
Thanks. I love you.
|
||||
3. |
Beli⎵ve i⎵ her.
03:28
|
|||
|
FISH [cont.]: You’re tired. Yes. Let’s get you back to bed.
Ella baby, go to sleep,
Ella baby, counting sheep,
Sleepy baby, cannot feed you,
Tiny Ella, I bequeath you.
Ella baby, listen closely.
Ella baby, sleeping mostly.
Tired darling, I will push the bed under the fleeting rays of sun,
If they ever come,
Through the grey sheet of sleet and tall wall of cold.
Spread your roots and grow in this artificial home.
The drywall is cheap and the brick is inferior.
The furniture’s fake and the pipes don’t lead anywhere.
But the crew still pumps heat from beyond hidden cameras,
The TV plays footage from lost 90’s cinema.
You are young and I am younger
Though I can’t recall the numbers.
You are small and growing smaller,
How I watch you every hour.
Your eyes are counting all the snowflakes
Bundling up our only escape,
Packing in our slumber palace,
Winter wonderland for Alice.
I’ll find you sleeping in puddles of diamonds,
Crying because you thought no one would find you.
Treading the water like so many pilgrims,
Finding your rock in the endless night’s ocean.
The last time I slept, I dreamt I was finding a criminal killer who had lost his mind and enacted his will upon all of the innocents, made them dress up and then dance for his purposes and then lost his temper and murdered them.
Oh Ella. It was a scary dream, I tell you. So I’ll stay up and wait until you come to wake. At a later date.
Darling Ophelia, eyeing the exit,
Dear sweet Camilla, your peace is collected.
Your pillow and glasses and favorite cardigan,
Went to the back to stare out of the yard again,
Into the woods that my dog won’t return from,
The look in your eyes of hopeful abandon,
From a heartless garden.
From a cheap apartment.
From a hurt alarmist.
From a laughless burden.
From a harmless world.
You stupid girl.
|
||||
4. |
An⎵icip⎵te.
00:45
|
|||
|
FISH: Ella? Ella. Ella! Ella!
MELODY: Is thy sweetheart now grown so cold,
That loving esperance
That thou canst never once reflect
On cold long since?
Don’t be frightened, little fish. Melody will teach you to swim.
Sleep now.
"Food for breakfast, have you got some?
Dried-up tissues, how delicious! (Call the Ghanthinn.)
Smell the oven, tastes like burning.
Snowy windows, world stops turning!"
|
||||
5. |
Keep the doors ⎵ocked.
01:31
|
|||
|
It is the first day I woke up thirsty, couldn’t think.
Reached for water, cup is too far, couldn’t drink.
Tongue lolled out, tried to call out, couldn’t speak.
Rolled out of bed, crawled out as the door creaks.
Winter never ends.
Spring is just pretend.
Snow keeps falling, calendar vacant,
No clock ticking in the basement,
Just the television playing movies.
Just the couch and chair as buoys.
Snow is falling, falling, falling.
Quiet as it hits the window,
Sticks and then becomes a crystal,
Silver flakes make mirror paintings
Now the outdoors are the same thing.
We are here.
The time is now.
The time divided by zero,
The space divided by four beds, six baths,
A house and a half,
A loving twin that could have been,
Half-born and wholly dead.
The rooms get dark too soon and
Refuse to do what they’re supposed to.
The sink won’t stop running
The kitchen is empty,
Can’t sleep in the bedroom with so much fidelity.
Static through speakers that can’t be unplugged but
The power went off and somehow they run.
Sleep on the sofa my sister was lost in
The pale blue glow next to Garheld and Oz-land.
Maybe it’s the plastic bag I lay in.
Maybe it’s the sound of my Playstation.
Maybe it’s the wind between the siding.
Maybe it’s something deep inside me.
MELODY: We should watch something before bed. How about the silly things that dreams are made of? Something to get the heart pounding and clenching?
FISH: I don’t know if I can stay awake for two.
MELODY: We have to watch two. That’s the Purifier.
|
||||
6. |
||||
|
MELODY [cont.]: Everything has its perfect partner. And we have to connect all the matching Couplets.
Stepped into the grey.
Walk the streets in a haze.
Fog for miles, roads are slippery.
Get in the bucket, someone follows me.
Button man staring, pulls his gun out
Before he burns powder, I take the run-out.
Exit on foot, poised like a drifter,
Slip inside quick and go see the picture,
The birdy’s in carbonite, froze and laid away,
No-heart goes mad and the law drags the dame away.
That’s OK.
A night in the fishbowl beats the bing any day.
Figure again in the back of the theatre,
Hop up onstage and I pull out my heater.
“Droppers and dicks, get a kick outta this.
The girlies and broads, they got Mick on their lips.
And that man in the back, don’t think I won’t pin ya.
You follow me out and I’ll blast a hole in ya.”
Play it again, Sam. Play it again.
I sit on the couch and I like to pretend.
Falling asleep with my popcorn in hand.
Maybe it’s time the second feature began.
Dorothy lost a slipper?
The witch will come and get her,
Invite her to the castle and let her stay for dinner?
Then clean up all the dishes
And lock her in the cellar
No prince can find and tell her
That home is anywhere at all that doesn’t feel like this.
Home has to be anywhere that doesn’t feel like this.
You may have to run and cry and fall and tumble down a bit,
But home is not a place that ever, ever feels like this.
You sometimes have to grab your bag and run through the abyss,
Cuz home is not a place that ever ought to feel like this.
You’ll cry and kick yourself until you trip and shout and hiss,
That you want to go away, that that’s the only place you miss.
And when Linda does remember that she left you in a pit,
She’ll come and say she’s sorry, that her week’s been so hectic,
Make sure you say you understand then send you on a trip,
You’ll wake up in a house where no one ever throws a fit.
Your aunt and all your parents and a room of all your shit,
Your grandma’s still alive and smiling from the chair she sits,
Your sister sings your favorite song and never, ever quits.
You’re piled under quilts and bears and sweaters Mama knits,
A wall falls down and slams your chest but doesn’t hurt a bit.
Your mem’ries burn like diary pages in the fire pit.
And all you recall is there was a place that really felt like shit.
And you will cry and shout and moan and scream with pain that’s infinite:
There’s no place like home that ever, ever feels like this.
|
||||
7. |
F⎵oss before brushing.
02:21
|
|||
|
It is the first night, I woke upright, couldn’t think.
Reached for water, cup was empty, couldn’t drink.
Winter never ends, bloats and distends, the bathroom nightlight.
Close the door, lock it, turn off the socket, regain my night-sight.
Familiar face but it’s empty,
Open the cabinet, it’s pills and amphetamines,
Capsules all laced with cheap sedative,
TV and TB and Hep C and Pepsi
and heartburn and Miralax, sugar and Prozac,
Headphones and hard attacks, anxious, unhappy laughs,
Mass hysteria, ask the media,
Kick and scream, pull off the TV,
Unlock the cellar, look out the window,
There’s just snow, but footprints in it,
Collect the shutters, board up the windows,
White Christmas came and you forgot clothes,
Naked on the table, unstable relatives
Yelling and crying, the dying guy lies on the
Stuffing untouched, not enough filling,
Chilling the air, no one cares,
They’re laughing, you’re starving,
Self-harming, act charming, not alarming,
Disarming, beheading,
disemboweled, disemboldened,
Disheartened, so cold and
So cold and so hungry,
So old and so empty.
When I am the one that you want to marry.
I am the one, you are the zero.
We are both numbers, numb to the cold and
Buried in debt,
Indefinite death,
Dealt hands without hearts,
Knives with no safety,
Stabbing like mad because life is so crazy.
Pushed down on cushions,
Forever listen,
Tears never fall from the sockets that glisten.
All fear but all calm,
All here behind walls,
The mind calls, the soul answers,
The mind stalls.
Dial tone, static,
Die alone, passive,
Dramatic laughing,
On my knees breathing,
Honesty’s comedy, truth is a parody,
Lost in parentheses, caught in apostrophes,
Pair of these gloves swallow my fingers,
Pair obscene loves to hollow my insides,
Air from above to follow my ice water,
Err on the safe side, where is my daughter
when I have been sterilized, thought I had caught her,
doors are all cauterized, there’s no escape now but
nobody ever tries. She’s all mine.
Built a nest to anesthetize,
Pick up the phone call for prophecy,
Spray paint the message he leaves me:
No time or place but he’ll be seeing me--
It’s you. How thou dost afflict me.
The light turns blue. The dark turns clear
Dead midnight.
What do I fear? You? There’s none else in sight
Worthy the concern of Apollo,
Worthy mine too, for the dead.
Fishers love fishers, that is I I I will lend my aim to avenge this wrong
Four though now nobody six-ceeds, six-cinctly, on night III,
I shall expel this poison in the blood.
|
||||
8. |
No sho⎵s on the car⎵et.
01:31
|
|||
|
MELODY: Did you say something, my love?
MELODY [cont.]: We are living in a house now,
Always what I wanted,
Nowhere to hide or avoid one another.
We are living in a house where the windows are boarded up
And it is always time for television.
We are living and you cannot fully call it living the way we lie there,
Or lie to each other about what we dream at night.
We are laying in a house,
And the floor is carpet that has never gotten dirty or will never get dirty,
The shag rug so darling,
So ugly,
So immaculately temporal and we are laying there,
Face up,
Staring at the ceiling because it’s above us.
We are sitting in a house,
And the mice keep dying,
Running around and eating through the cabinets,
Setting off the alarm when the woods out back are too cold,
And they’re always too cold.
Fake 90’s furniture, plastic and pleather,
Cheap wood siding and painted cardboard.
Soap opera bathtub, you were kissing me.
We were kissing in a house.
How did I enter your body so thoroughly, so completely,
So personally,
Something so private and you cannot shut me out,
You would never want to shut me out.
We are living in a heaven of sorts,
We are living in a picture frame.
And the glass of the bowl is so clean,
You don’t even realize it’s there.
We are living in a house,
We are, we are.
|
||||
9. |
||||
|
It is the second, I woke upended, couldn’t think.
Reached for water, spilled all over, couldn’t drink.
Took a shower, house lost power, water’s cool.
Check the clock and what a shock! I’m late for school!
Now it is Monday in early September,
Or close after Christmas, second semester,
And you have a new school because no school is home,
You can’t befriend anyone because they’re all clones.
The school will watch you suffocate,
The school will hatefully watch you and wait.
The teacher will ask you sarcastically
If you are done grabbing attention.
If you want to come up and teach this lesson,
Show the whole class how to spit bile,
Since you’re both so good at it,
And your teeth keep falling out,
Did you bring enough for the other kids?
The teacher stares at you like you’re nothing,
Tells you you’re the reason you’re being punished,
Asks you why you don’t want to learn lessons
That make less and less and less sense
The harder down you stare at them,
Ardor and hysteria,
Danger in the area,
You will practice hiding.
You will stay inside, then.
And your classmates will have their recess.
And you’ll become more depressed.
But you won’t say anything, will you? Can you?
They won’t let you. And they especially don’t
listen to girls or kids with speech impediments or bad dyslexia,
They wonder why you’re so apathetic,
A pathetic depressive class distraction,
Cursing when they’re laughing at you,
Crying when they send you to the office.
Crying ‘cause you’re just a little orphan.
And if your parents pick you up,
You’re not the same as how you was,
They’re not the same as when they dropped you off,
Because you thought they could protect you,
They thought they could infect you with their values,
Thought they could prevent you from the abuse,
Thought at least they wouldn’t have to ground you.
But you’re grounded, mister.
Shoulda stuck by your sister.
Shoulda been the correction to everything they’ve let in,
Everything they lie in, every time they’re lying,
Every night they’re trying but it just won’t cut it.
Every night your Daddy goes and kicks the bucket.
Mommy just stares. How did you get so unlucky?
And you just keep learning, wide-eyed one.
You just keep learning, your brain can’t stop turning.
You are a vacuum and, puke as you try to,
You can’t get rid of the mem’ries inside you.
Can’t stop growing to the place you’re pulled in,
In fear, shame, anger, hate, absorption,
Binging, purging, body distortion,
Teardrops, tantrums, hospital sutures,
Hemorrhage, coma, gone with your future.
The nurses stood by and blamed each other.
Blamed your mother.
Blamed the stains on your record,
The pain in your notebook,
The fact that you didn’t really want to control it.
The fact that you didn’t really put in the effort to succeed.
That you needed some help, that you had any needs,
That you didn’t help yourself, ‘“put your head down and read!”
You acted so scared when they towered above you.
You never did care, so of course no one loved you.
You stood up on chairs, so of course they would shove you.
You pulled out your hair so that they wouldn’t touch you,
But they just kept grabbing, didn’t they?
They just kept snatching your things away.
They were bigger and stronger and shouldn’t have done that,
And how can you love once you learn they become that?
And how can you wait for your turn to become that?
MELODY: 4.6 degrees Celsius and the sheets are in the wash. It’s OK; all stains fade with water and time. How are you feeling?
FISH: I don’t understand why it keeps happening, Melly. Will I ever get better?
MELODY: One fish, two fish, helpless blue fish. Just remember the Purifiers: Don’t let it in.
FISH: Don’t let it in.
MELODY: Yes. And always tell the truth.
FISH: Ok.
|
||||
10. |
Latch the basem⎵nt door
02:37
|
|||
|
MELODY: Have you been seeing someone?
Everything that Melly said was chocolate in my pocket,
Couldn’t eat it but I felt it, how it melted.
The other kids laughed, I ran to the bath,
Plunged myself in with my Brand New Uniform.
Everyone stares at what’s left of my human form.
I’m too beautiful and tired to perform anymore.
I deserve more.
I deserve to be more.
They work to the bone, twist the arm of my sister,
Count all your push-ups and pop all the blisters.
Make you fight mirrors to get out the exit
But nobody knows that they already sealed it.
You’re in the funhouse,
The bathroom,
Reflected in buildings or iced-over lakes,
There’s no escape.
You’ve got no face left to save.
It’s so cold, so cold in space.
No fire, no face,
Just suffocation.
Father’s harsh as we are placed there,
In the trouble time-out hate chair,
Face the wall and sit and wait chair.
Listen up and look down,
Eyes on sneaky sneakers,
Peeking up at daddy’s anger,
Balléd fists of constant danger.
Words of blue flame, oven’s on.
Not enough to cook a meal,
Mother’s hungry, doesn’t feel
Stomach tighten, how can skin grow,
She’s stopped looking out the window,
She’s stopped staring at the forest,
Used to garden, now ignores it,
Squirrels used to feed her carrots,
Now they stand on the sill and stare in,
Pupils gone but go on living,
Mother Earth is not forgiving.
All the others in our race
Rounded up, launched into space,
Froze forever in that place,
Drifting limbs asunder,
Four six six degrees under.
Absolutely nothing
Can turn us into something.
Frozen faceless bodies
Drifting past the sun king.
“Lord Ghanthinn. I am your humble servant.
I have one shirt, an if it please you, shall I burn it?
I have comfort now, do I deserve it?
My head doesn’t hurt, would you like I should hurt it?
“The peasants collected were all those infected with boils and plagues of the ‘80’s.
And it is your will that we punish and kill them to make sure that they spawn no babies.
I’d like a daughter someday.
After this slaughter someday.”
THE GHANTHINN: This day shall by thy birth-day, and thy grave.
|
||||
11. |
||||
|
Close to midnight, woke up in fright, couldn’t think.
Reached for water, bowl was filthy, couldn’t drink.
Winter never ends, reaches arms and extends beyond the basement.
Hugs the siding as the house is writhing, complete encasement.
The frozen black cats and rotted-in pumpkins.
The Christmas lights up and the presents unopened.
Get on the nice list cuz Santa’s a fiction.
Stole myself presents and wrapped ‘em in pigskin.
Slaughtered the hogs for more bacon.
Choked out a chicken. Pushed down a cow, he cried Ow!
I got angry and hit him again, shot all the hens.
Iowa farmboy on the mend or the fritz,
Got the shits from bad milk and eggs that week,
Lost control of my legs that week,
Started shaking and moaning and buried my dad,
Planted more corn where he’s at.
A good harvest he left,
Kernels were red but I’m half-blind and deaf
So don’t mind and don’t look where I’m chewing,
Spit where I want,
Shit where I oughtn’t,
Got caught but talked my way out of it.
Maw always liked me best.
I was the one she let suck her breast,
Cuck the rest,
Fuck her chest,
Buck the nest, send the eggs flying,
Splattered young chickies across the house siding.
And I’m still fighting!
Kicking, seething, sink my teeth in,
Bite the nipple, shove the old man,
Kick the cripple, why is he like me?
Someone shoot him!
Grab the rifle, load the bullet,
In his face and through the gullet,
Pull it.
Pull the fucking trigger!
Don’t wuss out, prove that you’re bigger
And stronger and older and smarter and better,
And still you’re unhappy and bitter!
Show me it’s OK to be a quitter!
Why should we trifle? Why should we dally?
Take up the rifle, walk to the alley,
Let some nice strangers find the finale.
MELODY: If these walls could talk, they wouldn’t say a word. They would just stand there and watch.
|
||||
12. |
||||
|
MELODY [cont.]: Fish, do you think our child will grow up to be like us?
FISH: Would you want her to?
Us on the wall, climb to the ceiling and
Scream again that I’m making you do this.
No food for weeks. Stomach won’t hurt now.
Eating itself and it’s the only one eating.
Can’t handle houseguests. Can’t carry friends.
Losing relations all over again.
You get excited and scream that you’re dying,
Must be my fault cuz I’m no longer trying.
Protect you from me, then hurt when you’re cozy,
Can’t keep you close but I can’t let you lose me.
I can tell where you are in the dark,
Lost in a mall or a crowded theme park.
I couldn’t hurt you, you couldn’t hurt you,
Somebody hurt you, maybe it’s us two.
Like chemicals colliding and breaking the beaker,
Crystal glass shards float on the carpet.
Hydrogen’s fine, chlorine can clean you,
Throw them together and burn through the ceiling,
Through the bathtub, through the bedroom,
Fall down to the basement.
Fall through the crawlspace, down on the ground
Cells and cellars of chemical compounds
That I like to huff when you’re not around.
But you’re always around.
When I turn my back or tiptoe to bed late
Or work on my desktop or check on my own weight
Cuz I’m getting thin, I’m thinner than you,
But don’t be hurt darling, cuz I’m starving too,
Don’t be hurt baby, I’m broken and blue,
losing limbs from overexposure and you
Chopping them off and making me eat them,
Don’t be hurt lover, I really enjoy it,
Self-mastication, transubstantiation,
You feed-back my fingers, they burn like tarnation,
Brimstone and dim toes and choking on digits,
Four toes and six fingers big nose and three dinners
Four eyes and six sixes six rooms three infections,
For you six bruises six fun’rals three of us,
Three of us,
You and me in this house,
We are living in a house,
We are,
We are,
We are.
Strung out by the heels in our upside-down apartment.
The overcast forever feels like the ground inverted.
Thrashing as the furniture turns into gooey chocolate.
Eat and eat and eat and eat but then we cannot swallow.
Rich and gooey oozing and you’re choking and you’re hacking,
And you try to spit it out but then anxiety’s attacking.
The chocolate carob chokes and chafes your antebellum senses,
You push and fall onto the floor and I come tumbling after.
You climb on top and thrust at me and try to take my shirt off.
I hack and cough and cry because I cannot get the hurt out.
Your fingers
Around my neck.
My last conscious thought before I wake up in our bed.
How is it you stay alive? And stay asleep beside me?
And take me in and throw me down and suffocate and hide me?
The sink is running.
I am sitting.
You are crying.
I am listening.
You are trying.
I must not be.
Daddy why do you keep dying?
Daddy why do you keep dying?
Daddy why do you
My mother was water,
I was
Crying
I turned on the faucets.
Let them run.
|
||||
13. |
||||
|
It is the third day, I am so thirsty, couldn’t move.
Water dripping from the ceiling of our room.
Glancing your way, past the doorway, voices laughing.
Hide my head, then look again, you’re staring at me.
Swallowed by the void.
Swallowed by the void.
46 years inside.
Swallowed by the void,
Sleep for 12 hours,
Don’t see the sunrise,
Get up with the sunset.
Get up and get undressed,
Get out and run for it--
No.
Lay still in my PJ’s.
Can’t change into my things
Can’t change out of my fins.
Swimming in sorrow,
Sleep til tomorrow.
No conscious, no thinking.
Just sleeping and dreaming,
Just Melody’s feelings,
Just echo disaster,
Just listening master.
The void, the void.
Postcoitally fried.
Tried not to cry, couldn’t keep it inside.
No inside or outside.
Melody mad at me,
Atrophy naturally,
Says “you’re attacking me”
Thankless and wrong,
Undeserved of her worthiness.
Her prettiness, her girliness,
A mess, request to adjourn this and
rest til the morning.
She says this is important,
Says I’m selfish for snoring,
For finding this boring.
That she’s not worth fighting for,
Not worth fighting myself for,
Spent another night on the floor.
I didn’t say these things,
I didn’t paint this scene,
One of pain, I mean
I had prayed for peace.
She shook me awake again.
She had cuts open
She said I made them.
She’s polite in the daytime.
Kisses nice and says sorry,
Watches to see if I say it back.
We watch more static on the television.
Eat some plastic in the empty kitchen.
I watch her bath so she can’t drown in it.
Look her over so she feels pretty.
We watch more static on the TV
And the night’s here.
Her eyes start glowing, the day of insecurities
behind them now showing and she kisses me,
I don’t kiss back cuz I’m asleep,
I’m a freak,
I’m completely,
In too deep.
Won’t cry because I know she wants it.
All that water back I drank from the faucet.
MELODY: Is this your home?
FISH: Yes.
MELODY: Is this your body?
FISH: Yes.
MELODY: Is there a God?
FISH: No.
MELODY: Is he your father?
FISH: I don’t know.
MELODY: Ok.
FISH: I dreamt about the end of the world. The sickness started with the characters on television. Everybody watching caught it pretty quick.
You know what? Sometimes I wish I wasn’t like this! Sometimes I wish that!
What? Why can’t I say that?
|
||||
14. |
||||
|
FISH [cont.]: Why are you crying?
Burying you, burying me
In multiplous piles of things we don’t need.
Dirty consumption, hurtful illusion,
Breaking my forearm, nasty contusion.
Pain was electric but you made it numbing.
Pills every morning, candy and dummies.
Fucking a mannequin, seminal incest,
Freezing together, losing my interest
Clashing in public, throw up my dinner.
Ask me a question, don’t hear the answer.
Don’t know your feelings, afraid of your terror,
Crying back at me, blank in the mirror.
Can’t help my laughing, probably anxious,
Funny you’re crying, pain twists your faces
Right where the food was, dirty old restaurant.
Kitchen’s been emptied, they left the heat on.
Only smell gas now, head to the oven.
Missing my family, sisters and cousins,
Father and Mother and several dozens
Of people I’m reaching to help give me love.
You took them all from me, playtime was over,
Back in the toy chest and under the covers.
I wanted them back but you told me they’re liars.
I said they wouldn’t, must’ve denied it.
They were my sweater, now I am naked.
Ice cold linoleum, not gonna make it.
Kitchen collision, domestification,
Fission incision, insidious baking.
Cyanide lacing the frost on the cake,
Happy Birthday, but the Happy is fake.
Puppy is angry, winks twice and escapes.
Static is singing from VHS tapes.
How old have I made it to, must be quite late,
Only the candles are lighting this place.
I lean in and blow and out goes your face.
|
||||
15. |
C⎵mmunicate pai⎵.
03:14
|
|||
|
It is the third night. I do not work right, can’t wake up.
Can’t sleep until you decide we make up.
Winter never ends, distorts and bends photos.
Glitches and stitches on all of the logos.
Scintillizing, scuba mouthpiece.
Flooded houses, easy drowning.
Floating facedown, I sleep on the ceiling.
Fingers are wrinkled but I’ve lost all feeling.
Soaked to the bone but the flesh is still peeling.
Paint on the drywall, we’re both congealing.
I can’t move.
I just watch, you criss-cross, you mumble, you curl up, you sputter,
you die in the bathtub 1000 times.
I watch and I think that you’re hogging the covers.
I’m cold and you’re frozen and holding my earlobe.
I cradle you closer to kiss your warm forehead.
Fever is catching but I will not spread it.
Bought sore throat lollipops just to abett it.
Don’t wanna hurt you but won’t call a medic.
You’re getting sicker but I keep forgetting.
Forgive me, I’m sorry.
You’re shrinking, I’m paltry.
You’re starving, I’m falling.
You’re sleeping, I’m watching.
You’re dreaming, I’m praying.
You cry out, I pull back.
You wake up and see me.
You reach out. I’m sorry.
I’m really sorry.
I left you there in that nightmare,
The way you watched me exit.
I was sent to most protect you,
Then we lost connection.
Tried to fall asleep each night but I just kept rememb’rin’
And when I fin’ly get to sleep, it’s never there I’m sent to.
It’s an upside down jungle that’s under the basement,
A bastard hotel where the rooms are all vacant,
I run to the bathroom and see myself faceless,
Lost in all these places.
You’re probably still standing there,
Watching scared for me to appear,
The only lonely room in the house,
You’re standing. Waiting for me to return
And turn the clock back,
Bring your rock back,
Change my feeling and your feeling and the way it feels to be together,
You and me in our home.
But you followed me, escaped my dreams and walked along the highway,
Slipping through the cellar door and put yourself in hiding.
When I’m alone some afternoons I know I hear you crying--
From in there.
And every night I sleep upstairs and close my door because I’m scared
That if I wake you’re standing there.
And the food is tasteless, you stole the flavor,
My appetite, my microwave or
Freezer, you’d let us freeze,
I can catch a cold or sleep at your feet
Being obstinate or sheepish at all,
And I didn’t leave you, I just became small,
And it only looked like I left down the hall,
Till you didn’t see me at all.
And one day I think that I might go to bed wrong
Sleep on my stomach or listen to your song,
Wake up beside you like it hasn’t been long,
We haven’t changed and I never left town,
And we never really got out.
And I’ll come through the door,
and open my eyes
and you’re standing there.
FISH: Melody.
MELODY: You let it in.
FISH: Melody, I didn’t, I didn’t…
MELODY: You let it in. You let it in.
FISH: It doesn’t happen when you’re here...
MELODY: You let it in, you let it in, you let it in, you let it in
FISH: When I get too frigid, she puts me on the heater,
I form and warm and warp and then my skin becomes depleted.
She drops me in the tub and once again I’m back to freezing.
I shiver in my towel and she p
[THE GHANTHINN enters.]
FISH: MELODY! IT’S RIGHT THERE, CAN’T YOU SEE IT? IT’S RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU!
|
||||
16. |
||||
|
THE GHANTHINN: See the pyramids along the Nile.
Watch the sunrise on a tropic isle.
Just remember all the while,
You belong to me.
See the marketplace in old Algiers.
Send me photographs and souvenirs.
Just remember when a dream appears,
You belong to me.
MELODY: I'll be so alone without you.
And I’m hoping you'll be lonesome too.
GHANTHINN: Turn blue.
|
||||
17. |
⎵⎵eak of it sol⎵mn⎵y.
03:13
|
|||
|
And I grunt and I snore and I open my eyes and
You are
Lying
Facedown
On the
Open
Floor.
The city thrums and throbs,
I feel it sinking farther and farther into
Oblivion.
The city never wakes.
The city lays naked,
Crying on the pavement.
The city wonders dumbly if there’s anything beyond
The empty fields of dirt and fog.
The buildings get stubby and the suburbs retreat
And the fog’s taking back all the streets.
I saw the doctor today,
She said I’m on a spectrum,
Because death is an ongoing process.
You will not die all at once,
You will be
Useless
For a while before death fin’lly comes.
She said I’m on a spectrum,
Because I can’t comprehend hurt anyway,
Not in her, not in many ways,
And the fog is creeping in and in.
Houses get smaller,
We crawl to the basement,
We fall to the pavement as skyscrapers crumble,
The fog hums and mumbles,
Static complexion,
Hush on the city.
Buzz but not thrum, not vivacity kicking,
Just zombie tongues licking,
Trapped in an old hotel,
Grey on the window pane,
Climbing the stairs to find somewhere to hide within.
The zombies eat anything,
Bust through the drywall,
Chew through copper wires,
Sparks, wasted sparks,
Cry out and fall to the ground.
But they won’t start fires.
The city can’t comprehend
What’s happening to it,
What’s grappling through it.
Every new light that gets eaten
Is one more bulb without feeling.
Every penthouse that loses a roof
Becomes the new ceiling.
Until we’re all in the basement,
The dark subway station,
The raid siren blaring.
And a brain death is the same death that pulls electricity,
The toaster sparks in the tub, the cord’s elasticity
Runs the IV from your arm to the catheter,
Goodbye, sweet baby, you only ever had half of her.
She’s not inside there, he’s so nearly empty,
And all searches show there’s no sign of activity,
Only thing left is pull the plug gently.
Because-- don’t you know, child?-- this winter is never ever
MELODY: Wake up.
FISH: Oh. Hi.
MELODY: Is this your Couplet?
FISH: I don’t know.
MELODY: You don’t know?
FISH: I can’t remember.
MELODY: Is this your daughter?
FISH: Yes.
MELODY: Am I a mother?
FISH: Forever and ever.
MELODY: The cup of kindness is empty. You are no longer my home, and I am not yours. We’re going somewhere we can get the help that we need, that she may paidl in the burn from the morning sun.
FISH: The other night, dear
As I lay sleeping,
I dreamt I held you in my arms.
When I awoke, dear,
I was mistaken,
And I hung my head and cried.
MELODY: Goodbye, Fish.
[They exit.]
FISH: Bye, mom.
|
||||
18. |
||||
|
I’m sorry you see me, I’m sorry I’m here.
I’m sorry that I’ve come to sum up your fears.
I’m sorry I’m useless, I’m sorry you’re hurting.
I’m sorry you’re crying, ‘cause you don’t deserve this.
I’m sorry for mother, I’m sorry I failed her.
I’m sorry that I’m the disease that had ailed her.
I’m sorry for papa, I’m sorry for baby,
I couldn’t have saved them, now they cannot save me,
No one can save me.
I wish I was hopeful, I wish I was brave.
I wish I had friends and the feelings that they gave.
I wish I was hungry. I wish I was pretty.
I wish I could start over in a new city.
I wish I was starlight, I wish I was soil.
I wish that the sunlight was constant and loyal.
I wish for the river to run through the green,
For love to reach down and be plucked from the stream.
I want to be perfect, and meet every stranger
And pick up my nerves any time there is danger
And slash through my sorrow and fill up the bowl.
And grow from the dirt like my veins bled hope,
My veins bleed hope.
|
||||
19. |
||||
|
THE GHANTHINN: Pray she may find some home and live content,
And may her lot prove happier than her sire’s.
It is time that I carry you in.
Cast on the floor, in Ella’s old journal
back from a time when she was diurnal...
Crawling in diapers, running through halls,
B on her homework, danced at her prom.
Cut off her hair when spring time was over.
Pulled out the courage and flame she’d been building.
Moved to the city, got an apartment
Built themself up with a rising performance.
Grappled for fire, woke up perfection,
stood up electric and cut down surrection.
Looked for himself, grasped for more focus
Sat and wrote 83 points for his locus.
Slept more and more, couldn’t stop scheming
Nestled indoors and built what he’s seeing.
Spoke all the mem’ries, gone as he said them
The only light left was the neuron called Ghanthinn.
Dredged up a picture from the staticky basement,
One vivid flash ‘til the quiet flood came in.
FISH: Is he...?
Is he...?
ISI?
|
||||
isabel, dreaming Chicago, Illinois
and who knows when i'll wake up?
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