a boss for us

hello my friend

my friend?

there is nothing to see down that street

i'm not trying to see anything

where are you going?

i'm not going anywhere

come into my store

i don't have any money

money is not a problem

all money is is a problem

fog & fog talk in fog about fog

there is nothing for you here but madness

but there is nothing for me there but madness

so where will you go

here there  there here

you go to madness

i am always here

madness is always with us

what is madness

madness is herethere

madness is the going that has gone

hello nothing

hello madness

hello hello

here but you is for there

amen

for some say that order is the way

and others chaos

and neither right

and both right

yet who could walk both and neither?

and the path of trying is the path of madness

and the path of seeing but not trying is also the path

and the path of neither trying nor seeing is madness

and the madness that is not madness is also the path

there is no path outside the path for all is path

and this is madness

there is sky and land and sea and fire

but they are dead in our hearts

we have kept them alive technically

they are dead in our hearts

the gap between coitus and dream

this is madness

the wheel that re-turns

this is madness

the dove and the oil

this is madness

the word that has forgotten how to fly

this is madness

the the that keeps theing

this too is madness

here we are

in the this and the here and the the

we shall win a prize

from the society of the nonexistent

and it shall be called onk

the prize of onk shall be ours

we shall place it high on the shelves of our soul

and dust it like rare italian marble

we shall call ourselves those of onk

and those who disdain us shall call us onkists

and there shall be a war

between the onkists and the yoophians

between the onkists and the uffuls

between the uffuls and the yoophians

between all and all

and this is madness

let us go to sleep

for we have exhausted the possibilities

but rather we have not exhausted the possibilities but they have exhausted us

for the night has gone and day is here and it is time to sleep

for we no longer know how to distinguish day and night

and this is madness

and this is the dusting

and this is madness

and here we are  the last poets

the last poets are always the last

and this is madness

we seek fog like others seek light or money or love

nothing for us here but fog

and fog is the wheel

and the wheel is the sea

the sea the hello

the hello the prize

the prize the sleep

let us sleep

and this is madness

and this is sleep

this is sleep

propreantepenultimate

the dogs wake me every morning between 0300 and 0400 for their scheduled street fight – their sorting the day’s hierarchy? a requisite sacrifice, maiming, exile? as if hundreds of canine demons are auctioning their souls on the block of eternal hunger, an experimental band barely clinging to the cliffs of sound jamming on that nearby abandoned rooftop. institutional and community life without their euphemisms, a polycacophonous rooster birthing the corruption of the day. i sit on my bed of camels for the hour’s free concert – war eventually exhausting itself (jabes writes within the human moral realm even evil must sleep) – this audio textbook of history, resting afterwards on the grass of dreams.

while this town is softer, gentler than many in northern india, it inevitably has its aggressions. only here have motorcycles and tuktuks aimed for and hit me – though lightly, as they stopped – always young men thinking it a joke. others – of the same tribe – sneer as they pass, spitting at my feet. less subtle than the routine aggressions of my home culture. pros and cons.

though tourists are here, they’re relatively few and disappear once out of town on the rural roads. there i’m a sufficient novelty that the contents of every fifth motorcycle are compelled to say hello, a decent percentage of these pulling alongside, i guess to fully manifest the exchange, ensure the white man knows the indian exists.

one gaggle of 3 boys (they all look 12 but the driver says he’s 18), initially amusing, circle back to me so many times, take uncountable selfies with me, ask me to record phrases in their phone then laugh outrageously, that i finally get annoyed and tell them to go home and watch porn.

this is a town of bands. bandi. i’ve lost track of the number that have passed below – led by 6 or 7 male uniformed brass- and drum-players, followed by colourful females carrying jars. looks like pt barnum should emerge, with a topper and dancing elephants. (as music, i prefer the dogs fighting.) the animals as usual are insouciant, though the monkeys and humans watch, bound in camaraderie by their eyes.

cows, despite being holy here, survive on plastic bag scraps and wire. their indifference to all manner of proximate abuse, noise, traffic is almost admirable. the dogs and wild boars too – the former often curled sleeping on the road during the day while vehicles go racing by honking loudly centimetres from their dreams. what trust! or, rather, what enculturation.

the guest house i’m staying at is run by a family whose living area is the lobby. sometimes i enter and 9 adult humans and 5 children are congregated, tv on, the tumbled troupe all gossip and screaming. i keep probiotics in their freezer and as i obtain a pill one morning an adult asks me what is your disease?

the proprietor’s son who does the cooking says you write too much. (that’s a new one.) reminds me of a recent paternalistic email from a bureaucrat in the housing co-op i live in – all power to the imagination! he hypocritically closes. these inane expressions of conformists, who are given residence in the house of language, born into the temple of imagination, growing to use their habitats, their birthrights, as walls and missiles. endearing in a sense i suppose. but the zoo after a few visits loses its appeal and one seeks possibility outside the societal cages of virtuous enforcement and obeisant commonplaces.

 

for some reason i’m reminded – consciousness even yet sprouts through the hard soil of ubiquitous establishment and cliché – of bruno schultz, who knew his uselessness, and used it, despite the variegations of human force and treachery, to colour life’s long night.