The Mirror

While the carrots sang arias into the holy earth and the snowmen turned into bronze weathervanes, I underwent a removal, tearing my skin off me, plucking out the eyes like Ping-Pong balls, squashing the shriek of my heart like a phone off the hook — and as these phenomena occurred, a fool walked straight into         me. He was named Mr. Rabbit. My own voice spoke to people, anyone, friends, strangers on the street, saying, "I am Mr. Rabbit."  The flesh itself had become mad and at three mirrors this was confirmed. Next it was bad Friday and they nailed me up like a scarecrow and many gathered eating popcorn, carrying hymnals or balloons. They were three of us there, though they appeared normal. My ears, so pink like powder, were nailed. My paws, sweet as baby mittens, were nailed. And my two fuzzy ankles.  I said, "Pay no attention. I am        crazy." But some giggled and some knelt. My oxygen became tiny and blood rang over and over in my hea

i say i am conscious i am discreet i like the feel of his breast hair i like the smells of sex of sweat of skin i write the word 'blood' i imagine a meal meat in its crumbs veal beaten flat sour cream onions i get off the bus prosperous comfortable London taking by hazard is part of the pleasure an unfairness of secretaries nurses an impersonal poison it was part of his intention to rob words of their power to grow big if you insist on going to bed with history a period is something i forget seven of my family mother father most of my friends communists for days i have had to deal with a bad smell a remnant refugees in strange countries i pack myself with cotton wool i dream a great deal the history of Europe a grand piano a notebook a doll i take six earthenware pots i am giving pleasure an exterior orgasm a vaginal orgasm oh boy oh boy oh boy [From: Antin, D. (1968) Code of flag behavior . Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press. p57.]

iii. Our heads ached. we were slightly sick with the smell of blood to a woman to women to the enemy i suppose we could say that they name us we feel safe with them we are on some kind of frontier we are frightened  trying to create men have i hurt you that i dreamed the dream was a telephone conversation these words moved me but i sat in a kind of cold fog i am the evil vase yet they were all used to it they had been living inside it for years it was not strange to them only to me a man about fifty a bachelor or perhaps a married man a man and a woman married or perhaps in a long relationship an American man and an English woman man and a woman both sexually proud two rakes male and female together this time the woman a wandering man a woman artist a man and a woman in a love affair a woman who has fallen in love against her will a healthy woman in love with a man a man using grown

Sleep     horns of a snail                                           protruding, retracting What we choose to know                                            or not know                                                                  all these years sleepwalking                         next to death I  This snail could have been eaten  This snail could have been crushed This snail could have dreamed it was a painter or a poet This snail could have driven fast at night putting up graffiti with a spray-gun: This snail could have ridden in the back of the pick-up, handling guns II Knows, chooses not to know                                                  It has always been about death and chances                                                   The Dutch artist wrote and painted  one or more strange and usable things For I mean to meet you in any land     in any language This is my promise: I will be there if you are there III

Three-days rain and, Right in the middle of town This small farmhouse.                                    I could have Dressed, rushed out, come back In five minutes with a wild Armful of wet apples Or one warm egg For a love gift.                         Freud Was out in the barn Munching hay with Marx, And Darwin dozed in the loft. We were alone for miles With honest coffee And a few words. You said: I'd sure hate to live in town. I said: This farming— It won't pay. [From: Nathan, L. (1975) Returning Your Call . Princeton: Princeton University Press.]

"I only remember the onion, the egg and the boy.  O that was me, said the madman."   — Nicholas Moore  1 "I bite into an apple & then get bored before the second bite," you said. You were also Samson. I had cut your hair & locked you up. Besides, your room was bugged.  A former inmate left his muse  spread-eagled on the picture window.  In the glinting late-day sun we saw her huge & cross-eyed breasts appear diamond-etched against the slums of Harlem. You tongued your pills & cursed the residents. You called me Judas. You forgot I was a girl. 2 Your hands weren't birds. To call them birds would be too easy They drew circles around your ideas & your ideas were sometimes parabolas. That sudden Sunday you awoke & found yourself behind the looking glass your hands perched on the breakfast table waiting for a sign. I had nothing to tell them. They conversed with the eggs. 3 We

                                                   Ma faim, Anne, Anne,                                                     Fuis sut ton  â . . . Rimbaud Because there was no other place to flee to, I came back to the scene of the disordered senses, came back last night at midnight, arriving in the thick June night without luggage or defences, giving up my car keys and my cash, keeping only a pack of Salem cigarettes the way a child holds on to a toy. I signed myself in where a stranger puts the inked-in X's — for this is a mental hospital, not a child's game.  Today an interne knocks my knees, testing for reflexes. Once I would have winked and begged for dope. Today I am terribly patient. Today crows play black-jack on the stethoscope. Everyone has left me except my muse, that good nurse.  She stays in my hand, a mild white mouse. The curtains, lazy and delicate, billow and flutter and drop like the Victorian sk