(halfway house)

XX.

         Any Where is a real halfway house. It's a halfway house for surrealism, more than it is for surrealists, although everything's welcome. I'm only halfway sure if the door is always wide open; some days it seems halfway closed, although you never can tell for sure. Like the pieces in a dream, in the dream, have you ever-sometimes truly been uncertain, of the identity, of an Anybody? Of anything, of some one? In a dream. If everything is like blood, the door at Any Where is the living heart of an animal: In Out In Out In. Out In Out. In Out In Out. If sentences could never start and never end, the sentence I would write here would contain both words, only two words, maybe a million different two words. The door at Any Where is a threshold, is time, of time. The Experience.

         I did not go through one side to get to the other. The living heart of an animal is always beating: never the same beat, never the same blood, always the same, always beating. For all of being living, the heart is the same never the same. The animal is the animal always different, because a moment makes a difference, different moment. I have done things, I was somebody, lots and lots of somebodies, one for every moment who I was, was who I was. And now it's still the same, still different, even now, even now. Even you. Even words, even ever. Even never. It's all real, it's all separate all together all the way all all just one. Just many. More than one. I travel all around, I'm always going to new places, it never changes, even when "never changes" changes, because what never changes is "always changes." Halfway is the only suitable compromise here. Any Where is a halfway stop on the Real Express route, the Expressive Rail trail, the Train Of Thought express, and even the Halfway Railway way.

         It's not really a place that you find, but you can lose it when you travel. I travel all around, and I don't; I spend my life on one train or another, Halfway, and halfway true things seem to be the truest. Halfway thinking feels confusing, halfway feeling feels halfway. Who knows, who knows: halfway is for living. Living is for who knows, and so is death. And so is halfway. All for the other, never to get to the other side. For not for. Half-way-door.

         I am a string, stretched taught between-in No two Points, between-in one strange loop, and plucked; life the measure of vibrations if time the measure of change. Movement, movement. The parts composing me came together, moved me, as though I were plucked, and I resonated with other strings that came near me. Maybe with the collective hum of all strings, each string so quiet, collectively too huge to not be a part of. Now, now, the string moves back and forth between black and white, and every time I get to black it could be white, the frequency so high, the amplitude decreased, no time to orient. Black or white, neither/either. I’m not in either, I’m in both. I’m in both/and/either/or. I’m not moving between black and white, I am movement and between-in. Confusion is gray, but so is clarity; when you hit the middle, it is only living, and there are no words, no words for black or white or gray, except direct experience of Anything, contained in single words and not, not for others, not for always. Fools look at fingers that point to the sky. But there are no single points for everything, for direct experiences, except itselves that can’t be somethings, that can only be living, and dying. Not eithers, Everything boths. The fool who looks at the finger and does not think and sees everything doesn’t need to look at the sky. The sky is in the finger, the finger in the sky, the point doesn’t exist. Only halfway.

(pain)

XIII.

         My migraines begin with no beginning. When a migraine starts, when it finds me; well there is no place, no point when it's found me for sure. Like the horizon in a gradient, like the birth of gray from the death of black and white. Because when I suddenly get a migraine, I suddenly feel pain the way it's always been there. In fact, there is only one migraine, I've never had more than one migraine, and it is always there, but not always beginning. Like a person you know: all of the person you know, your whole experience of that person, things about that person, is all of who you know you know, and all of that's inside you, always is. It somehow never leaves you, never stays in you, and you forget and you experience again and again; as soon as you see the person again, you know them again. And then life goes on and they are not physically present, and you forget until you remember. My migraine begins in a realm like halfway-asleep, a realm that exists in both asleep and awake, but not between. A No Place when anything could be, where nothing begins and nothing's eternal, and everything confusing can be seen confusing in all clarity, and things that start are not starting when they start. I don't know when my migraine finds me. Perhaps it's my head in orbit to the mass of potential that everything physical and experiential passes into: the chest of the body. And perhaps my head eternally undergoes phases, and in certain phases my head can be seen from the migraine that lives in the chest, and that's where it finds me.

         Pain is a funny thing because there are several ways it can hurt and several ways it can heal and several ways it can be happening and not hurt. It can afflict, it can teach, it can put you to sleep; it can wake you, ruin you, strengthen you, and drive you to a place when nothing makes sense and yet you experience the all-nonsense with all of your senses, and it's so clearly neither-either that suddenly you understand with an understanding that feels like it never began.

         There is physical pain, emotional pain, lonely pain; the pain of inseparability, the pain of winter, the pain of spring, the pain of transience and the pain of For Good. There is a pain for difficulty and a pain for simplicity. Pain can be tiny and inconsiderable, nagging and subconscious, undiscovered. It can be tremendous and sensational, it can carry you away to a sadness you don't want to be parted from, it can raise flags of blood and purpose that inspire waxing wind into your sails. It can steal your sails and leave you drifting to no purpose, it can cycle like fear and paranoia until you feel so alive from suffering that being close to death could not make you feel more alive. Pain can be the decay that fertilizes the soil, that nurtures things that grow. Pain can parent love, and hate, and indifference. It can be felt in every part of the body, of the chest, of the mind and heart, it can be felt it in places that don't exist and it can start and never start, kindle and douse fires. Pain can die while it's living, it can die and still be pain, hammering and aching and breathing in your head. Because pain is a funny thing; pain is both a thing separate from you and your experience of it. Pain knows the death of death as well as the death of life, and if it's seems closer to death it's because you are far from both death and life, which are always close together. Which are always found in each other, which are always like friends we know and we touch and we friend and we leave and we live. There is a No Point when pain becomes the death to your life, and the same No Point is where pain becomes the life to your death. Pain calls me back to my body, like a force that I can trust it brings my head to my chest, and there is water and air, and I can see the water and I can feel the air.

         Sometimes the pain is like a bowl of water; this is how the pain is separate from me. Sometimes when it's there the bowl seems really full, and if I am sitting and holding the very full bowl it means that I can't stand up without spilling it; this is how the pain is my experience of the pain that is separate from me. Sometimes the pain of not being able to stand up without spilling is water, more water put in the bowl such that a single breath would make it spill; this is a point where somehow the pain of the experience becomes the experience of pain. And it's a point where pain that is separate from me becomes a part of me, which is the start of the death of pain while it continues to live and be.

         Suddenly, I don't need the pain of pain, and it needs to be embraced. I can shove it away, bury it but the pain continues to be, and the pain of the pain continues to be. It can't be fought and killed---anyone with headaches must know that fighting headache pain makes it worse, and even medicine doesn't kill it. That if a headache dies after taking medicine, it was because of healing and not fighting, because a thing can be healed to its death. And pain of pain is very similar to the pain; it can be healed to its death, and then the pain still lives, but the feeling of pain has changed. The way all deaths are changes and not losses and not gains and not neither and not change. So I embrace it and I change, and the pain of pain is the part of me that changes, and the pain stays the same but I am living; for my head and my chest the pain becomes life, becomes a part of it, becomes a part of me like a bone in my body. Another sensation to live, another feeling to wake me up, to be awake so I am feeling the No Point that is always there that we don't always feel. The Point that our heads can't touch without our chest, that words don't touch, that's so essential it can't be described, is too complex, too simple to understand without knowing by feeling and can only be lived: the horizon between life and death, the line that makes our heads feel we are alive, and our chests know it.

(pieces)

VII.

Pluck the white-coated metal, black lipped lamps from the 

white plastic tracking.

Ink them on stamp pads.

When will they turn the water back on in the parks?

                  Better fill up a water bottle just in case it's not yet—

                                    I have a place on my bicycle to stick it.

Unusable metal tokens, polished with vinegar

Rock-polishing machine                 Coin sorting bank

(Neither take tokens.)

Plastic peg pieces punched out with brand-new game pieces:

                                                         separated,

                                                      lost,

                                                            found,

                                                          considered and

                                               discarded.

Stiff, far-twisted plastic-coated twist-ties, un-twisted,

                                    released from the ankle of the brand-new toy

                  and the punched hole in the brand-new box.

Plastic wrapper, wrapping box,

passes being brand-new—

moments, minutes, a day after broken?

Bro¦ken op‿en,

                    ap/art,

                    to↯rn, still passive;

                                                         what be it now?

                                                         what be-ed it before,

when my fingernail  could not slice it?

when I could not incise it,

             even at the corners of the box where the wrapping wrinkles up.

When my tooth could not tear it,

                  only pu l  l   ,  s  t r et ch   the wrinkled corner and

leave saliva beading up on the clear.

                  Even at the edges where the box folds in;

where the corner of my nail could not slit it,

only run along the indent, against nothing, aggressively,

only    s   t re tch  i ng and wrinkling the plastic.

   what be it then?

Before a pen is found to do the job,

                                    go where the fingernail failed.

                                    A scissors to finish what the tooth started.

What will all the stamp pads be when they've dried up?

separated,                  

       considered,

lost,         

discarded,         

《found?》  

I'll have circles the diameter of light bulbs

if I can find stamp pads the diameter of white track lamps.

Outside, inside, through the window,

through the nine-tenths-of-the-way closed curtain,

through the white plastic corner of fence,

behind an unfocused sum of tree fingers,

tree digits,

ticks a shape as bold and dimensional as a water-logged ink doodle. Ticking tail, monkey’s math, sleepy rhythm, in and out.

It's a monkey,

a faceless baboon or an unknown sort,

a crossbreed,

a generic likeness of—

but not a gibbon. Not a creature's shadow. Not altogether there.

On the edge of the dream,

a banana = slip, and as I slip into dream the ink monkey

appears like an inbreath and bobs away like an outbreath, disappearing to the park.

I left my bicycle by the fence, for the years and years of a heartbeat, with no tangible evidence of the was that passes since we were,

since the way it was and the way we were,

since and passing.

Like grabbing sunlight

as it cycles through the nine-tenths-of-the-way closed curtain.

Like banana meanings, like a rhythmic tick:

monkey’s math for water-logged ink at the start of a dream.

Like vinegar-polished metal tokens,

which cannot be sorted by mechanical banks.

Brand-new passes wrinkles, time and time of a heartbeat.

My white-coated metal, black lipped stamps pass too,

on the white plastic tracking,

like plastic wrapping,

plastic pegs,

and far-twisted twist-ties.

On the edge of the dream, there is no place to stick it.

(forty winks)

VI.

         Reclining on my bed I look into the Karate mirror that runs parallel to me on the opposite wall and see that all is in order in my room. No Peter-Pan-shooed thief is dismantling the storm windows, no disturbing skeletal cat is crouching against the ceiling in the corner to my right, no mouths are shutting in any of the pictures posted up behind the lamp. None of the canvas-skinned subjects have left their painty backdrops to sneak into my sheets, no brother of mine is on the roof outside the window with a bagel for my breakfast. Forty-winks and I'll be on my way---Wink number one: Was that a three foot hairy-legged centipede resting on the wall above my head? I blink. There are tears worn into my lykafur coat, ripped from my blinky eyelids after naps in crowds of beer and sharp grass, ripped and sewn in with a needle of grass at the world's weakest seams.

         My door pops open in a demonstration of manhood, proof that no one's helping hand is needed to turn the knob. Blink blink---I lost count already, unless that makes five. I poke the latest self-infliction in my mouth with my tongue. It tastes tender and savory, and painful. A finger travels to the space between my legs. Then, a moment of self-consciousness and salty guilt precedes and endures a vision of Anyone everyone regarding me, Everyone offended and feeling forced to live their disgust at me. So I do exactly as I don't-know-what-to do:

         I stretch myself on the torture rack between thinking one way and another and listen as my muscle tears under grueling strokes of "yeah buts." I listen to sinewy rips that sound like wet pulpy construction paper pulling apart, canvas on a hot air balloon bursting open, rupturing in the middle of the canvas, far from the seams. I hear the wet, fleshy tearing under my skin until I get to the end, reclining on my bed. Reclining on my bed is the dream, and I recline into its comfort. The dream reposes there, as fantasy, as gettaways, as entertainment, consolation, inspiration. Occasionally just as sleep. Cozy sleep boiling over with emptiness, so empty you have to put a lid over it. But right now I'm still blinking. I must not have reached forty yet.

         I listen to the song that's noising my room; the noise is all about a lady In London So Fair, and I like the story I'm imagining. Soon I snap out of it and realize that my sister is driving me somewhere. It's a car ride from hell; there's highway as far as the eye can see and Everyone knows: it's pass, kill, tailgate and be killed. I see cars full of children go down from crooked tricks and despicable stunts, and I keep my eyes on the red sky until my sister drops me off at a small theater with peeling frescos. I'm told by the cooperators that I've been Commissioned to Rectify their building Through Art. My fingernails scratch at the fresco, scratch away the crumbling plaster, peel and scratch 'til I feel the cement structure behind it, the architecture of the 1970's, heavy at the bottom. There's not a lot of light but there are red-orange rugs, and the trapezoidal walls and dead vines on the cracked cement suggest the building used to be an underpass. If I walk up the stairs I can take the slide to the central Prada store in the city. I take the slide. It's not a store, just a building. It's chic on the outside, black and white and skyscrapery. On the Inside prada is lost; it's black like an arcade and there are kids there, kids my age and older. Some are sitting in a jeep, others in a blue and red Porsche, wearing pricey sunglasses, taking photos of themselves and rocking back and forth because the cars shake like their miniature versions—the mini cars, planted in front of grocery stores, that little kids ride on for a quarter.

         A familiar-looking kid my age takes off his pricey sunglasses to assess a photo of himself. As he adjusts his stylish scarf he spots me and beckons me over. I look around. On the right towards the back of the room the black wall is missing. There are three long steps where the wall would be and three walls surrounding the long steps, it's dark inside because it's an arcade for kids much younger. By the time I look back at the familiar-looking kid he's engrossed in his project again. I go and join the kids much younger; we play life-size Hungry Hippos. But the game costs $6.50 and the supervising carnivalman shakes his finger at me, wordlessly accuses me of sneaking and kicks me out, so I wander past the Photobooth-in-a-Jeep and Porsche Rock 'n Ride and outside of the building where scores of kids my age and older are loitering and trading and chatting and grinding the toes of their shoes on the cement to put out finished cigarettes. Some are sitting in butts that are old and stained by the street and the dirt on the ground is probably ash. The grass that sprouts through the cracked cement is coarse and sharp and tougher than plastic; it's fibrous and dry and bends though it's stiff and it'll papercut your finger if you grab it from a sneaky angle. It's impossible to uproot, even if you tear up the fibrous blades; the scores of feet my age and older trample the dirt and pack the ash so tight that they form cement and that's how the streets are made.

         I make my way to a harlequin kid who is chatting it up with Anyone near the side of the Prada store, on the sharp grassy lawn of the park where loitering is abundant. I borrow an ice cream bucket full of cash when he isn't caring. I just need to use it to pay off a game of tug-o-war for the kids much younger. But the bucket is from crack deals and suddenly there are shouts announcing that "it's the po," "the pigs are here," "the fuckin' boys―the fuckin' po-lice" have hit the scene, and it's a dry, sunny day for the scores of kids my age and older to scatter like mad in every direction. Some continue to sit on the sharp grassy lawn and picnic on tattered, ashy tablecloths; they stay where they are because they know they can't get arrested if they're clean, or because the police have black batons to bring down the runners. Others run because they won't get away with staying, and the heavy policewoman near us is distracted by the runners just long enough for the Harlequin Kid to slap my shoulder and tell me to run. We take off. It's inevitable that she'll come after me and as I follow the Harlequin Kid, who doesn't take back the ice cream bucket, I look back and see her brown face, heavy at the bottom, chasing me. We sprint across the park and there are so many kids that she loses us, and I look at the Harlequin Kid and his eyes are so red and so tired that he stops to lie down under a tree for 'night's sleep. He hands me a pamphlet before he knocks out and I read about a kid my age or older who died with blood in his red eyes and coke dusted on his shirt and hairy arms. There is a picture.

         I wonder how the Kid got this pamphlet in my dream and what is he trying to tell me by giving me this. I wonder is he showing me that the world of law-abiders, the parents, the publishers of the pamphlet are ludicrous, Or Is he warning me, Or Is he laughing. His language is ununderstandable, and with no answer it is pointless to keep the speculations, so I delete them and the situation is feelingless. I delete right and wrong before I leave him to sleep under his tree, before I leave the tree and the pamphlet and the park and the world of highway as far as the eye can see. In forty winks I'm on my way, I wake up and remember I was sleeping.