Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0609300235010.7084@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Nikuko
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2006 02:35:19 -0400 (EDT)
Nikuko Alan always misread me, I scratched my skin, burned myself with flares, with torch, with bamboo stem cut deep, with ink of squid, with hammered gold, with the poison of lead and mercury - radiation flared my skin, torched me, cut deep into me, marked me with black metal - he'd read anything but pain, anything but death, but wound - he wanted me to fuck everyone because he wanted to fuck me, I didn't want him to, I wanted him to read death, he wouldn't read death - I'd show him victims with the skin burned off, impaled victims, blind and poisoned victims - I'd show him animals crawling with their heads half severed - he didn't want any of it - he wanted to write - he wanted to read what he wanted to read - just that - he'd write it down - take it down - take it in - how could I fuck someone who couldn't speak - who couldn't listen - I posed naked for him, I spread my legs, I opened my arms to him, he read my breasts, my arms - he read my back, slowly, the message of off-kilter, skewed message - some of the scars were old, the characters obliterated by war and history - everywhere he went he saw language, he gnawed language, swallowed it whole - inside he was festering, it was worse there, not as bad as black shadows on the bridge or slumped against a wall - One night I saw him up against the cathedral, trying to match the shadow-outline with his own - fucking the shadow of a dead girl - One night I knew it wasn't him - it was the words and their nearness - it was the words and their expectancy - words everywhere - choked and strangled language - that's what he was doing - killing whatever sounds were left - the world murmured and moaned - Honey, it was my mistake - my eyelids were cut off - did I tell you - I could only see - that's all I could do - my lips cut off as well - tongue torn out - I babbled blood - he mistook participles - I screamed - he heard infinitive - I fell unconscious - half-dead - against the wall - I was charred - hardly alive - he read the signs - he thought they were signs - Honey, I'd have said - signs of what - there's nothing there - What are things, that they may be named, that man may have done with them - he thought they were nouns - he thought of the world of nouns - my nipples were hacked, did I tell you - he thought the world was permanent - structured forever like the nighttime sky - my wounds! - he thought I was speaking to him - I thought him Legalist, this naive American boy, this boy of the camps and tropics, this boy of torture and finesse - he was sure I had something to tell him - the real thing, authentic experience - he saw through earphones, heard through a camera - I stared - frozen - he read my body like Leviticus - like the Cow - like Revelations - no, he read my body like Shakespeare - like Dogen - like Voltaire - no, he sang of Hugh of Lincoln, Horst Wessel, Celan and Sarah Bernhardt - no - no - he sang his own song - his song of love and tears - his song of tenderness - I could not close my eyes - my nails had been pulled - arms skinned - head close to severed - no - no - my legs were sawed through, ears cut off - skull crushed - Honey, there aren't enough words in the language - the enemy read and read - newspapers, posters, books, pamphlets, broadsides, magazines, emails, weblogs, listservs, newsgroups - he gathered strength - he didn't want to fuck me any more - he spat on me - he wrote 'someone dies' and that other song - I was stoned to death - I scratched my name into him - I scratched my flesh into him - my bones were his bones - my eyes were his eyes - my mouth was his mouth - my mind was his - my cunt was his - the years of my coming and going - the years of my birth and deaths - my death was his - my deaths are his - just now he's dying - he's writing and he's dying - he's reading and he's dying - he's remembering - he's memory - he's remembering -