The Ceremony of Bringing Out The Idiot
I come to and I am in the room and the angel is there already. Really, I cannot tell if it is an angel. The angel looks as tho it was made of pinholes obese with light. The pen is still in my hand. My hand is a fraud. My hand is a bluff. It looks fine cramped against the paper, doing the duty of setting down the words from another source. My hand frames its own knuckles in a sort of teardrop circle, it has hidden horns and it smudges up the works of the pen.
There is a dullness around my eyes and the lids are gummy. I have had to black them out in order to stay in the room with the angel, and I have stoppered my ears. The angel is more than bright, the music blinds me.
The angel sits everywhere above and behind me, instructs me to start writing.
“you sluggard, “ the angel says, “you are so delicate and stupid.” the coarseness of this pulls honey from my ears. The words I put down here are only approximations of the sounds the angel makes. I do not think they can be called sounds. I do not think they can be called language. The closest I can come to describing it is a twelve-toned bell made of locusts. But,
I know what the angel is saying, for I can feel the sounds.
At least the angel tolerates me. The angel savors me and candies up the truth when I listen correctly. There you are, humans are beasts. They love to take up territories. Some of them want my room, but this one is mine. In my room, it is I and the angel, who just spoke. I am anointed.
The angel says, “I love me some crazies.” I can feel the angel avoiding the sink. There are bits of spaghetti trashed there, some cigarette butts, a little waste.
My body is home and the angel tips over a lamp.
“put this down,” the angel says, “you can hide a world behind one seed.” I like that and write it, tho I have never known the angel to read anything I have written down. I write what I want. It is my paper and pen. It was me who collected the contempt of the clerk who counted back my change and sucked once on his dirty vacant teeth. I like that line so I write it on the paper. You can hide a world behind one seed, I have seen it done, so down it goes, right after you sluggard. That vibrates the ears right off my head.
Suddenly I remember a woman who told me she felt like a net full of oysters, so I make her that for real, right on the paper.
The angel must be a technician. The angel is recording the reactions of my meat meat heart, my broadsided heart, my walleyed heart. I write a list of hearts and think to my self, “how many times must I write the word heart?” and stop it.
My heart bounds this and my heart bounds out. The angel catches it and puts it back into my container. The angel holds many treasures together in a bundle, thumps it once against my losses and they brighten a little. This touches me in many places and reminds me I am only a spectator.
The angel continues, “yeah, write about your heart, put it between pigs and fishes and sex and wax and ash, people love a heart like that.” my heart in a sock, my heart is staked, my heart pushing the deliverance of poison, my bratty heart, my decelerating heart, all written out like that, my list of hearts does not make much sense. I read it again and it does not make much sense but it is all a part of the ceremony of bringing out the idiot. I cross out all of my hearts. The angel shouts. This has a lot to do with what I just did. Quickly I write, ′ my cross-eyed heart.′
“I just wrote’ my cross-eyed heart,’” I tell the angel.
“okay,” the angel says, “ now write down you will tell them what it is like to uncrate a carousel from your mouth, that you all want the tragedy, tell them you all map out the time chaos has seen fit to order for us and put an oracle near the end.” I do that, then I lay my head down in the angels bosom and go to where I have no hands again. I do not know what happens after, but the angel hums.
