speaking in technicolor

(seattle, jan. 2011)

in toussaint's the bathroom, a young man decides it best to take up residence inside his own bathtub : he is afflicted by no malady & perplexed by no muse : it simply makes sense : his partner, Edmondsson, remains appropriately aloof & unflinching : she brings him food when he is hungry : she speaks to him from her perch on the bidet next to the bathtub : they even laugh together : far from an act of cowardice or push for notice, a bathtub seems like a perfectly reasonable response to any psychic turn : the problem is usurped from the porcelain bowels only when an other insists that a situation is problematic or odd : in this case there are 4, all willing to simply take things at face value : 2 bodies, 2 minds :

(seattle, jan. 2011)

though not fearful of the rain, this area provokes a general mistrust in me of whether or not nature here has the ability to regulate itself : i fear both the possibility of the rain not ending & the rain ending : if the sun peeks at me for more than a day i decide the desert is uninhabitable & begin digging : if the rain refuses to cease for several days i dream of water draining through the clouds for a green eternity & i worry of my house sliding down to the bottom of the hill : & what will be there to catch me : & how well will i adapt to living on the eventual flood : i'll have to build another sort of garden : i'll plant the onions in the interstices filled with the dust accumulating just behind my ears :

(seattle, jan. 2011)

yesterday i passed a pretty mother walking her son in a red stroller : he pointed to a patch of clear sky just beyond my head and asked what is light made of, mommy? : shadows, i replied :

(seattle, jan. 2011)

i was once in love with a woman who would often assert the presence of phantom funeral homes : there must be a funeral home nearby, she would say...i can smell it. let's take another street : i reassured her that there were no funeral homes within miles of where we were, but that i noticed a retirement home a few blocks back : perhaps that is what you smell : a proximity to death : no, she said, i smell the pre-funeral : if there is no home nearby, then there once was one here : or there will be someday soon :

(seattle, jan. 2011)

for several weeks i wake & return to sleep with errant & lost thoughts of the same person : there was a point in life when i might have labeled this love : today, that being impossible, i've tagged it night swimming : this evening it will operate under the moniker necessity : &, finally, when i sleep the thought will always be known as forever : to hide this from others i must fashion a new language of inquiry : it is a maze titled plainsong :

i think of this person in english, often : i think of this person in french, occasionally : i think of this person in image & i think of this person in the sound i wish to scrape from the interior walls of her skin :

(seattle, jan. 2011 : benoroya hall)

this is what the inside of a ship looks like : notice the sound it makes as the hull is slightly bent by wind & waves :

(atlantic ocean, 1835)

if given a choice, i may choose image over object : last week i had an imaginary meeting with my acquaintance b., who i've never spent any significant time with : & never been alone with : the hood of my coat was pulled tight producing a type of corona around just my eyes & nose : alone like a tunnel, i thought : but b. was there and she took my hand & held onto it without speaking : we sat like that for a few hours : when i woke, my right hand was clutching my left & my sheets were making the noise of grass sleeping :

(seattle, jan. 2011)

i sometimes forget that a tree grows out as well as up :

(seattle, jan. 2011)

it doesn't make a difference whether i weep from joy or sorrow : either way i am still weeping : & never is one weep unique from another :