The Rational Human Body Perfected Talks to the Cable Company (vengeful stallions en route)
The mountains used to be silver, but now are thoroughly hollow. The silver and barren slopes are slick and resound loudly when touched. Workers are at work now at the tip tops of the peaks, shattering them off and rolling the silver shards down the slick slopes with the sound of deep and lingering thunder. At the bottom workers stand with thick earmuffs, retrieving the silver thrown down to them. They listen to long haunting love songs on the headphones under their earmuffs. The workers wear dark glasses during the evening, when the sun reflects off the silver slopes of the mountains directly back into their faces. They wear soft white gloves. They wear long white aprons. Their tuxedos are black.
The silver is loaded into rickety tin carts and hauled by rail to the ghost town at the foot of the mountains. The railroad station is dilapidated and the silver is unloaded into there by workers in white aprons. The floor is heated and melts the silver down, when it rains the mountains slowly fill up. The floor is slanted and pours the silver down into the refrigerated abandoned offices that were the ghost town’s city hall. A series of pits and retractable iron planks divide the silver into square foot squares.
Workers with soft white gloves remove the cooled and blocked silver. They bring the blocks of silver to me. I engrave them with the sacred mottos. They take the silver blocks back from me, they ship them around the world. I am a Capricorn, Saturn is my planet, my father is a Cancer. I work long hours and I cannot feel my hands on weekends because they are so numbed by the vibrations of the engraving pens. I wear a long white apron. Jesus was a Capricorn. I think I chew my nails too much, pop my knuckles too much.
The peaks of the mountains are becoming gradually lower. The workers cling to the slick silver slopes with hooks and rubber soles, and chip away at the tops of the mountains. They whistle long sad songs down into the hollow and resounding interiors of the mountains where silver used to be. The earliest symbol of Christianity was the fish. At the foot of the mountains the workers correct their hair and teeth, watching their reflections on the silver mountainsides. They polish the slope where their faces reflect with their soft white gloves.
At night I lay on my side in bed. I watch the long shadows of the workers, cast down the silver slopes by the halogen lamps they use to work at night. I roll over and watch the static on tv. The silver cascading down the hollow mountains causes a constant and low thunder. I roll onto my back and am numb from the vibrations of the constant noise. I pull my earmuffs back down onto my ears. A Capricorn is half fish and half goat. I try again to change the channel, but my hand is too numb to work the remote. I close my eyes and the rumbling silver mountains rock me to sleep.
I wake up in the morning and my eyes are ringed with black. I need to get more sleep. My eyes are growing old, I think. The weary eyes of an ancient soul. The eyes that pleaded down at me when my eyes were ringed with black from fighting. My temples are going bald. The eyes that told me to come out here, and lose my feet, and be set free. I wear a black bowler to work, its band is made of white satin. I’m much younger than they are but my eyes are as sallow as theirs already.
Saturn is the father of the gods, Saturn ate the gods. The sun rises earlier now, the mountaintops are lower. I put on my thick black sunglasses to walk down the street to the dilapidated boxcar where I work. I engrave the perfect silver blocks with the sacred mottos. When the wind comes the mountains whistle now. I sit in an ancient boxcar, away from the blowing dust. My soft white gloves stay spotless all day. My father has cancer. No one can know the secret mottos. Men came to me in deeply black tuxedos and soft white aprons. They removed their sunglasses and told me that I am the only one who can translate the sacred mottos. When she told me not to leave I told her I had to. Then my father adopted me and cut off my feet. Men in dark glasses, no anesthesia but my last glass of wine, and two long, elaborate knives.
I would swear on my life that one day I saw a mountain goat darting back and forth soundlessly up the silver mountains. I write the sacred mottos on the silver blocks, then the workers take them back from me. I collect the silver shavings in the pocket on the front of my soft white apron. Cancer is eating my father alive. I pull the doctor aside and show him the sacred motion. There is nothing he can do. I wish at times that I could sit in the silence in the hospital all night. The low and lonesome rumble of mountains grows louder as I approach town. I eat fish on Friday nights. The shadows of the workers break and stretch irregularly down the ravines and crags of the silver mountains. My prosthetics are steel, threaded to be locked into place on the floor where I work. She told me not to do this, she begged me not to leave, but only for a little while. Heavy grey wings hung beneath my eyes already.
Saturday is named after Saturn. I wear hard white gloves on weekends to compress the swelling in my hands. At night I run my fingers along my lips, I can feel the bones there broken into small grains like ball bearings. I write these silent mottos with both hands on the silver blocks. Each word of the sacred language is the mirror image of itself. Both my hands are broken. I swear on my life that one night I awoke to the roar of the hollow mountains in the wind, and as I corrected my earmuffs, I saw in the window a mountain goat, stately and tall under long white hair. I walked across the room and flicked the static snow to black.
When it rains at night the mountains fill with water. At night I set the silver slivers I’ve collected in my apron on the heated slanted floor of the station. When the wind blows across the broken open tops of the mountains it makes noise like wet fingers around the rims of wine glasses. The workers at the top of the mountains cannot wear earmuffs. They must be able to cry out if they slip and fall. They must be able to be heard as they die. They roar as they crash down the mountains. At funerals we all wear black tuxedos and soft white gloves. The workers are buried in thin tin coffins.
I wear a larger size of gloves now. The sacred mottos I write on the perfect silver blocks they bring me are growing sloppy. I do not see how I could possibly stop. They tell me I am the only one who knows the language, they finger the straps of their soft white aprons. My father notices I hide my hands from him. Saturn is descending in Capricorn in mid-January. The workers chip away at the peaks of the silver hollow mountains with small hatchets. The hatchets are blue steel and sharply curved to hook behind the silver and pull it down, falling down the slick silver slope of the mountains.
I swear on my life that I dreamed one night of a mountain goat with soft white hair, sartorial and silent along the steep silver slopes of the mountains. My father died on a Saturday. My writing is getting sloppy. Men come to me and ask me questions, they do not remove their thick black glasses. They suggest that I pass on the knowledge of the language. My hands are purple and twisted and swollen.
Young men come to me and recite grammar. Only one person can know the sacred language, only one person can know the sacred mottos. My carving is growing illegible. A man in a black fez comes to me, his soft white apron stretched over his massive belly. He tells me he’s starting a fish diet. He tells me that several of my cornerstones had to be melted down and redone. He asks me which boy I am going to teach the sacred language to.
He asks me how long it will take.
I keep dropping my engraving pen. My fingers will not bend. I hold the pen now between the heels of my hands. I write slowly. The silver makes a much higher sound now as it cascades down the sides of the mountains. A man fell two days ago and did not die. The sound does not vibrate throughout my body. I dreamed about my father. I took communion the next day, my first drink in two years. The priest looks sadly down at my feet. I cannot bend my hands to pray. One of the boys tells me that he talks to angels by the riverside between grammar lessons. There is a rumor in town that gold has been discovered not fifty miles away. The sacred language is simple and short. Each word is the mirror image of itself.
The sun rises earlier now, the mountains are much lower. I swear to God that last night a mountain goat was in my kitchen, gnawing the handle of the refrigerator. I show the doctor my hands. There’s nothing he can do. I cannot make the sacred motion. My father was born in Missouri. The boy I teach says he talks to angels. He tells me heaven was in Missouri, he was born on July thirteenth. My father told me he was born in Missouri. He said it was heaven back then. He told me I would lose my feet, and walk on wooden hooves. He said that people would know on sight that I was something special and different. He told me I would be locked in place. They locked me into place, then looked at me through dark sunglasses, telling me to create a sacred language, something only I would know. This first generation, they told me, would need me to help them along. My sheets are ripped to shreds by the steel of my feet. My prosthetics are by my dresser, the remote is thrown across the room somewhere.
The mountains are almost gone. My son will be engraving gold. The dangling workers are gone. Men stand in the interior of the mountains and bash the last few feet with massive hammers, then load the tin carts themselves. I spend my nights with an engraving pen pinched between the heels of my hands, engraving the sacred mottos on the long silver blade of a knife. Nightmares and the tv has been shattered. No one works after dark anymore. They tell me my boy drowned himself. I’m being relocated to the gold mine down the valley. I can’t write, not even clutching the pen in my jaws. I guess they’ll bury me alone. My teeth are too shattered at night to eat fish. At the end of the day they unlock me from the floor, and fasten my hooves back on me. The streets are silent now. I pour a glass of wine with my forearms and drink it through a straw.
I’m thinking of drowning myself. Air bubbles twist out from my nose toward the overhead light like molten silver. The rain comes at night and fills the mountains. I can sleep now without earmuffs. A second boy comes to me the next day. I show him the sacred mottos. He can memorize their forms on his own. I translate them for him, this language can die with me. He can parrot it forever. He can make up something new on his own, something more sacred than this. He says he was born in September. A Virgo I think, it doesn’t matter. A mountain goat swims across the massive silver pools, black horns rising in parallel lines beside his head, his soft and long white hair pulled heavily down his sides, the water silver in the moonlight and crumpled in front if his chest, pushed like silver by a white glove into its place, the cornerstone of an obelisk, the monument of a grave.
images: nuclear themepark [by night], giant eagle owl, white piggybank, seahorse and derby winners, embassies: gold teeth in a bag, headthrown back eyes ecstatic, sunlight mixed gold and silver, frogman's fingers, golden handcuffs, TV [like a portal] in a shiny silver hospital, hanging out a window, neckand ear kissing. feelings: suddenly remember something then hung up, hypnotickissing; heartquickening, indecision, thinking best of strangers, not believing, hunger, warm water, spongebath. words: 'no choice in desire [but love is a decision]', 'everything we know about sex is wrong', 'filters through the trees; catches on leaves', 'jingle bell socks; don't tell the doc', 'hamptonroads'. smell: warm, [home, child, blanket, teddybear], your unwashed salty cotton tshirt, skin, mouth, coal. sounds: clogs on cobblestones, roarrumble-delicate electrical storm, chimney gust, hospital ghosts..waiting to go home, a song: 'a century of [paper] lies' ?
they're sellin shampoo made from crushed pearls and virgin arctic fox furzz and moistyoureyesare made ugluttinous with scalped babies thighs and winterdense rainbowfish scales and kitten's dioxyribonucleicacid acic for sinkhole unplogger and hairspray from swanspit and chewing gum from orgasmic tantric treecum and toothpaste from larks diamond fillings and it all makes you pretty and clean and shameless with moist antibacterial monogramed silk hankershiefs to wipe your arse with and you're dirty and you will never be clean and you smell like death, just give me your money, down the filthy sinkhole to clean your scumclenched drainpipes. swallow bleach.
the apocalypse is on its way. too late. there is nothing we can do. well where's the fucking fun in that? if a massive hairy comet were headed our way we'd still want to be told, wouldn't we? that's upset me. I'm upset. soul, the right time. alive now, peace. into me see asleep; arose. it's time to work on exit techniques.
my uncle the arms dealer is a very charming man. he looks after everyone. he is handsome, funny and very, very rich. beautiful women adore him. he lives allover europe, speaks the language - says he's in 'defence' and that he doesn't press the button. i read his palm once; an afflicted ring of Solomon wrapped tight. he introduces people. says he doesn't push the button. he's a bit like james bond; when i was small he was a bit like james bond.
you get caught in a thursdayfriday, you know when you get slipstuck between days…things go on hold; turn cold. telephones spine you nervous, demanding, and you havent thought through your excuses, and the door goes, and how do they know where you are there? jumpy, buzzers, voice boxes, curtains closes. things wanting in. and you want to know where you are. But you're staring or thinking about sex or death and you know that talking to a friend will make you feel better because it usually does but you don't do that either. And you have stuff you must do that day but you put it off and sit there like you're in a lukewarm bath, okay as long as you don't move.
