rale

gasping my air direct from the mouth of the city. like a drug, it envelops, consumes and filters everything. the body rejects it, or maybe it rejects the body, but takes over from the inside and pushes me out. strange exile, and nothing slows down. without my body, i am everything, the soaked toe of a leather boot, i am saturated in grey water. this morning's newspaper plastered to the wall of the metro, illegible. tip of a burning cigarette, i smolder. nervous laugh of a young woman surrounded my men, i give myself up. lost eyes of an old woman, i search for home. cold wind funneled through buildings, i invade. whitened hands of a black man, i am chapped, i swell. broken toenail of the foot in a ruined cast, soggy from the rain. round buttocks of a mendiant woman seated on the grating over the métro, i rechauffe.

the human heart and other explosives, deepest charges. held together by the pressure of the body, cushioned from shocks by the flesh and the fluid, temperature constantly regulated.


three girls share a meringue in the phone booth to escape the rain. bleeding man approaches and stands in the opening breathing heavily, fly unzipped. stares with glassy eyes, nearly tumbles in, if it weren't for their pushing out....paris, home of true to life zombies and other undead phenomena--

corporal hermeneutics: examine the gesture, the unconscious response-- here the hand jerks from flame, there it throws a wave over the shoulder carelessly, or runs itself softly the length of a wall, measures the beat of itself against a chain link fence, a picket fence, against nothing, what is the beat of yourself against nothing? against the whole city? against the whole night? against the yawning open mouth whose lungs you are helpless but to vandalize, against yourself

shortcut, no cut, i am a small crease running itself down a page,
run harder, tear yourself down the page,
run softer, disappear .... and the page becomes infinite

to define myself here must be new, the words have changed. the morphemes have changed. the symbolism, too, is different. burn the self in the name of progress, reject the self so as not to stop moving, forsake the self for what sake-- cling to the self, to deny everything. or nothing. but for progress. stop.